Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I always feel overwhelmed by the day as if a dark cloud rests on my heart. I know I want to move away, to pass on to happier more pleasant things than contemplating the fact that in the last World War six million people, largely Jews but also many others including, gypsies, homosexuals and the physically disabled were systematically exterminated.

If only I could pretend that this was an aberration - something which only happens once in a thousand years but the Armenian massacres at the beginning of the twentieth century, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, the Rwanda genocide all prove that this is something which can surface almost anywhere given the right conditions.

I suppose part of the key is that it all starts by treating other people as less than human - they are not like us and so we don't have to treat them by the same rules as we would treat "our own kind".

I would like to think that there was something positive that I could bring out of this day but apart from the determination that it must never happen again I'm not sure what I can - and even that resolution by so many people proved helpless in the face of the Rwandan genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia.

Any thoughts?

Pancakes!

Children say the funniest things!

Sometimes it is through the mouths of children that God speaks to our hearts! Even to those who don't see themselves as 'religious'. Just asking questions that make us stop in our tracks and think, or those comments that remind us how dear we are to God.

One story I heard was of a child and parent having a dispute when the child turned round and said 'Well you can't tell me what to do because you are only a child also.' Parent asked 'how am I a child?' Child responded, 'You are a child of God!'

Children who have such a simple faith in God our creator can sometimes remind us of some simple facts and add a smile to our day.

I'm wondering if the little girl I met today is a prophetess in disguise! Apparently I am going to have 2 little boys!
News to me!

Keep smiling and remember we are all children of God!

False Prophecy!

"If I were a gambler I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000" or so said Paul Ehrlich Professor of Biology at California's Stanford University.

To give him credit he did say it some time before 1977 (as that was when the book I was flicking through looking for something else was published) but it does seem rather stupid now. I wonder why he thought it? Could ti be that he thought that we would all have blown the world sky high in a nuclear apocalypse or that we were all going to be taken over by the Soviet Union. Either way it shows how stupid our predictions about the future can seem!

Hi, well this is the first real entry as opposed to a test entry on the UoP Chapchat blog. It's here to share chaplaincy news, views and - what rhymes with news and views??? - well other random things that intrigue, puzzle inspire you.

All the contributors are members of the University of Plymouth Chaplaincy Team but as ever anyone can comment on what's been put up.

So, I offically declare this blog ope! Where's the champagne bottle? You broke it?!!!