More than Writers

I love the way Jesus spoke in parables. There is something about story telling that makes information come alive. Most young people seem to love hearing stories being read to them. I remember my younger sister knew all the Mister Men stories off by heart by the age of three. I can remember reading her one of them one night. I paraphrased one page rather than reading exactly what was written on the page. She corrected me immediately even though she had not learned to read by then.  She remembered every word exactly as it was written. She loved having people read the stories to her. Stories are easy to remember. People remember stories. Photo by  Mike Erskine  on  Unsplash Jesus used story telling to speak to the crowds. He used illustrations from everyday life, speaking in Aramaic, the language of the people. He was the master of story telling.  I have never written fiction, only autobiographical books. I would love to be able to write a novel one day....

“I have realized that the most challenging mountains are the ones inside… Pride, doubt, grief – these mountains are more formidable than any physical mountain I could ever scale. No, I am not expecting to get to the top any time soon – some mountains take a lifetime to climb.” These words are as true now as they were when I first wrote them in our Kilimanjaro memoir back in 2014. You see, the first draft of the German translation was ready in 2015, but it took me a further two years to have the guts to officially publish it. For a long time I put the delay down to translation issues, but I now realize that the real problem were identity issues. I found it hard to truly own my part of the story. I did not like to acknowledge that I hold my treasure in a fragile, broken clay jar and would have preferred a container of precious metal – scratch-proof, shiny and unbreakable. No matter how much positive feedback we got, I still wished I had a different story to tell, bu...

by Rosemary Johnson Do you remember the Lindisfarne song The Fog on the Tyne ?  It's quite rude. I couldn’t decide whether to go to the ACW Writers’ Day in Newcastle last Saturday… or not.  Newcastle is a long way away from my home and I was teaching until three pm the day before.  However, when I looked at Trainline , I discovered, to my astonishment, that I would be able to take a train from Colchester mid-afternoon which would arrive in Newcastle that evening.  Should I?  Shouldn’t I?  I decided I would, because we were launching our newest competition, for comedy writing.  Immediately I booked my ticket, all manner of problems reared their ugly heads.  You might say it was the devil getting in the way.  How would I get from my college to Colchester North Station?  How should I park my car?  How much would parking cost?  Would I find a space?...  No, I would walk to Colchester Town Station, about ...

From the moment our distant ancestors started to be social and communicate with each other we have been telling each other stories. The best stories entertain us, but they also help us to establish and remember who we are, to think about the world and make sense of it, they help a community to create a worldview. As Christian writer’s we should be very familiar with the power that stories have on us. Telling stories, in aural or written form, is a high and important calling. When we analyse ancient stories from different parts of the world we discover an intriguing fact. Even though these tales come from different places in terms of geography, culture, and historical era, they are remarkably consistent in terms of the themes that they deal with. The best stories tend to have similar themes, themes that still drive many of the best stories today, themes like: -           Love and romance -        ...

A good friend (the best) came out with a verse for me recently. We were on the phone and I was confiding in her about a decision I made twenty five years ago whose ramifications I still regret and worry about. It was an intensely personal memory and I'd only ever discussed it with my husband. My friend, who is a writer and Jesus-lover, paused for a moment then said, "You know that verse about restoring the years the locusts have eaten? Well, it just popped into my head and I wonder, you know, whether it's for you..." Here is the verse: - "I'll make up for the years of the locust, the great locust devastation...You'll eat your fill of good food. You'll be full of praise to your God, The God who has set you back on your heels in wonder." Joel 2:25,26 The Message When she mentioned it, I felt that thing - call it what you will - a pull at the throat, a lancing of the spirit, a sigh. I looked out over the morning garden - threads of sunshine,...

We bought a flat, with the help of financial assistance from a family member. Which, once the solicitor had woken up to the fact, meant further prescribed loops to jump through to establish the provenance of those funds and the bona fides of the donor, just to prove that the money wasn’t being illegally diverted from their company or the proceeds of their South American drugs ranch. Normal, anti-money laundering stuff. Nothing to get worked up about. Though it would have been handy if the solicitor had mentioned this when we began the purchase, two months earlier, and not on Tuesday when we hoped to complete on Friday. As headaches go, it was easily manageable. That evening we watched an episode of Father Brown which starts with a young woman facing hanging because her final appeal has just been rejected. See, some people do have it worse with their lawyers. I decided that on the whole I would much rather live in a society which takes the transfer of large sums of money seriou...

Humpty Dumpty by Teniel I have just sat through BBC Question Time. Regardless of which party you support, which politicians you favour, and whether you are for or against Brexit, if you also watched it, I think you would have to agree that from most of the panellists it was a Masterclass in using words which sounded like the English language but which had been emptied of almost all coherent English meaning. Participants happily contradicted themselves apparently unawares, asserted things of which they could have no knowledge whatever, and wilfully misunderstood one another. I couldn’t help noticing the contrast with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5. 37: “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” St Paul said something similar: “The things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No? But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jes...