Sunk by rising wine costs? Save money by drinking (responsibly!) at the best wine free-flows in town.
Sorry guys–this one's just for the ladies. Bright yellow couches against earth toned interiors are warm and inviting, right in the heart of Orchard Road. Wednesday is ladies night, where free flow champagne, housepour spirits, wines and a complimentary bar snack ($35 nett, Wed 7.30-9pm) are rolled out. The ladies get additional 50 percent off champagne, wines and standard house pours all the way till closing.
Bottle of red, white, or rosé? Quench your thirst at The Mad Poet every Thursday when wines and cheeses flow freely ($33+, Thu 6-8pm). Indulge in their Pinot Grigio Montelvini and Merlot Montelvini. To go along with this unceasing trickle of tipple are cheeses such as Kapiti herb and garlic triple cream cheese, Kapiti Kahakatea camembert and Whitestone chef's brie.
Grab a group of your best friends and enjoy Sundays brunching at The Wine Company, which has been around almost 10 years with five outlets. At three of their branches including Dempsey and Evans, they offer a free flow of bubbly in the form of Welmoed Sparkling Brut ($19.90+, Sun 12pm-3pm), a dry and refreshing afternoon tipple.
Any day is a great day for wine at Wine BOS at their free flow wine buffet ($20+, daily 8-10pm). As a wholesaler, they keep prices more than economical. Drink up from bottles such as Goldleaf Classic White, Sunrise Cabernet Sauvignon as well as some sparkling varieties at this cosy shophouse in the cultural Kampong Glam area.
Perch yourself at this central hangout with one of the longest free flows of wine. The deal ($35++, daily 5-9pm except Wed, Fri and PH eve) includes red, white and sparkling wine, as well as beer and a complimentary mini Wine Mansion platter. On Wednesdays, ladies pay just $25++ for the same.


A devastating fire that engulfed the famous Marcal tissue mill in New Jersey on 30 January has destroyed most of the historic building.
No injuries were reported at the Elmwood Park-based plant, and the manufacturer of the Marcal tissue products – Soundview Paper Company – has launched an employment opportunities website and job fair for the site's 500 displaced employees.
TWM visited the Marcal mill for its north-eastern USA Regional Report in May/June 2016.
The site's large, lit-up red "Marcal" sign which was displayed above the mill was established by founder Nicholas Marcalus in 1932.
The company was planning for future investments and growth to further boost the site's paper-making capacity and famous brand.
Soundview president and chief executive Rob Baron said: "The fire resulted in catastrophic damage to our facility.
The company has been engaged around the clock with the Governor's office, the New Jersey Department of Labour, the New Jersey Department of Human Services, Congressman William Pascrell, local officials and neighbouring non-profits to identify and secure support for its people.
A job fair was held on 8 February and it has also launched a new website page for its people to learn of hundreds of job opportunities at local businesses, as well as at companies owned by its parent company Atlas Holdings around the country.
Baron added: "Select aspects of the Soundview Paper Company/Marcal business will continue, primarily the company's Putney, Vermont operation and shipping of existing inventory to customers from Elmwood Park.
"We are increasing operations at our Vermont location, allowing us to support the iconic Marcal brand in the AfH and Home and Office markets and we are hard at work on plans to continue to bring the Marcal-branded bath tissue, paper towel and napkin products to your grocer's shelf.
"Over the last five days, we have witnessed overwhelming support for Marcal and its people from our friends in the local community, throughout the State of New Jersey and beyond.
"We have been reminded what the Marcal sign has meant to so many; that this company was not only a trusted employer and an iconic business, but a symbol of New Jersey's historic manufacturing legacy.
The 1930s-era mill was acquired by Atlas Holdings in 2012 and the company then established Soundview Paper to manufacture recycled and virgin fibre towel and tissue products for the local AfH, private label and At-Home markets.
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It cannot be denied that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and that even for the innocent citizen encounters with law enforcement can be intimidating. That is why it is crucial for anyone charged with a crime to consult with a criminal defense attorney who will aggressively defend your rights. Turn to The Farias Law Firm in Houston.
Texas State has some of the nation's strictest laws against drunk driving. Drivers pulled over on Houston's roads or highways and arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI), driving while ability impaired (DWAI) or aggravated driving while intoxicated (AGWI) could end up facing heavy fines and surcharges, higher insurance premiums, license suspension or revocations or imprisonment.
There may be a mandatory enrollment in a Drunk Driver Program and attendance at a Victim Impact Panel. Offenders may even be forced to install costly and embarrassing ignition interlock devices (IID) in any vehicle they own or use at their own expense.
Violent crimes, such as murder, domestic violence, criminal possession of a weapon, hate crimes and assault, carry severe consequences. People convicted of any of these offenses could face imprisonment, fines; loss of child custody or visitation rights, and community service.
You are innocent until proven guilty. We believe that. We want to listen to your story and fight for your vindication. People should be cautious about making statements to law enforcement officers because their statements can be twisted to be used against them. Before saying anything, consult with a lawyer.
Being in possession of an illegal substance is a serious crime in Texas. Anyone caught handling or harboring illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia (e.g. water pipes, bongs), chemicals (e.g. dilutents, dilutants, adulterants) or apparatus (e.g. vials, scales) used for the manufacturing, distribution, sale or ingestion of controlled substances could face severe penalties. Penalties could include a prison sentence, a driver's license suspension or revocation, probation, fines, drug testing, and forced registration as a narcotics offender.
Call The Farias Law Firm at 713-364-0103 or contact us online. We communicate with clients in English or Spanish, and we do not rely on translators.
The Farias Law Firm provides legal services to clients in the Houston, Texas, area.


SIDDHANT'S QUESTION #9 WHY DO AEROPLANES USE AVIATION FUEL ?
When I was travelling with my 3 year old son in an aeroplane , I made my efforts to tell him how does an aeroplane fly ?
Where are the engines located ?
I also showed him the radar.
Then I showed him the aviation fuel tanker near the aeroplane.
To my surprise he asks me "Is it the same fuel that we get at petrol pumps ? If not then why a separate fuel for aeroplane ?
Kids questions can be endless but also very surprising at times !
Both are kerosene type fuels.
Jet A-1 has a flash point of 49°C (120°F) and a freeze point maximum of -47°C. It is kerosene based high quality fuel that includes an anti freeze to prevent ice build up inside fuel tanks.
Jet A is produced and only available in the U.S. It has a flash point same as Jet A-1, but a higher maximum freeze point of -40°C.
1.Greater losses due to evaporation at high altitudes.
2.Chances of ice build up inside fuel tanks.
3.Greater risk of fire during handling on the ground.
4.Crashes of planes fuelled with wide cut fuel were less survivable.
5.Since space is at a premium on most aircraft, the amount of energy contained in a given quantity of fuel is important.
WINGS contain lined containers specially designed to store fuel.These normally run along the width of the wing.
WHY AVIATION FUEL IS STORED IN WINGS ?


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You Can Do: Cold Weather Running
By Amy Synnott
Updated on January 1, 2016 @ 05:45PM
I love to run. But every year, it's the same lame story: I work out like a fiend all fall and then winter comes, nudging me into a coma as soon as the thermometer slips below 30 degrees. By March, my muscles are as soft and squishy as my daughter's favorite teddy bear. But this year, I'm resisting the siren call of my space heater. And with the right gear (and mindset) you can, too.
21 of the Best Celebrity #Fitspo Instagrams to Get You to the Gym
What do I, a former beauty director and longtime magazine editor know about exercising in the cold? Well, actually quite a bit. You see, as a child, I competed for many years as a downhill ski racer in northern New Hampshire, a hobby that left me with permanent nerve damage in my fingers and toes—and a lifelong interest in never freezing again. Standing at the top of Lake Placid in a skin tight Lycra giant slalom suit when it's 20 below zero? Yup, I did that. And here's what I learned:
Layers are next to godliness.
