Those of us over forty probably all have a set of scales in the bathroom. It’s no fun, bleary-eyed first thing in the morning, to approach the scales with trepidation that yet another few pounds have mysteriously appeared! We are quick to let friends know when we lose a...

    On these recent Ordinary Sundays of the Church’s year, our second reading is taken from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. Corinth was an ancient Greek city with 90,000 inhabitants in 400 BC. The Romans demolished it in 146 BC and built a new city...

    My father had an “odd couple” of favourites. One was John Wayne, the other Mario Lanza. He would always insist on saying Mario Lanzo, with an “o”, especially when my mother would point out it was Mario Lanza, with an “a”!   Towards the end of his life,...

  The mood in our aeroplane was subdued as we began the descent to cold and cloudy Glasgow Airport on our return from sunny Gran Canaria. Once we had touched down, the recorded message was played with the usual strained cheeriness, telling us not to put on our mobile phones,...

  We all like people who are prepared to get their hands dirty and not just sit in their armchair and talk about what everyone else should be doing. You could describe the coming of God in our human nature, body and soul, as God getting his hands dirty with...