Seeker

Happy New Year to you all, whether you have just stumbled on this blog or are one of my regular readers. There's something odd about New Year's Day. It's a new beginning, but if you live where 1st January is a public holiday and you partied last night, then it's more like a day of recovery than a new start. And this year it's immediately followed by a weekend so many people's new start at work won't be until Monday. If you are in Scotland the new work year start will be Tuesday as you have another Bank Holiday on Monday. Well, Hogmanay is exhausting isn't it? What is different about today compared with yesterday? It is only a date on a calendar, a date when we have reached approximately the same position in earth's journey round the sun as we were in this time last year. Wait a minute, doesn't that happen every day? What's new is we have to start getting used to writing 2016 not 2015 and those of us who are old wonder how ...

What do you do when you're dirty and sweaty? You wash.  What do you do when you're tired and stressed? You relax in a bath or pool. What do you do when you need a kick start in the morning? You wake yourself up with a shower. Wonderful gifts for those of us with the privilege of easy access to fresh, clean water. After a bath, shower or swim, one can feel like a new person, ready to face whatever comes next. Tomorrow is the Sunday when Christians remember the baptism of Christ in the river Jordan by his cousin John. It marked the beginning of his public ministry. Jesus didn't need to undergo John's baptism of repentance, but he wanted to be alongside those who did, fully immersed in being human. Without water we couldn't live, so it's not surprising that most of the world's religions use water in a variety of symbolic ways. This is certainly true in the Jewish religion in which Jesus was brought up. One of the blogs I follow is that of Velveteen Ra...