MY WRITING LIFE

NOVEMBER 2025

 WRITING

Not much writing this November. I went on a two day retreat at my regular monastery at Crawley Down in Sussex and used their library to read about the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Ephesus (431). It was a useful preparation  for muy next bit of writing, but maybe not what a retreat should have been about.  It did enable me to write a blog on the Virgin Mary.  I also wrote a section on the persecutions of 304 – 311, within living memory of the bishops assembled at Nicaea.  I did not write more because I am waiting to order a book which I found so useful when I read theology at Durham. This is ‘The History of the Early Church ‘ by Hans Lietzmann, a very detailed and lively history. 

The following week I traveled down to Romsey to record ‘The Church has a Past – has it got a Future?’  I spent three days with my friend Elliott of Monkeynut in his recording studio while struggling with a  week-old cold.   I also had the impediment of my front teeth falling out the previous month. However, with the help of multiple Strepsils, we got it done. The next step is to get the audio cover designed.   In January I am going back down to record a conversation with Elliott about it.

MARKETING

I followed the plan for social media which ChatGPT gave me last month.  I posted 15 times on four different social media platforms.  A real step forward.  870 have opened my post, mostly on facebook/bibleinbrief.  I have planned a further ten posts in the lead up to Christmas.

The best initiative was when I went to the Bath Abbey shop during the Christmas Market, (see below). The books manager said she would order ‘Bible in Brief’, ‘Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths’ and probably ‘The Church has a Past – has it got a Future?’  I find a key factor in approaching any bookshop is to be able to point them to a proper distributor.  Happily Filament uses Gardners.

BATH

On Wednesday 26th Linda and I went to Bath to run her brother’s chocolate stall in the Bath Christmas Market (26/11 – 14/12).  Andy makes superb chocolates. They are a) incredible beautiful and b) really natural – just chocolate (milk and dark), fresh cream and fresh fruit.  Linda and I really enjoy selling them.  It is a long day, 10.00 – 19.00/20.00, but we keep giving each other breaks.  And it is such a beautiful city!

CHURCH

The month began and ended with two amazing services.  On 2/11 I went to All Souls evening Communion at St Mary Abbots with the marvellous Requiem of Duruflé.  30/11 was Advent Sunday and Linda and I went to an astonishing candlelit Advent service in Bath Abbey. The Abbey was completely  full. We sang ‘O Com O come Emmanuel’ and ‘Lo he comes with clouds descending’.  The Dean had arranged a marvellous responsorial Advent Credo.  Her is one of the responses:

• It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction.
• This  true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly. 

I preached twice in November. The first was on Jesus’ words about the coming disaster in Luke 21. The second was on the feast of Christ the King.  The day had been instituted by Pope Pius XI just after the First World War.  He was grieved that though there was peace theoretically, there was no real peace because of class conflict and rising nationalism.  Real peace would only come through following the Jesus way of grace and forgiveness.  At last the innovation of making the last Sunday before Advent the Feast of Christ the King made sense to me.

On our first night in Bath we went to a special service in Bath Abbey for Christmas Market stallholders. We heard how it had started.  November 2001  was a very depressing time. There was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease which was dreadful for farmers and the community.  Two local councillors, Marian and Greeta, had an identical vision of how to lift people’s spirits, which was to hold a Christmas market. They involved lots of Primary Schoolchildren who brought their parents etc. It took a some time to persuade others to buy into the vision, but it has been going twenty years. Last year contributed £45 million to the local economy.

Wednesday Saints

Because of being away, I only celebrated two Wednesday Saints.  Leonard, (d. 559), was a Frankish noble, who was baptised along with his chief Clovis. He then abandoned the warrior life and became a hermit, with a special ministry of freeing prisoners.

The other was Mechthilde of Magdeburg (1207-1282), a German mystic who was consumed with the love of God.  I quote her in my recent book:

“Jesus, dearest Lover of mine, let me approach you… with deep love for you in my heart, and let me never grow cold, so that I constantly feel your intense love in my heart and in my soul and in my five senses and in my members. Then I can never grow cold.”

 FILM TV & MUSIC

TV

We really enjoyed the Belfast police series, ‘Blue Lights’ watching the last two episodes together.  

Prisoner 951 was a fantastic series about the terrible experience of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, taken hostage by the Iranian regime.  Upsetting but deeply human, 

Music

In two free lunchtime concerts I heard both the Mendelssohn Octet, written at the age of 16, and the Schubert Octet.  Magnificent! 

Film

I saw ‘A Private Life’ with Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteil – a strange story about a psychotherapist who came to believe that a patient of hers had been murdered.  A very satisfying film.

A week later Linda and I saw ‘Nouvelle Vague’, a contemporary film about the making of the iconic ‘New Wave film ‘Breathless’ or ‘A Bout de Souffle’. It makes us want to see the original. 

On 1st December we went to the cinema in Bath to see ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ – a murder mystery all about a Roman Catholic church.  Convoluted, entertaining, and occasionally gruesome.  Go and see it and enjoy the surprise Christian ending!  

Wishing you a blest Advent 

and a happy Christmas.

Andy