Are you competing in a marathon? Is Bode Miller chasing you? No? Well, then pile on some clothes—you don't need to worry about the wind slowing you down. Choose moisture-wicking fabrics like polypropylene so your sweat doesn't stick to you like a wet salamander. And don't forget a toasty topper. I am obsessed with Lululemon's Fluff Off Jacket. It keeps you warm and prevents overheating with core vents, all without tripling your girth. Did I mention it also has "Cuffins?" In a pinch, these sleeves will keep your hands warm if you forget your mittens (which is what you really should be wearing when it's freezing out).
PHOTOS: Celebrity Approved Juice Cleanses
Cover Your Ears
It's not enough to just slap on any old hat—many of them will leave your tender lobes twisting in the wind. I probably don't need to tell you that's catnip for frost bite. When I used to race, I would often wear a soft, fleece headband instead of a hat. Nike offers a good reversible model. This will keep your ears—and the sides of your face—warm without turning your head into a furnace. Now, if it's really cold, and there's absolutely no chance you'll see anyone you know, you may want to bite the bullet and wear a balaclava. Truth: You will look a bit like a mugger. But, as Catherine Deneuve wisely noted, at a certain point in life, you have to choose between your face and your ass anyway.
What to Wear for an Outdoor Run
Update your playlist.
This is no time for the 2 billionth repeat of "Summertime Sadness." Take a few minutes before you leave your house to troll around the iTunes store for some super upbeat tunes. Some of my current faves: "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson (featuring Bruno Mars), "Sugar" by Maroon 5 and "Time of Our Lives" by Pitbull & Ne-Yo. By the way, it's nice to start with a slow warm-up song. Just for "Now" by Imogen Heap is my go to.
Stylish Workout Clothes and Gear
Empty your mind.
You know that moment when you're pouring a cup of coffee and deciding whether or not you're going to put on your exercise clothes? You look outside and it's dark. Weather.com tells you it's snowflake weather. Stop! Thinking this one through is ill-advised. Instead, try to channel whatever modicum of Zen you have lying at the bottom of your soul and empty your mind. Do not think! Just put on your clothes and walk out the door. And remember: The first 5-10 minutes may suck, but after that, the endorphins will kick in and you'll feel as omnipotent as Kanye West right before an awards show.
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Women Who Work Outside Road-Tested the Season's Cutest Winter Coats
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Consider These 10 White Button Downs the Foundation of Your Wardrobe
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Yes, It's Already Getting Darker Earlier — Here's How to Avoid Seasonal Depression
Gigi Hadid's Black Pinstripe Pantsuit Gave the LBD a Run for its Money
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Dr Anireddy Reddy, Prof. Dept of Biology, Colorado State University, talks to ETHeathworld about his research on the response of plants to the changing environment and its impact.
1. Could you elaborate on some of the plant mechanism that are used to sense changes in the environment?
Plants use multiple mechanisms to sense the environment. In my research we are particularly interested on how plants sense the environment. The environments they grow in, have tremendous impact on growth and eventually crop productivity.
In order to understand the various effects of the stressor in the environment like temperature and drought, you need to first understand how plants sense .One of the things that plants use is change the amount of cellular calcium in response to the various stressors. This acts as a signal and then initiates a lot of biochemical reactions in the cell and then changes and reprogrammes the entire gene expression so that it can cooporate with the surroundings.
2. What are the tools you use in your research?
We have a plant molecular lab in which we use molecular tools, biochemical tools, cell biological tools which tells us where a protein is moving in a cell or where it is localised. Recently, from the last 5-6 years we are using more and more of Genomic tools in which we are not looking in one single gene but we are looking at all the genes and how are they behaving in a given environment.
We use a lot of High-Throughput Sequencing using Next-Generation sequencing. Now in addition to second-generation, the third-generation sequencing is coming into place and we use it to look at how a plant cell is responding to its environment. What we do is basically take plant seedlings that are growing under normal condition. I also take the same seedling and put them under adverse conditions like the lack of water or expose them to temperature. Then you can look at how the genes are behaving under these two conditions in just 10-15 minutes to overtime of days.
Through this not only do we look at one gene but every gene that is being made and expressed. You can actually look at all of them and quantify digitally how much is changed etc.
3. What is the impact of agriculture on the quality of nutrition?
There are two main things when you think of agriculture and its impact on health which are whether we will be able to produce and afford feeding the growing population. For this we need cultivars which are crops that are high-yielding because we have already reached the saturation in terms of the land we can use.
The only way to increase the productivity in order to feed the growing population is by developing cultivars that can do well even under marginal conditions on the changing environment. For doing this you need to understand how these plants grow under various conditions.
Geographical location is another factor because you may have a plant which does well in place X but it may do terribly in place Y. The plants are adapted to particular geographical location so in terms of productivity it may impact quite a bit on health. The important thing is, that even in developing countries there is quite a bit of food but the quality of the food is nutritionally poor. We use to eat a lot of food that is starch driven but not balanced.
These tools can allow you to increase the nutritional quality of the food so that the protein content is all enriched in the food. With Genome editing tools you can precisely modify a particular enzyme or a particular pathway.


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Archives for posts with tag: faith
'The nature of God's relationship with humanity' – the mysterious unity of the death and resurrection of Jesus
'To be a Christian is to be attentive to signs of God's action in the world, and this is especially true in Holy Week and at Easter when – the faithful believe – Jesus by his death and resurrection revealed the nature of God's relationship with humanity.' Sometimes one finds profound theological statements in unlikely places. That sentence was from the first editorial in the Guardian on Wednesday 17th April. It is perhaps a slightly different way of putting the profound words 'God so loved the world that He gave His only son …'
The three hours' devotion service on Good Friday is concerned with sacrifice, about Jesus' sacrifice, his terrible suffering and death. The service is unlike any other one in our Christian year. What makes it special is that we try to get really close to Jesus in his last hours, to understand what happened to him and what he did; as we often say in a theological context, to walk alongside him, or maybe rather to have him walk alongside us, in his time of trial.
To say the service is unlike any other one is not quite right, because every time we celebrate Holy Communion we remember Jesus' sacrifice – 'in the same night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks to thee, he broke it and gave it to his disciples… and likewise after supper he took the cup; and when he had given thanks to thee, he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood of the new covenant'. The heart of the Eucharist service is a memorial of the Last Supper, before Jesus's crucifixion and death. I'm not in any way trying to take away the significance of the holy Eucharist, but I am saying that the Good Friday service takes you further and takes you deeper in understanding, or rather, shall we say, in appreciating, what Jesus went through.
What I am going to try to do now is to address that question of understanding. I hope that you will more fully appreciate what Jesus suffered, what he went through; and to some extent you will understand why, at least in the historical sense of who did what to whom.
I'm not going to touch on the mechanics of the crucifixion or the literal historical data; what I want to concentrate on is trying to explain it. Why did Jesus have to die?
Perhaps today it's more a question 'Why did He die?', not necessarily why he had to die. You could say, following the words of the Creed, that Jesus' death was for us – 'who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate'. Jesus himself said that 'greater love hath no man than that he should lay down his life for his friend'. (I am quoting from the Book of Common Prayer, 1662, and the Authorised Version of the Bible, 1611, so it is necessary to point out that 'man' means 'human being'). Or again, we hear that Jesus is the 'propitiation for our sins', making up for what we have done that is sinful.
There is a powerful romantic theme that occasionally people do heroic things where they suffer in somebody else's place. St Paul, in his letter to the Romans [5:7-8], contrasts what you might call ordinary heroism, risking your life or even losing your life, to save someone else whom you might not know particularly well, but have nothing against, and what Jesus appears to have done, which is to give his life not for just anybody but for people who definitely don't deserve it, who are sinners.
We don't really talk about ritual sacrifice much these days. The idea of going to a temple and slaughtering some animal to give it ritually to God is completely alien to us in our modern world. But I think we know how it was supposed to work: that nobody could measure up to God's perfect standard, and to the extent that you fell short – an example of falling short would be Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden – to the extent that you fell short you had to ask God for forgiveness, to make it up to him, to turn away God's wrath.
