Westy's Weekly Blog

  We’re no doubt all familiar with feuds.   In America there was the notoriously long-running feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys from the mid-1800s in the Appalachian Hills – in which many lost their lives.   An earlier feud between the MacDonald and the Campbell clans in Scotland led to the Glencoe Massacre in 1692.   The Campbells slaughtered many of the MacDonalds and many more died from cold and exposure as they fled.   But on a smaller scale there’s the many garden variety family feuds that we’re all familiar with, where Auntie Flo hasn’t spoken to her brother, Uncle Jack, for more years than either of them care to remember.   Or the two brothers who have not spoken for years due to a failed business partnership.   I recall a funeral, at which I officiated, where one side of the family glared at the other side of the family across the open grave of their mother.   And there was the funeral where a son giving the eulogy took it as an ...

  A while back I wrote a Blog about humility.   I pointed out that humility doesn’t come easily to us human beings.   I should perhaps have put it even more strongly, that in an age and culture in which we’re told to take the attitude that “it’s all about me”, humility becomes an ever more rare virtue. Someone once pointed out that when I point the finger at others there are always three fingers pointing back at me.   True – and I’m acutely aware that humility has too often been lacking in me as well.   Confession time...?   Sure!   Amongst the earliest motivations for me to become a pastor and preacher was a distinct touch of arrogance... instead of humility.   I grew up in a church that was part of a post-war migrant community.   Our earliest pastors and preachers were Dutch imports for whom English was their second language.   I suspect that they made their sermons in Dutch and then translated them into English.   I recall th...