Seeker

This icon is in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco and was made by a Franciscan friar, Robert Lentz. It was commissioned to commemorate the election of the first female Anglican bishop, Barbara Harris. The Syriac inscription reads, 'St Mary Magdalene'. The language was chosen because it is a form of the language spoken by Jesus. Mary Magdalene's festival is today. She was one of the women who travelled with Jesus and supported him out of her own purse. Jesus had healed her - from what exactly we don't know. Luke 8: 2 tells us he released her from 'seven demons' which implies a severe or chronic illness, either mental or physical. The only other times she is mentioned by name in the gospels is as someone who witnessed Jesus' crucifxion, burial and the empty tomb. According to John's gospel she was the first to see the risen Jesus, who sent her to tell the 12.  For this reason she is known as 'the apostle to the apostles'. Her testimony to them was...

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS CHOCOLATE - as you can see from these Easter eggs TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE MAY HARM YOU - but don't you like a little indulgence at special times? Out of kindness to you who give up chocolate in Lent, I'm posting this before Lent starts (9th March this year). But it's not too early to start thinking about Easter eggs, chocolate or real. In my childhood the special treat at Easter Sunday breakfast was real eggs soft-boiled in water containing vegetable dye. You can do it easily by adding something like red onion skins to the water. We 3 children would help add fun faces and hair before cracking the eggs and eating them. Probably much better for us than chocolate eggs, but we did get those too. Which brings me back to chocolate. British supermarkets sell millions of chocolate Easter eggs each year, many ridiculously priced and with huge surplus of packaging. 2011 is the first year that some of them will sell 'The Real Easter Egg...