Why ‘Valentine’s Day’?
Friday will be Valentine’s Day again, February 14, the day dedicated to lovers. So how did the name of an early Christian martyr get linked with a day when websites and shop windows everywhere use that name to boost sales…
A Messy Divorce
Tears flowed in an emotional parting with the pro-European Union members of the British delegation to the European Parliament on Wednesday. While Nigel Farage led his anti-EU party in a provocative Union Jack-waving farewell, a spontaneous rendition of Auld Lang…
An anthem inspired
The UEFA Champions League playoffs between the last sixteen teams don’t resume yet for another three weeks. And yet the high choral strains of the anthem familiar to any football fan resounded through the Upper Room salon in Amsterdam as…
Eurotunnelvision
A Dublin economist was giving his take on Brexit on a documentary about Ireland I watched over the weekend. ‘We Irish have always been the underdog’, he said, ‘so we can sympathise with others more easily. We have always suffered…
On Boring Theology
When my youngest son introduced his wife-to-be to my 90-plus-year-old mother via skype, the first question was: ‘and what are you studying, dear?’ ‘Theology’, came the answer. ‘Oh, how boring!’ exclaimed my mother spontaneously. Mum was one for practice and…
