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Whither Whit?

Whitsunday is a lovely festival (though sadly ignored now in too many of my local churches) but to me it speaks simply of God, the holy Spirit of God, God within us and in Jesus, and beyond us and beyond Jesus, in whom we live and move and have our being, the breathing of God in whatever way that occurs, Sophia,the wisdom of God beyond all our understanding, the immanent G*d whose gifts - charismatic blessings - are without number, and about the chief of which S.Paul has written so memorably in 1 Corinthians 13. For these thoughts I am greatly indebted to G.W.H.Lampe's profound Bampton Lectures of 1976 - GOD AS SPIRIT to which one returns again and again with profit.

As for the birthday of the Church of God, one might think perhaps more accurately of its beginning with the faith of Abraham, or in what was to become its Christian form as beginning with the first gathering by Jesus in Galilee of those who for some time would almost all be still very much truly Jewish.

John Bunyan
St John the Baptist
Campbelltown, NSW, Australia.
bunyanj@tpg.com.au
28 May 2012

Clergy exchange?

I have a 3 month sabbatical coming up next year and want to find a priest in the Church of England with whom I could trade parishes and houses. I would be willing to trade with more than one (ie, one month here, one month there, etc) but would prefer to trade with only one. Also, I would like to be within 50 miles of Oxford so that I can do research at the Bodleian. Do you have any suggestions about how I could arrange this? Thanks.

Barry Vaughn
St. Alban's Episcopal Church
Birmingham, Alabama, USA
anglcan@aol.com
31 May 2012

(See our Professional Exchanges section, and send us enough information that we can include your request for an exchange in our listings. These things take time to arrange, so tarry not.)

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.