Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

Valentine’s Day is for February, but love is for all year round, and that is not always easy.  Relationships have their ups and downs, and sometimes a bit of encouragement helps a lot. So this year, you may find Care for the Family to be worth a visit. Its blog, podcasts and other resources offer...

– the enjoyment of romance If you have been hurt in your search for romantic love, Gabriel Possenti (1838-62) may be a good saint for you. Because Possenti, born to the governor of Assisi, began by having it all. He grew up doing the mid-19th century equivalent of eBay, nightclubs, cinema and online dating, only...

Academics at the University of Cambridge have come up with a theory as to why women do more housework than men. They call it the ‘affordance theory’, which says that men view unwashed dishes and unmade beds as a simple mess, without feeling the need to do anything about it, while women are instilled with...

The Munich air disaster took place 65 years ago, on 6th February 1958, when a plane carrying the Manchester United football team (known as the Busby Babes), plus support staff and journalists, crashed while attempting to take off from a slush-affected runway at Munich-Riem Airport. Altogether, 23 people were killed, including eight players. The Elizabethan-class...

Editor:  The copyright on this picture is now in the ‘Fair Use’ domain at Wikiart.org. If you use the graphic, please add the following credit: https://www.wikiart.org/en/stanley-spencer/christ-in-the-wilderness-the-scorpion  ** ** At the end of this month we enter the season of Lent: those 40 days when we follow Jesus into the wilderness and prepare ourselves to celebrate His...

– vicar and poet  On this day the Church Calendar celebrates George Herbert. For those who are muttering ‘never heard of him’, just think of the hymn ‘Let all the world/ In every corner sing’, which he wrote, along with several other hymns which are still popular, even if they are well over 300 years old....

 Immediately after His baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus faced and resisted three powerful temptations during 40 days in the wilderness of Judea. This time of testing and temptation was His preparation for the work God had sent Him to do on earth. It’s the principle behind the season of Lent, which begins on 22nd...

At the end of last year, the number of Christmas services advertised on the Church of England’s church-finding website were up by more than a quarter on pre-pandemic levels. The A Church Near You website was advertising just over 23,850 services and other gatherings. And search engines saw a surge in people searching for phrases...

– and poet If we were to name someone prominent from the 17th century, we might mention Rembrandt or Shakespeare. It is unlikely we would remember George Herbert. However, he was a prolific writer, a gifted speaker and musician. His hymns are still sung today. Herbert was born into a wealthy family in Mid-Wales on...

Lent is supposed to prepare us for Easter, but making time for spiritual reflection in our busy lives can be hard. One solution is to take a short retreat, at one of the many retreat houses or centres around the country. It has been said that “Retreats are for ordinary people at any time in...

Your mental health is the biggest single predictor of your personal happiness. So, suffering from depression or anxiety disorders can devastate your life. Finding love is also a vital ingredient for happiness. “People need to be needed, and to be in meaningful relationships”, says a recent study by the London School of Economics. It goes...

Twenty years ago, on 1st February 2003, the US space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts. It was the second space shuttle disaster after Challenger, which saw a catastrophic failure during launch in 1986. In both cases the “organisational culture” at NASA was blamed, because engineers’ advice was ignored. This...