graham's blog

As part of my new resolve to do a bit more blogging, I have moved my blog to a new site - http://grahamtomlin.blogspot.com/ go there for more of all this....

There were a few stories going around before Christmas about the revival of paganism, the winter solstice, with druids dancing around Stonehenge and uttering long-lost pagan oaths. It brought up the old stories of Christmas being a pale Christian version of good old pagan revelry in the depths and darkness of winter. Yet there was a good reason why Europeans gave up on paganism. I spent part of Christmas reading G.K. Chesterton's Life of Francis of Assisi, quotable and pithy as GKC always is.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to start blogging a bit more often. So watch out here for a bit more action. I'm hoping that writing down thoughts stimulates more thought, and helps to crystalise the ones that do rattle around my head, so I'll give it a go again. Sorry to readers of this blog that I haven't done much since the rather miserable night in Rome in the summer. Christmas has come & gone and I'm eager to get going on some of the books I got for Christmas so I will try to comment on them here. Promise.

Went to the Champions' League Final in Rome last week. Just a fantastic time. Hot day, wandered around the city - tons of Barca & United fans around. Saw a few ruins, museums, art galleries (strangely Wayne Rooney didn't seem to take in any art galleries...) Getting into the game was the most complicated thing ever - endless security gates,checking ticket, passport etc.. Great view (pic attached), great atmosphere. Fun to see the opening ceremony - you don't see it on TV and the Italians know how to put on a good show.

Watched a fascinating programme the other day. I used to know Michael Ward in Oxford a little while ago and the BBC ran a documentary on his PhD resarch (something most doctoral students dream of but never achieve!). He was doing research on the Narnia stories of C.S. Lewis. They are a little odd in not being a proper series at all, with all kinds of different themes, characters, disjointed patterns, and people had wondered for a while what was missing. He seems to have stumbled on the answer.

I preached at St Paul's Cathedral recently at the consecration of a very fine man and a good friend, Paul Williams, the new Bishop of Kensington. This is the text of what I said, in case you're interested:

I realised recently that there is a section of the HTB website where all my sermons are in one place! If you need some help getting to sleep sometime, you can listen to them here:

http://www.htb.org.uk/media/media/graham-tomlin/all/all/all

The Credit Crisis and the Church

Just been in the Philippines, filming some lectures for a video version of our SPTC ‘School of Theology’ .Jane (Williams) and Mike (Lloyd) were there too & it as good to listen to some other lectures – they are good! It’s also good to know we roughly believe the same things! We did a few ‘video Godpods’ – in other words, Q&A from the audience, video’d for the course.

Just back from the summer holidays. Been reading some good things, including one of the best responses to Dawkins et al that I’ve seen so far. It’s called ‘What’s So Great about Christianity’ by Dinesh d’Souza. The title isn’t great and at times the theology is a bit wayward, but as a polemical response it’s much more direct & confident than most anti-Dawkins books.