A Christian bedtime story that is also suitable for children going through loss, bereavement or change. — Joe didn’t know his parents because he was a tadpole and tadpoles seem to just appear out of nowhere. As far as he knew, he had simply arrived and was swimming around with so many other guys in the same place that it was sometimes hard to move. “Hey Joe!”…

Why shielding kids is bad for them. — I had just finished helping my father wash my grandmother’s body. I couldn’t get her wedding ring off, but dad finally managed with lots of soap. I was seventeen and it didn’t seem weird to be doing this. …

A New Exilic Period for the Christian Church? — “Why can’t we just sing hymns like we used to?” a young boy asks his mother in church. It seems unfair that crowds of people now gather at football matches and sing songs and hug each other when many church congregations are still expected to observe distancing, no gathered singing…

The bird who went “tweet” — There was once a beautiful little bird called Dottie, who lived in a nice farmer’s yard. She wasn’t very old but because she didn’t have the bright or colourful feathers which other birds had, she felt she was a bit dull and not very beautiful at all. Her friends kept…

Virtual church, more people praying than ever before … it’s a good thing, right? — A recent survey showed that one in four people in the UK have followed online worship during the COVID-19 crisis and that one in twenty are praying for the first time in their lives. Many of these are millenials and Generation Z. …

Meeting a unicorn. — Once of a time, there was a young girl, called Zoe, who loved unicorns. One evening, after bedtime, she couldn’t sleep, even when she knew she should be trying. Looking out of her bedroom window, she saw something glowing at the bottom of the garden. Quietly, she put on her…

Specially written prayers for you to use in the pandemic. — Many of our churches here in northern Italy are closed right now and people have been asking me to help them to pray in this coronavirus crisis. There is a lot of fear, especially when the “enemy” is invisible and could be anywhere. Prayer is the ultimate mindfulness. It places…

As a priest I never thought I would write a prayer about hand sanitiser, but there was a deeper lesson there. — Living in the historic centre of Florence Italy is a big privilege, even in the grip of current anxieties about coronavirus. Sadly, as a priest, my “dog collar” is no vaccine. Having just got back to the 15th -century palazzo I call home, I realise that I would never normally…

The dilemma for a faithful European national. Given my pro-European stance, I have been astonished over the last three years by the responses of people, both friends and acquaintances, who have unfriended me on Facebook over the issue of the UK’s exit from the European Union. …