This is allied with the idea of the Last Judgement, either at the end of the world, (if we can imagine that), or at the end of a person's life. And again, although we couldn't really describe with any certainty what to expect at that End Time, as it is called, there is a very common idea that there will be some kind of last judgement; and indeed in the Bible at the end of St Matthew's Gospel there is a picture of the last judgement, the division of the sheep from the goats. 'The Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him. Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations. And he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats' (Matthew 25:31-32). In that context, Jesus is taking the punishment that sinful man would otherwise deserve.
But there is a little question mark. It is easy to miss this, but particularly in the context of this very solemn, contemplative service, when we are trying to get as close as we can to follow in Jesus's footsteps on the way to the place of the Skull, Golgotha, where he was crucified, the little niggle, if you like, is quite a major issue in fact. It is this. God gave his only son. What does the word 'gave' mean, here? God is, after all, the creator and sustainer of everything and
everyone. Did He give his only son over to be hurt, to be whipped, to be insulted, to be humiliated, to be tortured and ultimately killed in the most bestial way? Because if he did that, how can we say that God is a loving God, that God wants the best for all of us, and if there is evil in the world, it has come in against God?
As you know, sin isn't just, isn't really at all, a question of doing bad things. It has a very particular meaning. It is about being separated, divided off from God, cut off from God. And the 'salvation' that we talk about, that we believe in, the eternal life – 'so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life' – that salvation is coming together with God, being united eternally. So in that context how could God give his nearest and dearest over to be horribly hurt and then killed? Something doesn't add up.
At the very least it looks as though there is a paradox. How could the good God hurt anyone, least of all his own son? And if you were concerned about that, put yourself in Jesus' position. You would feel uniquely deserted. We will say, towards the end of this service, the terrible words of Psalm 22: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' It's what Jesus said as he suffered. There is no more terrible protest in the whole of literature. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
But at the end of the Stations of the Cross, these days the last station is usually the station of the Resurrection. These days, particularly since the Roman Catholics dusted off the old idea in their second Vatican Council in the sixties, the most important message to the world from Easter is the message of what they call the Paschal Mystery, the 'unity of the death and resurrection of Jesus'. The Paschal mystery; the mystery is that unity, that putting together, of opposites; that everything to do with Jesus is the opposite of what you would expect.
Think of the Sermon on the Mount. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Don't retaliate. The exact opposite of the normal thing to do. In the Beatitudes, everything is back to front. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' You would have thought in the context of being close to God himself – the most theological situation you could possibly be in – that the last thing you would possibly want, in heaven with God, is to have weedy people round you who have no particular spiritual gifts. But they are blessed. 'Theirs is the kingdom of heaven'. That's crazy.
It's more straightforward to understand 'Blessed are they that mourn'. For 'They shall be comforted'. That is a contrast, but it is an understandable one. You might hope for comfort. Jesus assures it.
But 'Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.' Doesn't sound happy – but happiness is assured.
Think of the Magnificat, the most revolutionary text this side of Karl Marx. 'He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.' 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.' Why don't we sing that verse of 'All things bright and beautiful' any more? Mrs Alexander wasn't saying it was right when she wrote that verse. We shouldn't just shut it away. It's shocking, and it's meant to be.
There's a sort of tension on Good Friday, there's another sort of paradox; in a very sacramental way, for Jesus to be uniquely alive, alive in a new way that no-one had ever seen before, the opposite had to be true. He had to be very, very dead. But except in the very minimal sense that God, the creator and sustainer of all things, must be behind everything, everything that happens, I think we can explain Jesus' suffering, not in terms of cruelty by his father, but in terms of the waywardness of sinful man.
When you look at the details of the trial before Pontius Pilate, there isn't an inevitability about what happens. It is the active badness, the active sinfulness of the chief priests and scribes which catches Jesus. Pilate gave them a good way out if they had got carried away by the mob, by offering Jesus as the prisoner to be released in the traditional way at Passover time. But they positively chose – it was deliberate – to release the bad man and to kill off the good one. It was another paradox, and another counterintuitive.
But as you go through the Good Friday service, metaphorically walking behind the cross with Jesus, I do suggest that you can hold your head high and recognise him truly as your king, because that tomb will definitely be empty. This is Jesus working out the way to salvation: salvation, a relationship with God, a close relationship with God. That tomb will definitely be empty.
One implication of that is that there's no need for a priest to stand between us and God. Jesus is the great high priest, who has opened the sanctuary to us. In the letter to the Hebrews [chapter 10], we will hear that the Lord says 'I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more,' and the letter goes on to say, 'where there is forgiveness there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore my friends since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way, that he opened for us through the curtain, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience'.
It's not a question of buying off God's wrath. It's the other way round. God will raise Jesus from the dead, in the Easter morning miracle that we will joyfully celebrate. There it is. There is forgiveness and there is no longer any offering for sin. There will no longer be any blood sacrifice.
But first we must follow Jesus. To come out into his blessed light, we must follow him into the darkness.
This is an edited version of a reflection originally given by Hugh Bryant at the Three Hours' Devotion service at St Mary's Church, Stoke D'Abernon, on 19th April 2019.
Tags beatitudes, Bible, Book of Common Prayer, Christianity, Christians, church, Creed, crucifixion, Easter, eucharist, faith, God, Golgotha, gospels, heaven, Hebrews, holy communion, Jesus, last judgement, Last Supper, Magnificat, Paschal Mystery, religion, Resurrection, Romans, sacrifice, salvation, sheep and goats, Sin, St Mary Stoke D'Abernon, St Paul, The Guardian
Add Faith
Sermon for the Third Sunday before Lent, 17th February 2019
Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26 – see http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=417352294
I have to tell you that, when I read the Bible lessons for today, my sermon pretty much wrote itself. That's because today we are given a sort of potted guide to several key points in our Christian religion. It's a different angle on some of the most important things we say in the Creed. See if you agree.
Yesterday we had our Marriage Enrichment day, for everyone who is going to get married at St Mary's this year – I don't know whether it was Godfrey's cunning plan, to schedule it nearly on St Valentine's Day, or whether it just came out that way. Be that as it may, I had a sneak preview when I was helping to set up the lantern slides for it.
I was impressed by one slide which listed 'Six Topics' – actually with an exclamation mark, 'Six Topics!' in a marriage. They were Money, Time, Sex, Children, Communication and Difficult times/Conflict (which is really two topics, but never mind). But the interesting bit was that on the side of the picture, alongside the list of the six (or seven) topics, was, in big handwritten style, '+Faith', you know, the word 'Faith' in big swirly letters, with a plus sign in front of it. Add faith.
That's the point of lesson number one today, our Old Testament lesson. Add faith. 'Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals … whose hearts turn away from the Lord.' But 'Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. … They shall be like a tree planted by water … in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.' If people didn't get so bogged down in everyday life, if they didn't forget to think of God, perhaps to say their prayers a bit, and to read their Bible, things would go better. God will be with them in the difficult times.
But what is the faith which you need to add, for a successful marriage – or, following the prophet Jeremiah, for a fruitful life?
You could just say to our wedding couples – and have we got anyone here this morning who went to the course yesterday? Or was it enough to be going on with? Anyway, you could just say to them, 'Pay attention to the words of the Creed. I believe …' – I believe: in what? What do Christians believe in?
Incidentally, I think it's important not to get too stuck on saying 'I'. 'I believe'. It may be more honest to say, 'We believe. We.' There may be some less important things that we struggle with, but we can say the Creed all together, if we say 'we', and if we mean, 'This is what Christians as a body subscribe to – and I'm in that group.' It need not mean that, in order to belong to the church, you have to believe in every detail. You can just be happy to belong.
So back to the question, what do we believe, as Christians? What is our faith? Our other two lessons, from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, and from St Luke chapter 6, will give us some more important pointers.
You'll note that, although we've just done our marriage enrichment course, the lesson from 1 Corinthians isn't the normal wedding one, 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal'. Oh, all right, '… if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love'. It's 'love' in a wedding, not charity. But we're not doing that bit. We're looking at the fifteenth chapter, about the resurrection of the dead. That, that's a key point in Christian faith. Faith in the resurrection, in life after death. Starting with Jesus himself, and then growing into what in the funeral service we call the 'sure and certain hope' of eternal life. We often have 1 Corinthians 15 at funerals. We have it because St Paul really goes into this key bit of faith, faith in eternal life, in a resurrection of the dead.
