Dec 19, 2024 | Christmas, QPUpdate
If you’ve ever been in the car on a journey with kids, you may be familiar with that phrase. Children are generally not known for their patience; it’s a trait we learn and develop over time (hopefully!) Advent, that stretch of time, when we wait and prepare for...
Dec 12, 2024 | Christmas, QPUpdate
I am not usually an aficionado of Christmas adverts. However, this year, I found myself irresistibly drawn to “Loganair actually” the Scottish airline’s offering. The images in the first frames of their compilation of Christmas journeys were curiously familiar. Where...
Dec 5, 2024 | Christmas, QPUpdate
Mary, did you know that you would be misrepresented, misunderstood and overlooked for most of Christian history? Whether we’ve shrouded you in plaster-cast superstition or cancelled you out as nothing more than a convenient womb for the incarnation, I suspect we...
Nov 28, 2024 | Christmas, QPUpdate
Did you know that one of the Christmas songs we will no doubt sing this season has a link to Paisley? In recent years we have at Christmas time sung the song Adore which was written by Martin Chalk and Graham Kendrick. Martin, who now lives in South Carolina, grew up...
Nov 21, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
Find my Past Many of us these days are fascinated by our family history. I did a bit of digging in my father’s paternal line and found the Sprotts hailed from Blantyre. George Sprott, a retired miner, constructed a row of tenements called ‘Sprott’s Buildings’ to house...
Nov 14, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
So, I missed you last weekend. To come clean, I was indulging in a personal obsession. I was enjoying a long-planned dad-and-daughter weekend in the west of France for the start of the 10th “Vendee Globe” single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Our obsession with...
Nov 7, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
My alarm goes off. It is Wednesday morning, and some strange alchemy has happened overnight. When I went to bed our duvet was made of cotton and a light fibre fill, but the temperature difference between under the duvet and outside the duvet has transformed the cotton...
Oct 31, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
“Hinba” is Scotland’s very own spiritual Atlantis. Saint Columba, stressed out with the buzz and busyness that was monastic life on Iona would take himself off to the sacred isle of Hinba, there to commune with the Lord. Did I mention this often meant standing...
Oct 24, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
Many of you will have, I’m sure, visited the town on Oban either to enjoy wandering around the town or to catch a ferry to an island. As you go around the town you might notice, as you look up at some of the older buildings, brown staining, weeping down the façade or...
Oct 17, 2024 | QPUpdate, Strengthening the Heart of the Fellowship
Ok. Are you ready? I’ve a confession to make. I’m an addict. There. It’s out there. No more hiding it away, it’s in the open. What, you might be asking, am I addicted to? Well, my addiction is this…I’m addicted to books. Always have been and always will be. Scouring...
