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As a northerner who landed in Haywards Heath 18 years back Brexit touches my family. Here’s a 2 min essay on my hopes for 2019:

To enter the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is to find yourself welcomed into that great hospitable procession of the people of God into the heavenly Temple. Mary and Joseph remind us that we can never have Jesus to ourselves. To be a Christian is to be one with Mary and Joseph and Paul and Augustine and Francis and Richard – and the list goes on! Full sermon text for the Feast of the Holy Family (Christmas 1) at St Mary, Balcombe can be read here: http://johntwisleton.blogspot.com https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BsAW9AmBP3W/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1xiosv5geo4w2

At the Boabab Tree in Queen’s Park, Bridgetown, Barbados which is 90ft tall and has 81ft girth and estimated to be 1000 years old. It's not native to Barbados but originated in Guinea, West Africa from where it is thought a seed floated across the Atlantic and grew on the edge of a lagoon. More photos from our trip at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com/ https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Br9wkxqhIwD/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=p199yebv6vz6

Enjoyed a couple of nights at Codrington College, Barbados dated 1745 which is the oldest theological college in the Americas. My links with Codrington go back to 1987 when I first visited to prepare running the Alan Knight Centre for Amerindian ordinands in Guyana where Anne and I were married in 1988. More holiday pictures at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Br7W8SzBYjp/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=hybwb3cc0fmm

How can we see more gifts of service released in our lives, especially the gift of DISCERNMENT? To live in the love of God is the clue to discerning the best form of service to others. Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit whom we welcome day by day, hour by hour - God’s love pouring into our hearts - but do we? Or do we get so filled with a self-serving agenda that God’s love gets blocked out? A practical suggestion. Start making a morning offering to the Holy Spirit. Sit on your bed and say ‘God I thank you for the gift of this new day and give myself to you. Send your Holy Spirit to use my gifts to God’s praise and service’. I find that such a prayer sweeps the day up into God’s hands so that, as I keep my attention on him I discern what’s important and get on with it. Living with Holy Spirit discernment and empowerment is actually very simple if we set our hearts upon the Lord. The Holy Spirit rejoices to enlist those who give themselves day by day to his service and helps them discern where they can make a significant difference. Give yourself to God and he will give you to others! Hear more of the ‘Gifts of Service’ Premier Radio Christmas series every Thursday evening at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Premier-Drive or on listen again to programme 4 at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Christmas2/Gifts-of-Service https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Br5yrt9BKAE/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1b76fk9m3evj8

Barbadian ad for ‘vape & smoke thingies’ which puts into words one’s ignorance about the wide range of smoking substitute devices and what you call them! More photos from our trip at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com/ (at Haywards Heath) https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Br2Cv3ahtzB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=hqoep77uet04

A happy and joyous Christmas capturing the ‘fear not’ message of the angels! At the Midnight Mass I celebrated in St Bartholomew’s in Brighton the large congregation was blessed through a rendering by choir and orchestra of Joseph Haydn’s beautiful St Nicholas Mass with unmistakable witness to Christian truth. Haydn like us knew tumult. Whilst he lay dying in the Vienna of 1809 Napoleon was bombarding his neighbourhood. Such was his international reputation as a composer that Emperor Napoleon sent guards to his house to protect him. The score of the St Nicholas Mass is marked ‘in nomine deo’ as were all Joseph Haydn’s works. With all his flaws Haydn put trust in God seeking the Holy Spirit to make him his conduit of beautiful composition, musical beauty we are being fully immersed in this Christmas night. Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted! Full sermon at https://johntwisleton.blogspot.com/ https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Brzgaa-BPVS/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1w3c7aivdti58

Premier Radio’s Gifts of Service series centres this week on AVAILABILITY with reference to the Dalai Lama who described our western lifestyle in these words: ‘it seems as if every aspect of a person's life has to be so precise, designed like a screw that has to fit exactly in the hole. In some sense, you have no control over your own life. In order to survive, you have to follow this pattern and the pace that is set for you.’ ‘When I needed a neighbour, were you there?’ To be there for our neighbour is a decision that takes us out of the rush of life just described, the mini world of family, the mega world of social media, to be available to the next person who calls upon us - and the Holy Spirit, God in the present moment, is with us as we make ourselves available. Listen again to this 15 min programme by clicking this link and then the button for programme 3 at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Christmas2/Gifts-of-Service https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BryACRKBjcE/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1lmdjh5rxodpp

This frieze in the Parliament Museum in Bridgetown, Barbados captures the hurt done by Britain to so many Africans over three centuries through their capture and transportation to the West Indies to serve as slaves. More photos from our trip at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com/ (at Haywards Heath) https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Brw4i4rhXbm/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=pv1w8mah752k