St Paul's letter reads a bit like the transcript of one side of a telephone conversation. We can't hear exactly what the Corinthians were saying: but it's pretty clear that some of them were poo-pooing the possibility of life after death. St Paul points out the logical implications of that. If there is no chance of resurrection, then the whole basis of our faith, our belief that Jesus was raised from the dead, would be contradicted. So one of the key points in Christian faith is a belief in life after death – and in particular a belief that Jesus was the first one to be resurrected.
It's such an extraordinary thing, so contrary to all the laws of nature, that it is difficult to believe. So St Paul goes on, after the passage which we have read today, to tackle the question not just that the dead are raised, but how they are raised. It can be your homework today. Read the rest of chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. Even if you are a Darwinist, there's nothing in it to upset your scientific understanding. I won't spoil it.
So in our first two lessons we see two pillars of our Christian faith, that you need faith, if your life is going to be fruitful – that you shouldn't try to ignore the Divine – and that our Christian faith is centred on Jesus' resurrection from the dead. It is a sign, a vital sign. We believe that the empty tomb was real. And then, we believe in what Jesus' death and resurrection meant, in who Jesus really was, and in what he did. That Jesus is God, God with us. But note that as St Paul says, if that really is too much to stomach, then you need to know what it is you are dismissing. You can't have Jesus without His resurrection. Without it, he's not God.
And then in St Luke's Gospel we go on to hear what the effect of Jesus, the effect of His coming, is, and what it still can be. Our lesson is St Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' great statement of what you must do, if you really follow His teaching. First of all he states how contrarian, how back-to-front, Christianity is. Basically in those days, just as it is today, people tended to equate material success and prosperity with virtue. You couldn't live in such a lovely house; you couldn't really have such a nice car, unless you were basically doing the right thing, unless you were a good person. Scruffy people must really be pretty useless, you're tempted to think. No wonder they're living in damp rented flats if they only bothered to get one GCSE – in some non-subject or other. Feckless.
But Jesus says that if you're poor, or hungry, or sad, it's not a question of blame. There's no such thing as the deserving – or undeserving – poor. They are 'Μακαριος' in the Greek, blessed. That's what the poor are, what the hungry are. Jesus turns things upside-down. This passage of 'beatitudes', blessings, 'Blessed are the .. [whoever it is]', runs into the really revolutionary bit, 'Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, lend without expecting to be repaid.' Don't rush to judge someone – it could be you next. All those great, generous ideas – but the problem is that no-one really follows them. Because people say that just as resurrection can't be real, in real life turning the other cheek is a lovely idea in theory, but it can't be practical.
But what Jesus is advocating is a bit like what St Paul was saying about resurrection, about life after death. If you've got no faith in it, you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. If you make faithful-sounding noises, if you tell everyone you've been saved, but you still think that rich people must somehow be better people, and poor people must really be a bit useless, a bit feckless – if being saved doesn't make any difference to what you do, to how you treat people, then Jesus is there to tell you you're just not getting it yet.
This is a neat way for me to round off what I'm saying. Godfrey and I are going to be running a Lent Bible study course, and the theme is going to be exactly what our Gospel today was about – the Beatitudes. I do hope you will come. We'll have a session in the daytime and a session in the evening. I hope you will feel blessed at the end of it – and that you will see that being blessed isn't the same as being comfortably off. You will need to add faith.
Tags Acts of the Apostles, beatitudes, Bible, blessings, Christianity, Christians, Creed, faith, God, Jesus, marriage, poor, Resurrection, rich, sad, St Paul
Wisdom and Faith
August 5, 2018 //
Sermon for Evensong on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 5th August 2018
Psalm 88, Job 28, Hebrews 11:17-31
I'm going to cheat, ever so slightly, tonight: because the text that I want to talk about isn't actually part of either of our lessons this evening. But it does come in the Book of Job, a bit earlier than our first lesson, which was from chapter 28. This quotation is from chapter 19: and it is
'For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth'.
You can probably hear it, as one of the arias, 'airs', as he called them, in Handel's 'Messiah'. I know that my redeemer liveth. It does lead into our two lessons, which are about different ways of knowing things.
The first lesson, from the Book of Job, is all about wisdom; the value of wisdom, how difficult it is to come by, but how important it is: and the second lesson, from Hebrews, is all about faith; trusting that something is the case, believing in something. Hebrews tells how faith can make you a hero, and how the various stars of the history of the Israelites had faith in things, and did remarkable deeds as a result.
Let's look first at wisdom. What does it mean to be wise? This has connotations of good judgement, discernment and fair-mindedness. I think these days that we often tend to concentrate not on what would be wise in certain circumstances, but rather, on what would not be wise. You know: we tend to say, for instance, 'If I need to go home from here, I could go in the golf buggy. But it wouldn't be wise.'
The idea of wisdom is that it's the sort of knowledge which leads to a successful outcome. Knowing what is likely to turn out well, and having the good judgement to choose that course of action rather than anything else.
Another thing that wisdom is bound up with is understanding. If you understand something properly, then probably you will deal with that thing better, more effectively, more correctly. In the Book of Job, Job has three dialogues with his so-called 'comforters', his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, candid friends who hold up a mirror to him, he having suffered unjustly. He's not done anything wrong, but terrible things have happened to him. They try to help him to understand what has happened to him. For some reason God has caused it.
One thing that's different between the world of Job and our world today is that we don't tend to look for a divine cause for everything that happens. Obviously, as Christians, we believe that God is the ultimate creator and sustainer of our life. But I'm not sure that we would see Him at work taking sides, if you like, lifting up some people and casting down others. I think these days we tend not to think of God in that way, because it tends to lead you into the possibility that God is not a good and loving god, but that He may in certain circumstances be a vengeful and cruel god.
I think we tend to say that things just happen; perhaps, tying them a little bit to somebody's conduct: 'If we carry on polluting the atmosphere, then global warming will happen much more quickly', say. Of course, if you were in an Old Testament frame of mind, you could cast that discussion in terms of breaking the Covenant to look after God's creation on our part, and God inflicting punishment accordingly.
But I'm inclined to think that's not a common view these days, even among people who do think about God and believe in Him, because in a way it makes God out to be not necessarily a loving god. And it's interesting to see how Job thought of wisdom in this context.
'… the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.'
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.., and so on, is, I suppose, what 'the fear of the Lord' means – although it's odd that it should be fear and not love. Maybe a better word would be 'respect'. You can have loving respect for God.
I think that's pretty good, even in the court of the philosophers. What is it, to be wise? It's not something you can just acquire, as the lesson says. And it's not something you can buy, or learn, like riding a bike. There has to be some sort of guarantor, that what we think may be true, is true. That could be God.
The point about having God in the background, underpinning our knowledge and understanding, is that otherwise, we might never agree on what is wise. What is it, to know that something is a good idea? It might be a good idea for me; but it might not be a good idea for you.
In Handel's 'Messiah', that line from Job, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth', actually points to the Messiah, the Saviour of Israel, to Jesus. The air goes on, 'For now is Christ risen, the first fruits of them that sleep.' Händel's librettist Charles Jennens quoted 1 Corinthians 15:20 as well as the Book of Job.
But in the context of Job himself, another way of putting what he says is, 'I know that my vindicator lives'. He has been unjustly condemned. Poor old Job is suffering all sorts of indignities, trials and torments. And he has done nothing to deserve it. So what he really needs is somebody to speak up for him in a persuasive way, an advocate, a 'vindicator': somebody who can prove that he is not a guilty party: somebody to show everyone what the true position is.
But here's the problem. It's not necessarily the case that we will all agree about things that we say we 'know'. I might say that I know that something or other is a good thing. But that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing – and you might disagree with me. We sort-of think that, if you say you know something, if I know that such-and-such is the case, then it must be true. Really? Well, just saying it tells you that that's not necessarily right.
