Our own Burnside Sunday School Drama performed a Pentecost piece at
Pentecost, waving “tongues of fire”. We also performed “The Mad Hatters
Tea Party”.
Did the Hatter and the
March Hare invert the
sleepy dormouse in to the
enormous tea-pot nearby?
That year I was not on holiday at the seaside,
but often visited Para Handy’s corner with its
sand, sea and boats not forgetting crab sticks
and lemonade. That was my “seaside”.
Did the sun really shine every day?
Then it all stopped, but what a glorious –
always to be remembered - experience!
Anne Cowan
Dear Pharisee, How did you get such a bad name?
This was written in form of a letter by the Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide in
2003 and published in a German newspaper. At the time I translated it for
our magazine. I thought of it when we had two recent Gospel readings which
showed the Pharisees opposing Jesus, one for his treatment of the Sabbath,
the other when he started his ministry. So I thought I’d remind you of
Pinchas Lapide’s offering. He was a very distinguished historian, who
specialised in research about Jesus and the New Testament.
He wrote:
Dear Pharisee,
Please excuse that I am writing to you anonymously, but in addressing you I am
thinking of all your colleagues. I could have written: dear Nicodemus, or: dear
Joseph of Arimathea, or even: dear Rabbi Jeshua of Nazareth, now called Jesus,
who must have been one of your group, as his words prove. Why should I be
writing now after 2000 years? I have been visiting a North German island
recently, where I was offered a drink called ‘a Pharisee’. It consisted of brandy
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