Blog on the Learig

  17 December 2025 We attended a Christmas service in which a poem by UA Fanthorpe was read. It is called, ‘Cat in the Manger’. It begins, ‘In the story, I’m not there.’ And continues to ask the question and insist that a cat was an obvious occupant of any stable. The cat who is the narrator of the poem, blames ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, /who got it wrong, /Who left out the cat’. Certainly there is no mention of a cat in the Infancy Narratives. But, come to that, there is also no mention of a donkey, an ox or a cow! There is a legend about a cat in the manger. It is said that the baby Jesus was crying because he was cold. Mary for all her saintliness couldn’t quieten him. The cat in the stable jumped into the manger and snuggled into the baby giving him warmth and a constant purr which soothed him to sleep. Sounds plausible but, of course, there is no record of such an event in the Gospels as the poet acknowledges. Does it matter? There are two ways of looking at this. ...

  16 December 2025 We were at the Dundee Choral’s production of Mendelssohn’s magnificent oratorio, ‘Elijah’. Whilst it didn’t seem a seasonal production and the audience wasn’t large in numbers, it was inspiring   to hear one of the repertoire’s greatest oratorios. The choir was in good voice – and the soloists too. Dingel Yandell, who sings bass, was Elijah and he sang his part with strength and conviction. There wasn’t a single blemish in his range – consistently good from top to bottom. Of the others, the mezzo-soprano, Beth Taylor, shone not least because she had been invited to stand in for the publicised mezzo who was indisposed. Taylor reminded me of Ferrier and Baker in the timbre of her voice which had enormous colour – the treacherous Jezebel, the pure strains of the angel and the flow of the arias. Mendelssohn’s composition is magnificient and certain scenes in the oratorio are memorable not least the music which accompanies the battle of the gods, the eart...

  15 December 2025 ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence …’ prays the prophet, Isaiah. (Isaiah 64;1)   And the flooded plains and the famine stricken lands would be no more. And peace reign in Ukraine, Gaza, the Sudan …. ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down …’ is our Advent cry for help, our longing for the coming of the Son of God. But will our prayer be answered this Advent? Was it answered last Advent? Was it answered when the lament was first delivered in the days of the prophet? There are two problems with this prayer. Firstly, to whom would God respond? If you were the one who cried, ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down ..’ would God respond to you over against another worshipper with the same prayer? Secondly, would your cause be justified? Would you have right on your side? What sort of God would make immediate response to your prayer? A puppet on a string? Or ...

  14 December 2025 Christmas   is a celebration of our vulnerability. How did God consider such a wise and simple plan? The baby lying in a manger embraces our humanity in all its vulnerability. If you look more closely at this familiar scene, you will notice that the shadow of death envelopes the Christchild. There’s Herod and the sharpness of his wintry vanity and cruelty. There’s Simeon who perceives the grief ahead, ‘Sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.’ he says to Mary. Anna, married for only seven years and now eighty-four, is living witness to the resurrection, finding new life in her grief. And there’s Elizabeth. She did not experience death but there was a death within her. She was barren. Her barrenness is the opening symbol of the gospel. Like the wilderness and the dry land, she rejoiced in the birth of a son whose home became the desert. His name was John, the Baptist! ‘The desert shall rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus it shall blosso...

  13 December 2025 In the thirteenth station of the cross, Jesus is removed from the cross and placed in the arms of his mother, Mary. It is traditionally called the Pieta. It has its origins not in the Biblical witness but in the fourteenth century German Church. It is often depicted as a sculpture. There is nothing to establish the truth of this in the Gospels. Mary is certainly a witness to the crucifixion and St. John famously reports that Jesus invited the beloved disciple to treat Mary as his mother and asks Mary to consider John as her son. The Pieta is the fruit of a creative imagination. It is not difficult to see the pattern of the mother cradling her baby in her arms morph into the weeping mother holding her dead son in her arms with thorns in his brow, wounds in hands and side all bloodied and bruised. But who knows whether it was true or not? In his novella, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013, Colm Toibin paints a very honest picture of Mary who will not ...

  12 December 2025 We saw the film ‘Nuremberg’ in the cinema this week. It stars Russell Crowe as one of the most powerful Nazis, Hermann Goering and Rami Malek as the US Army Psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley,   charged with monitoring the mental health of Goering   and the other twenty-one Nazis tried at Nuremberg. Robert Jackson, the USA Associate Justice, argued for a fair trial for the Nazi criminals. At first the United States was not supportive preferring summary executions. Pope Pius XII was not in favour either until Jackson revealed knowledge of the Pope’s controversial relationship with the Nazis. Jackson’s efforts proved successful. Trials took place in Nuremberg charging twenty-two high ranking Nazis of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Goering was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. He committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide pill the night before. The psychiatrist found Goering intelligent yet highly narcissis...