Barbadian advertisement which also displays Fat Jack’s reluctance about getting married! More photos from our trip at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com/ https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BruTdVgBmcV/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1cnorxtob9olu

Christmas lights up at Oistins in Barbados where Anne and I spent most of this month courtesy our friends Bishop Wilfred & Ina Wood. Oistins is famous for its fish market and for the locally popular Miami Beach where we enjoyed sea baths daily with the locals. More photos from our trip at https://sightsofbarbados.blogspot.com/ https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BrsNyUohSP_/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=112r33igx8xe0

Anne and I took buses to visit the north of Barbados on Sunday highlight of which was seeing the sea cascading into a cavern called Animal flower cave after the carnivorous sea anemones we saw in this underwater pool. We had to run as I clicked the end of this clip ducking our (especially my!) heads. Awesome - as is so much of Barbados where we have spent December so far. This was posted waiting for our baggage at Heathrow. https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BrptCbzhAIw/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=atjkwodt36fx

How can we see more gifts of service released in our lives, especially the gift of AVAILABILITY? We need to cut more slack in our lives so when things that need love and care turn up unexpectedly we can more easily be available. After all, how many of the things we see as urgent are actually important? We live in three worlds. The mini-world of the family. The midi-world of our neighbourhood and the mega-world of mass media. Attention to these three worlds stretches us more than human beings have probably ever been stretched. I mean, before communications opened up through roads most people lived all their lives available to one another in families within neighbourhoods giving bare attention, outside wartime, to national or international concerns. Now we’re spoiled for choice in terms of where we give our attention whilst caught up in social media often to the detriment of family and neighbourhood. A practical suggestion out of Mother Teresa’s book. See everyone - I mean everyone - you meet, the one after the other, in the course of the day, as BEING CHRIST TO YOU, that is your neighbour, in the image and likeness of God, worthy of your attention, whatever their circumstances. Hear more of the ‘Gifts of Service’ Premier Radio Advent series every Thursday at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Premier-Drive or on listen again at https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Christmas2/Gifts-of-Service https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Brm6-VLh9ii/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=wvog2nhf63ss

Thinking about GIFTS OF SERVICE in the second 15min Advent programme on Premier - as I look back on my life I think it's the people who’ve listened to me who’ve changed me most. I think of my mum and dad, my friends and teachers and people who’ve lent an ear to my desire to follow God in the best way. I also spend time listening - to God, to the people who cross my path day by day and of course to myself. By listening to others I serve them and others serve me as they listen to my aspirations. We hear three voices - those from God, our neighbourhood and our self. Even when we’re speaking, those voices engage with us. We have two ears - and one mouth! But we also have inner ears gifted by the Holy Spirit to listen from the heart and see our hearts touched, melted and enthused towards others. Building capacity to listen is building awareness of those three voices. In Sussex I’m involved in a network 130 strong of folk with listening gifts called spiritual directors or soul friends serving hundreds of people month by month helping them into more effective Christian life and service. In this second programme these folk are featured. To listen again the play sign on programme 2 after clicking here: https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Advent/Gifts-of-Service https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BrfL7cZhQ7r/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=kekohe2mz0ko

On Gaudete (‘Rejoice’) Sunday as the purple of Advent lightens I look back at one of my ‘books of the year’ which was Pope Francis’ on Joy. It was so refreshing to read of holiness being fullness of humanity accessible to all and no prerogative of the few. Francis writes practically about attaining such humanity though what’s written in ‘Gaudete et Exultate’ has a sting in its tail. To find joy we need to leave ourselves behind! The Pope provides a rich and persuasive meditation on Matthew Chapters 5 and 25 and Christ’s call to seek God ‘in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified’. To gain holiness we must never set worship above service nor allow service to happen in our own strength, we need help from one another in the Church and we need to beware of the devil. I’m making this grounded naturally-supernatural booklet my next year’s retreat guide. Gaudete et Exultate Pope Francis On the call to holiness in today’s world Kindle edition £7.34 96pp https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/Brbe8oQhsf0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ruzjx40o2ixp

I have an eccentric friend who never side steps a mobile reading pedestrian heading for him because he has a mission to alert them to their rudeness. Nigel Cameron’s book is less direct but nonetheless a wake up call to better stewardship of the digital world we own more and more but which so often owns us. ‘God & My Mobile’ charts the extraordinary benefits of mobiles, smart technology and social networking whilst reminding us of the price we pay for this like the rise of multi-tasking which leaves us distracted and unable to concentrate when away from our phones. It's a helpful book which, recognising damage being done and calling for imaginative countering of it, is optimistic overall calling for Christians to take a lead in promoting good practice in the digital world. https://www.instagram.com/johntwisleton/p/BrY5iLXBy2-/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=14lc2ntk0bhp4

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