Maybe faith can add another angle on this. This whole topic is what's called epistemology, the philosophy of understanding, what it is to understand something, what it is to know something, what it is to perceive something. And faith is in this area. In the Letter to the Hebrews, you find this wonderful catalogue of heroes in Bible history, doing heroic things because of their faith. By faith they did such-and-such. I think we're meant to distinguish faith from knowledge – although that may not actually be a real distinction.
At the beginning of chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews, there's a definition of faith. 'Faith gives substance to our hopes and makes us certain of realities we do not see', (NEB), or 'faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen', according to the King James version.
I've been beginning to think about how I'm going to explain God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit to my little grandson Jim. Jim is 19 months old, so his capacity for philosophical reasoning is probably a bit limited, at least for now. But I think it's a good thing for me to start thinking about how I will be able to explain these things in terms that Jim can understand.
So much of our understanding of God, so much of our religion, involves things we cannot see. In some ways it would be very handy if, in the same ways as with the ancient Greeks, our God periodically came down from heaven and appeared among us: and of course 2,000 years ago, that's exactly what happened. But these days we are challenged by how to explain that we believe in something, we trust something to be true, that we can't see and we can't prove the existence of – at least in the same way as we could prove whether I'm wearing pink socks.
It's not just religious things: there are a lot of things where in order for our lives to just carry on normally, we need to have faith. I have faith that I will get up next morning and that there'll be another day. But there's no way I can prove it. Anything involving the future involves faith. If I turn the ignition key of my car, I have faith that it will start up and go. But I don't know.
There are some similarities with what Job was talking about. He was praising the idea of wisdom. It was a gift beyond price, unable to be found anywhere specific. If you had wisdom, then you would make fewer mistakes. You would be able to discern the right thing to do.
But if you have faith, it takes it on a further stage. If you believe and trust in something or in someone, depending on how inspiring that figure is, how compelling they are, you will be inspired, you will be able to rise to the highest challenges. Just as with wisdom; you won't be able to prove it, but it will be real for you. If you have faith that something is the case, then for you, that is reality.
But there is an extra factor in this, both where wisdom is concerned, and also with faith. And that is, that it isn't just a question that if I do the right thing, it will make me more successful; or if I have complete faith in, say, a particular diet, then I will achieve spectacular weight loss – well, actually , there may be better examples that you can think of – but the idea, the point, is that wisdom and faith, in this context at least, involve something extra, someone extra: they involve God.
In Job's world, the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and in the context of the Letter to the Hebrews, in the light of Jesus, faith makes it possible for us to be heroes, to do things which by ourselves we would never be able to do.
I know that my Redeemer liveth.
I know it. It's wise to believe it. I do believe it. I have faith.
Tags @babyJim, ancient Greeks, Charles Jennens, faith, Handel, Hebrews, Israelites, Jesus, Job, Messiah, Wisdom
The Damsel and the Mite
Sermon for Holy Communion on the 5th Sunday after Trinity, 1st July 2018
2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43
You might wonder what the connection is between our two lessons today. The first one is from St Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, which you might think was more apt for one of those Sundays when we review our giving to the church and our stewardship, and on the other hand, the passage in St Mark's Gospel, the two miracles of Jesus, healing the woman with the unstoppable haemorrhage, who just touched the edge of his coat, and Jairus' daughter, one of Jesus's greatest miracles, where he raised a little girl from the dead. We know that story so well, but not in the words that Godfrey read. I don't remember Jesus saying, 'Little girl, get up' – although that is what the Greek literally says. The words I remember are so much more mighty and memorable.
And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.
And they laughed him to scorn. …
And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.
'Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.' Not 'Little girl, get up'. Now that's a proper miracle, in proper miracle words. Just imagine what it must have been like
if you were Jairus or the damsel or the damsel's Mum, indeed everyone around. She wasn't just some little girl. She was the damsel, the damsel in Mark's Gospel.
Anyway, I'm not really going to talk about the gospel today. Because I'm sure you've heard loads and loads of sermons about that lovely passage in St Mark's Gospel about the raising of Jairus' daughter and the healing of the woman with the haemorrhage; the key point about both stories being the importance of having faith. To the woman who touched his cloak he said, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well,' and to Jairus, when people were saying it was too late, that his daughter had died, Jesus said, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well,' and to Jairus, 'Do not fear, only believe.' They both had trusted in the power of God.
No, what I want to have a go at this morning is to look at what St Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, where he is trying to get some funding for Christians in Jerusalem, who are hard-up, from the relatively well-off people in Corinth. This was like us in wealthy Surrey putting together a collection for a parish in the East End of London or in down-town Sheffield.
I think that it's very interesting to see what St Paul was writing – or actually dictating to his secretary, because that's how he worked – at the very earliest times in the history of Christianity. These letters to the Corinthians are usually dated by scholars at around 50AD [CE], so less than 20 years after Jesus was crucified. It is reckoned that only the letters to the Thessalonians are earlier. So we are getting a glimpse into the life and concerns of the earliest church. And St Paul is banging on about people upping their planned giving! Clearly, some things haven't changed. But I'll let Stephen Chater speak to you quietly about whatever St Mary's needs.
The interesting things about what St Paul was saying here are precisely how sensitive he was, and how he recognised how tricky it is to reconcile money matters with faith. There are churches who preach a 'prosperity gospel'. According to that idea, if you are wealthy, it is because you are blessed – and conversely, if you are faithful to the church and give generously to it, then God will reward you, and make you rich.
I doubt whether any of us here would believe in that sort of thing. And neither does St Paul, here. What he does say is that he wants the Corinthians not only to talk the talk, to 'excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness', but also to walk the walk, in giving – the word in Greek is χαρις, from which we get our word 'charity'. It's also the word for 'grace', and indeed the words of 'The Grace', 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit' come from the end of this very same letter.
And 'grace' has another connotation, a 'free gift'. In St Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 6, and in the letter to the Ephesians chapter 2, salvation, eternal life, is said to be the gift of God, not something people can earn through doing good works. It is a χάρισμα, which means a free gift, given by χαρις, grace, generosity. These are all related ideas. So what St Paul is asking the Corinthians to do is to be generous. Give a free gift – this isn't a payment for services. Paul says, You're not obliged to give; I'm not ordering you to do it. He says in v 8, 'This is not meant as an order; by telling you how keen others are I am putting your love to the test.' [NEB translation].
St Paul says that although Jesus was rich, he became poor. Actually that seems a bit unlikely. Jesus was, at least on earth, a carpenter's son. He was a sought-after preacher, a rabbi. But I doubt whether he was like some of the telly-evangelists in the USA today, who are pretty well-heeled, as I understand it.
That's true in parts of Africa too, incidentally. We had an interesting visit from a clergyman, a bishop's chaplain, from the diocese of Owerri in Nigeria, with which St Andrew's Oxshott, or rather Revd Canon Jeremy Cresswell, their previous vicar, had links. This chap fully expected to be kept in some comfort wherever he went. His reasoning was that, as Christ's representative, people in the church should accord him respect and provide for his needs generously. I see that Godfrey is making notes here … But unfortunately, I think it only works for vicars in Africa …
I don't know whether St Paul knew Jesus' story of the widow's mite, which is recorded in St Mark's and St Luke's Gospels (Mark 12: Luke 21). His Letters to the Corinthians were written before those Gospels; but his point in his Letter, which he spells out in the next chapter (2 Corinthians 9:6) where he says, 'God loves a cheerful giver', is very much along the same lines as Jesus' teaching about the widow's mite. What she gave may have seemed very small, a couple of coppers only; but it was all that she had.
Paul goes on to make it plain that you mustn't feel pressured into giving more than you have (2 Cor 8:12). He reminds the Corinthians about the story of the Israelites after they had come out of Egypt, when they were with Moses in the desert, and they started to grumble and complain that they didn't have enough to eat.
The Lord gave them an 'ample sufficiency' when he dropped manna from heaven, and numbers of quails for them to eat. I've always wondered how that last bit worked. In the sixties you got 'chicken in a basket' at Berni Inns. Maybe the effect was similar. The point, though, was about the quantity. Not too much, and not too little. An ample sufficiency. That's what the Lord gave them. So the Corinthians – and we – should give to the Lord just what we can afford, and not more.
