The roads were so treacherous that what should have been a five-minute drive took 40 minutes. My mum didn’t speak much English, so I did the talking
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I was graduating from university the same day Storm Goretti was due to hit Birmingham. The forecast was for snow – and lots of it – so I decided to get the bus in, rather than risk driving and having to leave my car behind in a snowstorm. Joining me was my mum.
We successfully attended the ceremony and managed to get on a bus back home but as the snow worsened, it broke down a kilometre from my house. The whole bus emptied and we were forced to walk through the blizzard. It was like The Day After Tomorrow out there. Tough conditions for anyone, but my mum, who was in her late 60s, was struggling to take even a few steps.
Continue reading...Instead of ‘being’ or ‘doing’ the wrong thing, a more useful understanding of sin may be of ‘missing the mark’ – a sense of not quite right-ness
Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life
As a child, I was taught we are inherently unworthy of God’s love. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I would intone at Sunday mass, along with the other parishioners. I was imploring God, not just to overlook my theft of the last cookie in the pantry, but for something more fundamental. I asked him to remove the heavy weight of shame from my eight-year-old shoulders.
I had absorbed the doctrine of “original sin” into the marrow of my bones, even though it was hard to square with another key teaching of my church: God is love. Surely, I reasoned, a loving God would not send me to hell if I failed to believe in Him?
Jackie Bailey is an award-winning author whose latest book is The Outrageous Good Fortune of Living (HarperCollins). Jackie works as a funeral celebrant and pastoral care practitioner, supporting people to navigate death and dying
Continue reading...Travellers caught up in ongoing migration row as Madrid introduces retaliatory measures on visitors from Italy after Rome imposed checks
Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the fallout of the escalating feud.
Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa.
Continue reading...Locarno film festival
A couple attempting to leave Ukraine when the war encounter gender identity issues in this bold and challenging film
A movie’s themes could hardly be more urgent and contemporary than those on offer in this entirely absorbing film from German director Isabelle Stever and Ukrainian critic turned screenwriter Anna Melikova. It’s a bulletin from the frontline of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and from the culture war too. It is about identity and choices made in peacetime when less was at stake. There is a bold and brilliant premise that may at first look artificially satirical but is actually inspired.
When Russia begins its attack, the crisis is very specific for a scared young Ukrainian couple, recently engaged: Olya (Tania Myronyshena) and Oleh (Markus Bright). As bombs rain down, they head west in the cramped car of Olya’s elderly mum and dad – with Olya grumpily objecting to her dad’s sexist comments from behind the wheel about female drivers – to stay with Olya’s sister, who is married with a young baby and whose husband, to her fury, has joined up. Oleh’s plan is to get out of Ukraine and live with Olya in the safety of Germany and the EU.
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Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:
Reflections of Notre Dame in the window of a Parisian wine shop.
Paris, France, 2015