Reflecting on family life & climate change

Tomorrow, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, we host BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship. The occasion is Mothering Sunday and the theme is ‘A sword will pierce your own heart also.’ The preacher is Revd Anna Poulson, whose daughter had Aicardi Syndrome and died aged three.

Then, at our 10.00am Eucharist, I will be preaching on the theme of What constitutes family life? Remembering Jesus and his Mother, with reflections drawn from our 'Praying with Dementia' evening and my own experience of extended family life.

At our 5.00pm Issues of our Time service, Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explores the Church’s perspective on the themes of our time. Tomorrow's theme is Climate Change: Crisis Management or Full-Scale Repentance? While ecology is always among the leading concerns of our time, two events happened in 2015 to give it an especial focus. The first was the publication in June of the papal encyclical Laudato si'. The second was the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in December. The two events map the territory of the ecological crisis in contrasting ways. In his sermon Sam intends to dig inside both the Pope’s thinking and that of the Paris delegates, and identify what the ecological debate is really about, and where we can focus our energies in responding faithfully to it.

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Sergei Rachmaninoff - Ave Maria.

Simon Evans Goes to Market

How do you make economics funny? How do you put the comedy in commodity? That is the challenge that comedian Simon Evans has set himself with Simon Evans Goes to Market. The first series was interesting, thought-provoking and informative, as well as being funny. 'The market in radio comedy being what it is - [he] was rewarded with a second series.'

'In this new series for BBC Radio 4, he looks at the markets of four goods that might perhaps be referred to as 'Bads' - coffee, alcohol, tobacco and sugar. Addictive, stress inducing, even deadly - but a big part of our daily life that we just can't do without.

With the help of a variety of experts and regular co-host, presenter of More or Less, Tim Harford, he shows how economics really is part of our everyday life.'

Miranda Sawyer notes that Evans' humour 'doesn't quite fit the comedy norm' as he's 'not particularly leftwing, he has no time for cool posturing and he likes to know about stuff.' He laces 'proceedings with his clever jokes, some scripted, some off the cuff', and 'illuminates a subject as he riffs about it, takes it seriously and gets the laughs.'

Thanks to Paul Trathen for a good night out.

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Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck.

Spokesperson for the silent throng of things made by the human hand

The Evening Standard has four pieces written in appreciation of Neil MacGregor following the announcement that he is to step down as Director of the British Museum. This is fitting because "he has popularised the extraordinary riches of the museum in such as a way as to make them part of an intelligible human story, accessible to the ordinary public."

Michael Prodger writes that MacGregor "sees no conflict between popularity and scholarship and instinctively grasps that the public wants information as much as entertainment."

Antony Gormley described MacGregor as "the spokesperson for the silent throng of things made by the human hand, heart and brain over all time. Like no other before him, he has helped us see, empathise and interpret the huge diversity of humanly made things, allowing us to understand what they are and the world from which they come."

I was pleased to see that his future projects "include working with the BBC and the museum on a new Radio 4 series on faith and society." His series 'A History of the World in 100 Objects' was, in part, an inspiration for my short story The New Dark Ages, which can be read using these links - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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The Band - Don't Do It.