So what is the link between those miracle stories, about the damsel, Jairus' daughter, and the other lady with the chronic illness, and St Paul banging the tin – albeit very elegantly – but clearly twisting the Corinthians' arms – to give generously to the church?
I would suggest that the idea might be this. When you read the Gospel stories of what Jesus did, and particularly the miracle stories, the idea is that they are revelations, revelation of Jesus' divine nature. God, with all that God can do, in a man. That man, Jesus, healed people, even raised the damsel and Lazarus from the dead. It demonstrated that he was much more than just a young man from a humble carpenter's shop.
On the other hand St Paul interpreted it all, and he explained Jesus' teaching in a way that everyone, not just the Jewish people, could understand. And when you have believed the miracles, when you 'excel in faith', then St Paul teaches that you will want to gracious, to be generous.
St Paul was the great church planter, the original Alpha Course teacher – and he was also, effectively, the first archdeacon. Paul was totally practical about how the new churches should operate, not only in their worship and care for others, but also in the nitty-gritty of church admin. You need enough money to run the church. And then you need more, if you are going to do something for neighbours in need.
It's teaching which is still valid today. Do please think about what you give to the church. Are you doing in practice what you say you do? Please do give -cheerfully – but don't bankrupt yourself in the process. Be like the widow and her mite.
Oh – and you know, if your wallet is somehow empty, St Mary's is geared up to take credit cards, even Apple Pay. God bless you – and thank you!
Tags Alpha Course, ample sufficiency, Apple Pay, archdeacon, carpenter, Charity, Christians, Corinthians, damsel, faith, χάρισμα, χαρις, Jairus, Jeremy Cresswell, Jerusalem, Owerri, St Mark's Gospel, St Mary's Stoke D'Abernon, St Paul, talitha cumi, Thessalonians, TV evangelists, wealthy Surrey
The Man with Two Bibles
Sermon for the third Sunday of Epiphany at St Mary's 22nd January 2017
1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
When President Trump took the oath of allegiance on Friday, according to the report on the radio, he had his tiny hand on two Bibles, one of which was the one which Abraham Lincoln used, and the other was one which his mother had given him. It makes you think that the Bible must mean something to the new president.
Using two Bibles in this way reminds me of a story which I heard about a rich old man who had two Rolls Royces. Somebody once asked him why he needed two. He wasn't a car collector. However, he said, he felt better having two, just in case one broke down. So perhaps Donald Trump needs two Bibles, just in case one breaks down.
'Wait a minute', you will say. One of the things about the Bible is that it is utterly reliable. It's even better than a Rolls-Royce. It doesn't break down. All you need in life is holy scripture, 'sola scriptura', only scripture, in Latin. But different churches say different things here. There are, perhaps, some differences of emphasis.
Today is the Sunday in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I must confess that my heart does sink a little bit when I realise that I have to try to say something useful and enlightening about the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, especially when we have a lesson like the one which we had today from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. St Paul ticks them off. '… each of you says, 'I belong to Paul', or 'I belong to Apollos', or 'I belong to Cephas', or 'I belong to Christ.' St Paul says, Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptised in the name of Paul?'
Poor old Corinthians. They are always getting ticked off by St Paul. It's one of those points where I have to say – and I think some of you will agree with me – that I feel rather sympathetic to those Corinthians. Why am I an Anglican? Why is somebody else a Methodist? Or for a Wee Free? A Baptist? Or a member of the United Reformed Church, or indeed Roman Catholic? And is this a good thing?
When you read a lesson like the one we've read from 1 Corinthians, It's an 'oh dear' moment. It looks as though, although for hundreds of years, the church has been divided into lots of different denominations, everybody seems to turn a blind eye to these Bible passages which suggest that we should be all one church.
We can trace back the various splits and disagreements which have given rise to the different denominations. For instance the original split between the church in Byzantium and the church in Rome, the orthodox and the Roman Catholics respectively; and then in the time of the Reformation – 500 years ago this year – Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, and starting a movement which split the Western Church into Roman Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants themselves were divided, mainly between those who were Lutherans and those who followed Calvin and Zwingli, the reformed Christians. And there were – there are – Baptists as well!
This isn't going to be a sermon where I try to teach you all about the various differences in theology and the philosophy of religion as it has evolved down the ages; why, for example, the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics have not moved together – after all, Henry VIII was a jolly good Catholic, the only problem being that he had some local difficulty with the Pope.
Apart from that, Henry had no difficulty with the Catholic doctrines, of transubstantiation, according to which the bread and wine in holy communion actually become the body and blood of Christ; and the blueprint or route map of heaven, what happens to people after they die: that their souls go to a place called purgatory, where all the sins are laundered from the souls. Possibly laundry is too nice an image; it is more like the refiner's fire.
Not a nice process, but after that you were ready for your encounter with St Peter at the Pearly Gates. Henry had no difficulty with all of that; but of course Martin Luther did. He was particularly opposed to the Catholic Church's system of indulgences, according to which you could pay in order to shorten your time in purgatory. It was very lucrative for the church but it didn't have any basis in holy scripture.
Martin Luther wanted to strip out all these things that were not in the Bible but which had grown up in the church's tradition. 'Sola scriptura', only scripture, was his motto, his byword. Calvin and Zwingli, on the other hand, as well as relying on scripture, like Luther, did not like the traditional idea of a priest, as someone standing between the believer and God, somehow mediating worship. That Catholic idea was based on the Jewish concept of the priesthood, according to which an ordinary mortal who came into contact with God would die.
The trouble with having a priesthood is that you start to have a hierarchy, 'princes of the church' among the bishops, living in splendour in complete contrast with the simple life enjoined on his disciples by Jesus. In reaction against that, Calvin introduced the idea of the 'priesthood of all believers'. God would meet anyone, directly, face to face in prayer or worship.
Why would you follow one form of theology rather than another? Surely what the Bible says, if you follow what St Paul has written to the Corinthians, is that splitting up into all these different churches is an aberration. Somehow we have all got lost on the way. True believers will all just belong to one church, whatever that is.
At that point, of course, all of you in the pews mentally shift from one foot to another, with your eyes cast down, thinking privately that it's hopeless, after 2,000 years of history and because of the way that all of us have been brought up in different traditions round the world. There is no chance of abolishing all the various denominations in favour of a single unified church, and the idea of having to go to a single church may well fill us with some trepidation.
'Our beliefs are not one-size-fits-all', you will say. You might even say, 'My God is not like your God.' I have always found it rather difficult when people talk about 'my God', because it seems to me that God does not belong to us, but rather that we belong to Him. So saying that something or someone is my God, mine, is nonsense.
In your mind's eye, even if not out loud, you are probably thinking, 'I don't want the churches to be all just like so-and-so down the road. Just think, they might make me wave my arms around or clap in time to a guitar, or have to smell incense!' – or, indeed, whatever it is that you get sniffy about in other churches.
But I think the thing that you need to take into account is the idea that is behind what St Paul is saying to the Corinthians in our lesson today. In effect, it is not what the Corinthians want that matters, it isn't that they must have that great thing, that we celebrate so much in our society today, namely, choice, it isn't that: It isn't up to them, it isn't up to the Corinthians: it's up to Jesus himself.
What would Jesus say about, 'I belong to Apollos' or 'I follow Paul'? Or, I'm a Methodist, I'm a United Reformed? I'm a Roman Catholic, or an Anglican? I'm a high Anglican. I'm a low Anglican. I'm a middle of the road Anglican. I'm an Evangelical (Godfrey will tell you more about that, of course); or I'm an Anglo-Catholic. Every shade and nuance is catered for. What do you think Jesus would think about that?
What St Paul says is, 'Christ did not send me to baptise, but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.' In other words, the key thing is for people to hear the gospel, and in particular to hear about Christ's passion and death and resurrection: to hear about the role of the cross which is at the heart of it.
