Pelican Brief
Pelican Brief DM 25th September 2023 Collective nouns are not my strong point, so I had to look up the one designated to a group of pelicans. A pod stands first in the queue, then squadron, then fleet; and of the three, squadron I think suits best, for pod seems too associated with whales and […]
Ladies Arms
Ladies Arms DM 18th September 2023 One of our Lebanese friends recently joined us for lunch and kindly brought some Ladies Arms. It’s a funny expression, and conjures up thoughts of body-snatching or mannequin theft. Ladies Arms are delicious pastries, drenched with syrup, and filled with ashta cream. ‘Znoud el sett’ is their name, which […]
Grounded grasshoppers
Grounded grasshoppers DM 11th September 2023 I have now calculated that there is not enough life left for me in this world to read all the books on my shelf. Actually, I think I passed that point years ago, but have been in denial, so that I could still keep on buying them. But obviously […]
God is dead ?
God is dead ? DM 4th September 2023 Katharina Luther once resorted to a clever ruse to rouse her famous husband out of his depression. She entered his room dressed in funeral clothes, and when Luther predictably asked who had died, she said, ‘I thought God must have died, by the way you are acting’. […]
The Hottest Part
The Hottest Part DM 28th August 2023 In my school days, there was no such thing as a licence for operating a Bunsen burner in the science lab. From many misspent years of smoking and many mischievous deeds performed at cracker night, my pyromaniac friends and I knew how to strike a match and understood […]
Artificial limits
Artificial Limits DM 21st August 2023 “And on that farm he had a bot, AI-AI-O.” What a world is the world of Artificial Intelligence. How quickly the digital cogs turn, and how rapidly the line is approaching when we won’t be able to tell the difference between the real and the artificial. Alan Turing would […]
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve DM 14th August 2023 I wonder what Adam and Eve were like before the Fall. The Bible tells us many things about what they were like after, but gives only the briefest details about their state of innocence. I wonder how they spoke, what they looked like, and how they related to […]
Oaken lore
Oaken lore DM 7th August 2023 I wondered why the autumn leaves on my oak tree were still hanging on, though the worst of the winter winds had done their best to set them free. They seemed not just to defy their deciduous relations, who were already looking decidedly naked, but even gravity itself, with […]
The Case of the Missing Q
The Case of the Missing Q DM 31st July 2023 There’s a long-standing tradition in theological circles that Matthew and Luke drew from a common source when they wrote their Gospel accounts. Theologians assign the letter Q to this supposed common-source document, which stands for quelle, the German word for source. The complete theory is […]
Me O My
Me O My DM 24th July 2023 In a recent sermon on David’s famous Twenty-third Psalm, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, I sheepishly confessed that I had referred to the word ‘my’ as a personal pronoun, when in fact, it is a possessive pronoun. Believe it or not, there are eight different subcategories of pronouns […]