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  17 October 2026 At the end of September, Stephen Kerr MSP successfully passed a motion in the Scottish Parliament. It read: ‘That the Parliament remembers the life, courage and sacrifice of Jane Haining, the Scottish missionary and Church of Scotland school matron who cared for Jewish and Christian girls at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest during the Second World War. ‘Notes that, despite being urged to return to the safety of Scotland as the threat to Jewish people in Hungary intensified, Jane chose to remain with the children in her care, believing that they needed her all the more in times of danger; recognises that Jane was arrested in Budapest in 1944, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and died there on 17 July 1944, aged 47. ‘Further recognises that Jane Haining was posthumously honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for her courage in helping Jewish people during the Holocaust; welcomes the addition of her name to a memorial wall at Auschwitz-Birkenau, e...
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  16 October 2026 Last week, the British Dyslexia Association held its awareness week -   ‘Dyslexia in Real Life: At Work’. Through stories and conversations, the Association ‘highlighted the experiences of dyslexic employees, the strengths they bring to the workplace and the barriers that can affect their confidence and career progression’. In summary the Association said, ‘ It was encouraging to hear how many employers are recognising dyslexic strengths and providing the understanding and personal support their employees need.’ They went on to acknowledge that there was still work to do so that everyone had the opportunity to reach their potential. Amongst those interviewed in this encouraging tale was Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her dyslexia was diagnosed when she was a teenager sitting her O Levels. The presenting problem was her difficulty in spelling. In her exams she was given 15 minutes every hour to go back over her material and check her spe...
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  15 October 2026 We have been watching ‘Time’ on the BBC. It is set in a young offenders institution   and features David Tennant as one of the prison officers and Siobhan Finneran as the chaplain. Both of them are exceptional actors playing flawed but very real characters. There are three episodes in this series. Whilst there are welcome incidents of compassion, forgiveness and redemption, the overall impression is one of brutality and inhumanity. The young offenders appear to be feral and, as such, are treated like wild animals and, in the words of the show, banged up. As the show unfolded, we kept on asking whether this was a true reflection of what happened in young offenders institutions. Two things were horrifying. Firstly, the amount of violent behaviour which the young offenders displayed towards each other. Secondly, the number of hours the young offenders had to stay inside their very small cells. There was reference to a former day when the boys would have ...
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  14 October 2026 In the title of Jody Stowell’s book, there are references to two Biblical passages. The first is to be found in Isaiah 42 when the prophet is talking about God’s servant. ’ He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.’ There is rich spiritual treasure in these fragile images of a small church which despite being battered and bruised is still  able to share some light with the world. The servant or the minister of God is called to nurture this bruised reed and dimly burning wick. The second is a reference to the Parable of the Mustard Seed. The peculiar characteristic of this seed is that it is very small but it grows into a tree which provides hospitality for the birds. We should not be fooled by size. Big is not necessarily best. ‘Small is beautiful.’ was our mantra fifty years ago. There is a third Biblical reference in Stowell’s analysis. This is ...
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  13 October 2026 Jody Stowell is an Anglican vicar in Harrow. She ministers in what she describes as a ‘small church’. She defines this smallness as a church with a worshipping community numbering a hundred or less. This categorisation would cover most of the congregations in the Church of Scotland. The main thrust of her argument in 'Bruised Reeds and Mustard Seeds',  is that small churches have gifts to offer which are not valued by the institutional church. Her main bone of contention is that the Church of England is riddled with anxiety and has passed this anxiety down to the small churches. The strategies which she has seen in her denomination are replicated in our own – a focus on numbers whether its congregational statistics, the numbers of vocations, the numbers on a financial spreadsheet. It’s all about data analysis rather than our ministry to love God and to love our neighbour. There is an assumption that the bigger churches are the successful churches and ...
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  12 October 2026 I think it is safe to say that many people have been shocked by the inhumane way in which the American State has treated   Christa Pike. She was convicted of murder thirty years ago when she was eighteen years old and given the death penalty. She is now fifty and the sentence was carried out on 30 September. Unbelievably, the executioner was unsuccessful. He attempted to inject a chemical into her body below her collarbone. He hadn’t carried out such a procedure in the past thirteen years. Pike survived and has just left hospital. Her future is still unclear. There is to be an investigation into what went wrong with the execution. Thereafter, her future will be determined. It is likely that there will be a legal challenge if another attempt to execute her is agreed. Apparently, 28 states in the USA use lethal injection to execute people on death row. 9 allow electrocution. 9 states have authorised gas   and 5 states have the firing squad as an op...
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  11 October 2026 Two weeks ago, the Church Times had   an article written by Amelia Braddick. She was   reporting on analysis done by the Children’s Society from data gathered from 200,000 15-16 year olds across 29 European countries. The sample included 13,500 from the UK. There were five startling results. Firstly, nearly one in five 15-16 year olds in the UK is unhappy with their life. The teenagers were asked to respond to the question on a scale of nought to ten, ‘Overall, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?’ Secondly, the UK ranked last for overall life satisfaction with an average score of 6.73 out of ten.   The UK was at the bottom of the European table just below the Czech Republic with an average score of 6.82. Croatia had the highest score – 8.00. Thirdly, the data revealed a gender gap. 20% of the   girls reported low life satisfaction. This   was a worse result than that reported by 16% of the boys. Fourthly, ...
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