Provided we get the Gospel, nothing else really matters. I don't think that Jesus would particularly care whether we like a particular church or a particular style of worship or not. The more important thing is that Jesus gets to be believed in by more people. So my feeling is that is that, although there might be moves to get closer to each other in the various denominations, moves such, for example, as ARCIC, the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, or more recently the conversations between the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the covenant discussions between the Anglicans and Methodists, still, you can give yourself a break; you can smile sweetly at your friends in the other churches, particularly in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: you can take the opportunity to go and visit each other's churches and worship with them. But you don't have to give up being based at the church you've always gone to, where your friends are.
You definitely can be confident that we all, all of us in Churches Together in Cobham, Oxshott, Stoke D'Abernon and Downside, are united, united in that we believe in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; so I think we wouldn't get ticked off like the Corinthians were.
Mind you, going back to Donald Trump and his two bibles, as Canon Giles Fraser has written recently in his 'Loose Canon' column in the Guardian [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2017/jan/19/for-donald-trump-faith-has-become-the-perfect-alibi-for-greed], President Trump does go to a different sort of church, different from any of the ones round here, a church called Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in New York, where the minister is, or has been, the Rev Norman Vincent Peale. Mr Peale has published a book called 'The power of positive thinking' and has developed a theology, if you can believe this, of how to be a winner, how to be successful in business. It seems to be a sort of 'prosperity gospel'.To be blessed, in that congregation, means to be rich.
Giles Fraser wrote, 'When Trump was asked what God is to him … he came up with this: "Well, I say God is the ultimate. You know you look at this … here we are on the Pacific Ocean. How did I ever own this? I bought it 15 years ago. I made one of the great deals, they say, ever. I have no more mortgage on it as I will certify and represent to you. And I was able to buy this and make a great deal. That's what I want to do for the country. Make great deals."
Awful, isn't it. And it came from something at least pretending to be a church. Now what that means is something which we ought to be thinking about, especially in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Tags Bible, Book of Common Prayer, Calvin, Cranmer, Donald Trump, Evensong, faith, heaven, Henry VIII, Indulgences, Martin Luther, prosperity gospel, Protestants, Purgatory, Reformation, Rolls-Royce, St Mary's Stoke D'Abernon, transubstantiation, Zwingli
Must Rhodes Fall?
Sermon for Evensong on the third Sunday of Epiphany 22nd of January 2017
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; 1 Peter 1:3-12
I said when I welcomed everyone at the beginning of the service, this is the Sunday in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It's particularly nice to have Father Jonathan and some of our friends from Sacred Heart here to worship with us. That of course goes for all our friends from all the other churches, but today I have a particular thing to discuss with our Roman friends.
This morning I preached on Christian unity and tried to reconcile our modern tendency, to elevate our tastes and our wish to be able to choose, with the clear biblical imperative that we should all be one in Christ Jesus.
Tonight I want to be more specific in touching on the fact that this week is not only the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, but also that we are beginning to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, or to be more precise, the 500th anniversary, on 31st October, of Martin Luther's 95 Theses protesting against various practices in the then Roman Catholic Church; in particular, the sale of 'indulgences' in order to shorten one's time in 'purgatory'.
In those days, the belief was that, after death, your soul went into a halfway house, purgatory, where it was tested and purified so as to eradicate from it any traces of sin. This could be a lengthy and painful process, which you could shorten by buying indulgences. Without going into the theology involved in Martin Luther's challenge, I would just point out that this dispute about indulgences was the beginning of the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the churches which are subsequently described as Protestant.
What I am interested in tonight is to some extent influenced by our first lesson from Ecclesiastes, the famous lesson about time, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to get, and a time to lose, and so on. Everything in its season and a season for everything
As some of you may know, I was an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford. The College has been in the news recently because it has become the subject of protests by a movement called 'Rhodes Must Fall', started originally in South Africa, protesting against memorials to Cecil Rhodes, who, as well as founding the famous Rhodes scholarships, and paying for the building of Rhodes House, where the Rhodes Scholars could meet, gave to my old college, Oriel, enough money to fund the building of a new Rhodes Building which was finished before the First World War and which has just been subject to a complete refurbishment including the building of a new additional top floor with very splendid penthouses for students looking over the rooftops towards the dreaming spires of Oxford.
On the side of the building which faces the High Street there is a large statue of Cecil Rhodes, and the protesters have been demanding that the statue be removed, just as a similar statue in Cape Town has been removed as a result of their protest. The protesters have argued that Cecil Rhodes exploited his workers in his diamond mines, that he had been a racist and colonialist of the worst type, and he should not be remembered favourably in any way.
This has prompted a huge amount of soul-searching in the governing body of the College, who have in their turn consulted the old boys like me – and the old girls; this consultation taking the form of a seminar which took place recently with three distinguished academic speakers and open discussion aimed at placing the heritage of Cecil Rhodes in the appropriate 'context'.
I have to say that I was rather disappointed that, with the exception of one speaker, none of the discussion concerned the moral question whether or not it was acceptable to judge people by contemporary standards when, at the time they were active, moral judgement would have viewed them differently. Or, if even then Cecil Rhodes was a bad man, was it a good thing to accept gifts, albeit generous ones, from such a bad man?
Then having regard to our lesson today, what difference does time make? If at that time the gifts were made, Cecil Rhodes was not a bad man, according to the standards prevalent at the time, what difference does it make that in time that perception may have changed?
Those sort of perceptions seem to me to affect our view of the Reformation as well. There is a statement from our two archbishops, Justin and John Sentamu, about the Reformation, celebrating the good things that have come from it, the proclamation of the gospel of grace, the availability of the Bible for people to read in their own languages, and the recognition that lay people are called to serve God in addition to those who are ordained. This is an echo of Calvin's idea of the priesthood of all believers.
At the same time the archbishops express regret, and acknowledge that the time of the Reformation was a time of violence and strife between the Christian people on either side of the Reformation process, all claiming to know the same Lord.
We have been using tonight – as we do every Sunday at St Mary's at 6 – the Book of Common Prayer, which was originally written by Thomas Cranmer in 1549. It was – and still is – the finest expression of reformed theology in the English language. Even so Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake as a heretic seven years later. The turmoil in the English Church did not really subside until nearly 100 years later. The prayer book which we are using is the 1662 edition.
The Reformation in England claimed many lives. England had see-sawed between Henry VIII's version of Protestantism, which really was Catholicism minus the Pope, (because of his inconvenient objections to Henry's desire to obtain a divorce), to the Catholicism of Mary, back to Protestantism under Elizabeth and so on. Until after the Civil War and the death of Charles I, under the reign of Cromwell and the Puritans, extreme Protestants; England had lived out the Reformation for over 100 years. It was a live issue, and unfortunately, an extremely violent time. The poor Roman Catholics suffered a lot.
There has always been a paradox in the area of religious belief and tolerance of other people's beliefs. Jesus preached a message exclusively of love and caring for one's neighbour. But at the same time he foresaw that divisions would be caused by his gospel. Matthew 10:34f: 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.' But he told them to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.
Unfortunately his followers did not listen, because for them, for someone not to believe what they regarded as being fundamental and true, was sacrilege, blasphemy and had to be completely eradicated, even by killing the person who had expressed the unacceptable view.
Is very difficult for us to understand why people should have been horribly killed like this, for example by being burned at the stake; but of course we do see the same sort of religious violence today, this time between Muslims and other religions including our own, in the Middle East. Converting from the Muslim religion to another religion is regarded in many Islamic countries as a capital offence.
Does Ecclesiastes have anything to say about this? Is it a recipe for moral relativism? It seems to say that at different times, the same thing is both good and bad. We see the same issue in the context of safeguarding and sexual misconduct. Those of us who grew up in the swinging 60s were frankly not terribly shocked by what rock musicians got up to after concerts with adoring groupies.
But now it is recognised that there was a great inequality of bargaining power, if I can put it that way, and great scope for glamorous individuals, usually men, in effect to coerce impressionable young girls. What is it that makes things right and wrong? What is it that makes things right at one time and wrong at another?
