He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical calendar.

The church year dramatizes a lot of the stories of Scripture.

It's not as though Scripture itself says, hey, here is the way that you need to structure your Christian worship.

Follow a year and a calendar that works this way.

Instead, the church calendar is something that arises from the church's reading of Scripture.

and the church's desire to inhabit this world of scripture just as we find our own lives enfolded within the life of christ we want to find our identities disclosed to us within the world of scripture this pattern of worship allows us to be kind of encased within the story that Scripture tells.

One of the other ways that we can use the Bible is to just pick and choose, to say, I'm going to set my own themes and my own structures for worship.

And so the church year

He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical calendar.

Romans 8, 22-27 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

For in hope we were saved.

Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical calendar.

Every year on the first Wednesday of the season of Lent, the season of preparation for Easter, at my church we gather in the evening and we go through a series of prayers and then we bring out Ashes, which are the burnt ashes of last year's palm crosses from Palm Sunday.

These symbols of celebration becoming symbols of sorrow.

And they're mixed together with oil and they're smeared on our foreheads.

And as we make this smear, we say, remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

And this practice of Ash Wednesday is a symbol of the entire season, a season of penitence and preparation, a season of remembering one's own mortality and limitation, a season of identifying with Christ in his sorrow.

He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical calendar.

As far as we can tell, every single generation of the Christian church has looked at the world around itself and said,

this must

be it.

We must be living in the last days.

And so the early Christian practices around the preparation for the arrival of Jesus at Christmas were oriented towards the future.

And so the practices around this season that we now call Advent, Advent coming from the Latin word for coming or arrival, this season of Advent focused on this future coming of Christ.

So Advent is a season both of looking back to the arrival of Christ, the word made flesh in the birth of the infant Jesus Christ, but it also looks forward to the future, the coming of Jesus Christ again in glory at the end of days.

He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical calendar.

The Christian church is that community which patterns its worship on the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ radically reorders and re-centers and reshapes our sense of time.

Time as we ordinarily understand it, passes from the past into the future.

It is a place that is filled with growth and development.

It is a place that is filled with the setting of objectives and strategies and goals.

But in the resurrection, we see something new happen.

isn't

the metal shop.

And bugged the hell out of the record store people until I got it, then got the warning when it came out.

I don't know if I had this the day that it came out, but I had it at least within a week.

And I remember getting this, like, Walking in the Shadows comes on.

I was like, okay, we'll obviously talk about the tracks.

And we've done this on I Remember Now as well.

And I remember I was like, wow, this is not what is out right now.

Great, great song coming up.

I mean, you were part of the, the 11 unions that signed a letter saying i- it's, things have gotta change, and he's not allowed to do it.

I was one of the first to call for Keir Starmer to go.

I think if he'd have gone in February, we wouldn't have found...

the Labor Party wouldn't have found themselves in the position where the voters have come out and sent a loud and clear message, actually, to say that they voted for change two years ago, they haven't seen it, and I think that's been clear, uh, across the board.

What we've seen in Wales, uh, has been a decimation of the Labor Party, and I think it's been because Keir Starmer's not trusted.

Um, he promised to deliver change.

So I think what our position is certainly is that Labor trade unions is we wanna see... whoever's put in front of us, what they're gonna deliver for that change, how they're gonna deliver new policies.

Steve

Is it a busier day for the fire service than a normal day?

Yeah.

It's often been a, a busy period, Ian, and good evening.

And, yeah, look, essential workers that are going out to work, and yet you're talking about yourself, uh, working Christmas Day.

But look, in the fire service, w- we're there 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, and, uh, firefighters don't really get a time, a downtime at Christmas, really.

And they'll, they'll be there responding to emergency calls, those working in our control rooms, and also on the frontline attending emergencies.

But in my experience, it's always been a busy period of time, and I know in the area that I've worked in, uh, just last night, there were crews attending where people had fallen into rivers in frozen water, so we'd been mobilizing our rescue boats.

I, I imagine that quite a, a large proportion of them probably work in the health service as well.

Now, I don't think they've done a very good job of justifying (laughs) them, but th- uh, in a sense, it's inevitable that these kind of situations are going to occur.

Well, yeah, you're exactly right, Ian.

But th- the issue is, is, is people are being suspended for having a, a different position to the government, and I think the Labor Party risks alienating, uh, the very people who put them into power, and that working class communities, trade unionists, uh, our trade union, uh, and those struggling from austerity, and, and these are why people have voted in the way they have.

And, and like, uh, it's just been talked about, three people have had the whip removed.

What about the others? Um, I think it is just a heavy-handed approach that the Labor leadership is showing, and I don't think it plays out well for them.

It just seems to be cack-handed to do it now.

Well, look, it's bizarre.

And like I said, I'm really disappointed with what, what they've done.