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Hello everyone. I hope you are all ok - as much as anyone is ok at the moment. There really is no way to start any kind of coherent sentence about what is happening in the Middle East. I have no wisdom here. It has been a little surprising to me to watch students from Palestinian hotspots such as Ilkley and York marching through the streets of the UK carrying photos of the atrocities carried out in Israel and celebrating the fact that it happened. It seems to me that both Palestinians and Israelis are not well served by their leaders who all seem morally bankrupt and I also feel it must be very lonely being a Jew in the UK at the moment.  

Years ago, we saw a film called Sarah's Key. It seems to be a rule in this family that we chart the film career of Kirsten-Scott Thomas wherever possible. No idea why. As a film, a lot of critics said it was a bit soapy - and soupy actually but it has haunted me for years. It was about the round-up of Jews in Paris in 1942 which the French government pursued enthusiastically. What struck me particularly was the way the majority of Parisians were more than happy to join in. They were just Jews. A lady on the news said that five generations of her family had now lost members to murders because they were Jewish - through pogroms, the Holocaust and now this. It struck me last week - and this was before any of the horrific atrocities that the Israeli government are sanctioning in Palestine - that no one lit a candle outside an Israeli Embassy, no one held a vigil, no one lit up a national monument in the colours of the flag. David Baddiel's book Jews Don't Count is an interesting long essay on this and I have found it very challenging. However, it hasn't quite answered for me how the awful things that the Palestinian people have suffered justify the killing of, among others, a small child who was found with its hands and feet bound, suggesting last moments full of unspeakable terror. 

It is probably wrong to move on, yet I will because we could ponder on these things forever and make no difference except to make sure that, our own side of the street is swept, as they say, and we do what we can.

I gave in and agreed to watch HOH sea swimming this week. I haven't been before because it does make me a bit jumpy - especially if it's a bit choppy. However, Monday was a lovely sunny day and I thought the chances of watching the love of my life suffer a violent, watery death were pretty slim (I can't swim so if it kicks off, he's on his own). So I sat on the beach and watched him swim (see highly professional photo above) and it was actually a very pleasing way to spend an hour. And there was a toddler with a pointy stick trying to spear a fish (unsuccessfully thank goodness). Also, lots of people getting dry, standing on one leg under their beach towels. Always something to watch on the beach - as Victoria Wood used to say. I think sea swimming is one of those things where you appreciate the idea and you can certainly see what the fuss is about but er... no thank you. Thanks! But no.

We also went to see The Great Escaper with Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine. It looks like a prime example of a film for the custard cream and cup of tea brigade  - which is me by the way - that usually gets ignored by film "experts". It is, however, excellent. Obviously, the performances are top-notch. Those two could probably have phoned their performances in but they do sterling work and do justice to a story about how people's whole lives are given light and shade by their experiences in war. These are people who survived but no one really leaves it behind completely.

Finally. Messy Church this week and we did Jesus being the Light of the World. There was a bit of nervousness because the lady telling the story lit a candle to show how it can drive away the darkness. Children are very up close and personal during the story but there were plenty of people on hand to make sure any little fingers reaching out to the candle were gently dealt with. It is funny how children reach instinctively towards the light whether it's an ethereal, poetic vibe like a candle in a story or a bedroom light flicked on after a bad dream.  It's a pretty big claim that Jesus made about himself - to say that anyone could find in him the light they need to live when there is just so much darkness. But I have found it to be so on numerous occasions when I have taken the time to reach out and I expect you have too. 

“I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.” John 8