Quartz
The theme for the 6pm service last Sunday was forgiveness (12th of Feb). Kate talked about the woman who poured perfume on Jesus feet, and the issues of shame, guilt, forgiveness, and Love which that story involves. It is often too easy to focus on a simple dynamic of a judge giving forgiveness to someone […]
During Advent in 2022 Quartz used visual arts to give people the opportunity to contemplate how they shape light entering the world. We made several mobiles, strings of mirrors, that were hung in the building. They were beautiful to look at, and many people commented that the installation helped them contemplate. The process of making […]
This picture is one of my early ones. It has been useful a couple of times recently. This morning I was thinking about peace as I stood in to help out at a commemoration of remembering the day that Bruce killed Comyn in Greyfriars, Dumfries. The opportunity to help arose as a result of connections […]
I draw during the 11 O’clock service. The pencil and paper help me to explore the familiar surroundings and repeated words. Perhaps this is similar to taking notes in a lecture theatre, even if the text is available online. Writing helps focus the mind and activate more of the brain to aid retention. For me […]
How the digital world can help us worship at 6pm on Sunday the 29th of January we will be gathering in St Johns to use digital technology to worship together, and also explore ways in which access to the digital world can help us live out the Missio Dei, the mission of God. In the […]
The view from the Crichton QFC on January the 15th, 2023 It had been a drich few days before we met. Record flooding levels in Dumfries saw businesses washed out, some perhaps beyond their ability to recover. I wasn’t sure if some of our proposed activities (follow the link to see the plan) would work […]
To what extent is salvation given or worked out through living? I suspect that the issue of how “Grace” and “Works” relate to one another is an example of #SensingMystery, although like all mysteries it involves a confusion of certainty that keeps us going and awareness of the unknown so we have to keep asking […]
The experience of being challenged and moved by experiences including love, beauty, goodness, joy, compassion, injustice, evil, suffering, death.
Meet outside Crichton chapel at 2pm on January the 15th, 2023 “Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely […]
Sensing a changed quality in awareness. Often described as the feeling of being ‘at one’ with nature, oneself and others. We often slip quickly into thinking about ‘things’, or thinking about or experience of things. #SensingAwareness is more about being in a state of awareness of direct experience, mindfulness. The Divine in the world, creating […]