I think that among the various Christians here in Cobham there is more that unites us than divides us. We are all looking to follow Jesus's message of love and care for our neighbours, and that is the standard which we seek to apply to our conduct. Not everything is what it seems at first. Apparently the first student to win a Rhodes Scholarship was a black African.
Tags Anglican-Methodist Covenant, Anglicans, apostasy, Archbishop John Sentamu, Archbishop Justin, ARCIC, Cecil Rhodes, contextualisation, Ecclesiastes, faith, Gus Casely-Hayford, islam, Methodists, Oriel College, Oxford, religion, Rhodes Must Fall, The Pope, toleration
Bishop Andrew and the Meaning of Faith
Sermon for Evensong at St Mary the Virgin, Stoke D'Abernon, on the Second Sunday of Lent, 1st March 2015
Genesis 12:1-9, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Yesterday morning, along with Beryl Jones and Godfrey from St Mary's, Robert Jenkins and the other ministers from St Andrew's, together with their churchwarden Dr Moni Babatunde – and about 991 others – it was our privilege and our joy to attend the Service of Inauguration of our new bishop, Bishop Andrew, at Guildford Cathedral.
The process is called 'inauguration.' Just as we are no longer supposed to think of bishops as 'princes of the church', so we don't talk about them being enthroned any more, but just 'inaugurated'.
Bishop Andrew had to declare his loyalty to the inheritance of faith professed by the Church of England, the 'faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.' That is in the preface to the Declaration of Assent, which is read by the Dean. She went on say, 'Led by the Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.'
If you want to look at the 'historic formularies' which are referred to, then look at p.584 (and following) in your little blue Prayer Books, where the historic form of service is set out – although I'm disappointed to tell you that we didn't follow that, but instead it was a more modern version. Do look at the wonderful lesson in the Prayer Book, from 1 Timothy, setting out all the qualities which a bishop needs – '.. not greedy of filthy lucre..' and so on. The 39 Articles are there too.
Tonight, on the Second Sunday in Lent, we are reflecting on the nature of faith. The faith which inspired Abraham to leave his home and go off in search of the promised land, just relying on the Lord's promise, in our first lesson from Genesis, and the great catalogue of instances of faith set out in the Letter to the Hebrews, the faith shown by a 'great cloud of witnesses' that it refers to in Chapter 12.
Bishop Andrew chose as his lesson, which was beautifully read by his eldest daughter Hannah, a passage from chapter 47 of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, which certainly those of us in my car, coming away from the service, couldn't remember before, as it wasn't the 'still, small voice' of calm, and it wasn't the dry bones: but it was Ezekiel being walked around where the temple would be, and being shown a spring of water, which variously was a trickle, came up to his knees, and then was deep enough to swim in, which flowed out into the Dead Sea, and made the water of the Dead Sea sweet enough for fish to thrive and be caught abundantly there.
Bishop Andrew drew on that image as he outlined the task ahead of him. He had some allusions to Classical mythology as well: the story of Odysseus and the Sirens in the Odyssey, and a version of the same story in Jason and the Argonauts. The Sirens' song was intended to draw Odysseus and his companions to their deaths on the rocks, and they were saved by the beautiful song of the singer Orpheus, which drowned out the Sirens.
For Bishop Andrew, this illustrated the need for continual work, continual strife against all the challenges which he would have to face in his ministry. As he pointed out, rotting fruit will spread rapidly and ruin all the good fruit next to it: but it doesn't work the other way. The good fruit doesn't neutralise the rotting fruit by itself. Something positive has to be done to get rid of the bad stuff.
In the Letter to the Hebrews chapter 11, that first line, 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' has a rather different meaning from the 'faith' which the Bishop has to declare his assent to, as part of his inauguration.
We can say that Bishop Andrew shares our core Christian beliefs: he shares the specifics of belief which are set out in the creeds. But what we're being asked to reflect on tonight is slightly different. This passage in Hebrews is a pretty philosophical passage, and it deals, not so much with the content of our faith, with what it is we believe and trust in, but instead it invites us to think about what it means to have faith. What are we doing when we have faith?
It's drawing a contrast, which you'll also find in Chapters 4 and 8 of St Paul's Letter to the Romans, between what we can see with our eyes, what we can sense with our five senses, the truth of which we can witness – we were there, we saw it happen, so we can certainly say we believe in it – and the things that we can't see, but nevertheless believe in: what it is that gives substance to our hopes and in some way provides a touch-stone, a reality check, for things which we cannot directly experience.
Some philosophers and writers have of course challenged this. H. L. Mencken, whom Alastair Cooke was so fond of quoting in his Letter from America, said, 'Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.' The Oxford philosopher Richard Robinson, in his book 'An Atheist's Values' [Oxford, OUP, 1964] simply finds Christian explanations of faith to be 'unintelligible', believing something where there is no evidence for it.
The word which we translate as 'evidence' in this context, in 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' in Hebrews 11:1 (KJV), something which convinces us that something is true, is something objective, it's something outside us. It's not a question of our being disposed to believe something, credulous. It's what it is that makes us disposed to believe it. In Greek, the word is ελεγχος: it's a word which means a proof, a process of putting something to the test.
I have to say that I disagree with those philosophers who say that this kind of belief, faith, trust in the reality of something which you can't actually prove, is simply unintelligible. We believe and trust in all sorts of things every day, which we can't prove. For example, that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, or that we will – or most of us will – carry on with our lives, and that there will be another day.
I believe and trust that some of my friends are curling up in front of the TV, and getting ready to watch Top Gear. I can't prove it – I can't see them. But for practical purposes, I'm quite confident that that's what they're doing.
You can of course object that some things are more likely than others. Some things are more believable, if you like, than others, and therefore more deserving of our faith. Can faith, our faith, pass this test?
I would suggest that our faith in God is both intelligible and intellectually respectable, because of the testimony of the actual people who were the real witnesses, which we have in the Bible, and because the history of that faith, as it has been passed down by the generations here in Stoke for the last 1,500 years, is such that, frankly, if it wasn't true, it would've died out.
The thing about our Christian faith is that, although the object of it is invisible, it is real. 'Abraham put his faith in God, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness', St Paul writes in Romans 4. 'Righteousness' in Paul's letters is what draws us closer to God. If all there were is mankind and what man can see, can perceive with the senses, then indeed, faith makes no sense. But we believe that there is more, more than we can know or perceive. Just because we can't perceive it, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Hebrews gives a catalogue, as I said earlier, of all the various heroes and heroines of faith. Look what a tremendous tradition you will be following if you join in! Bishop Andrew is saying that, if you have the faith, if you get swept up in its stream, a stream like that stream rising in the middle of the temple, in Ezekiel's vision, then even in the barren waters of the Dead Sea, you will make a good catch.
Let us give thanks for Bishop Andrew's teaching, and for the example of his faith. He will be a good man to watch over us – which is what a bishop does.
Tags abraham, Bishop Andrew Watson, Bishop of Guildford, Book of Common Prayer, Church of England, Dead Sea, enthronement, Ezekiel, faith, Genesis, H.L.Mencken, Hebrews, historic formularies, Jason and the Argonauts, Odysseus, Orpheus, prince of the church, Richard Robinson, Romans, Sirens, St Paul


Located on the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf, Dubai has emerged as a global city and business hub of the Middle East. It is one of the seven emirates that make up the country.
The purpose-built 200m² FBO facility at Dubai World Central is located next to the GA terminal and includes a VVIP passenger lounge, crew lounge, washrooms and showers offering the same high levels of service provided at Dubai International Airport.


This village of Thwaite, above Muker, is also one of the most beautiful ones in the Swaledale. Approaching the village, I could see stone houses, overlapping one after another, over the bridge crossing a beck. The name of the village means "clearings in the woods" in the Norse.
Driving along the dales, I could see the beautiful villages having gray stone houses on the way. I wanted to stop to enjoy the views of them. If only I had had more time! As a passerby tourist, it was not easy to make enough time to give myself free rein to the Dales. It would be better to live in the dales to enjoy the beautiful scenery of them to the full. I could not but be in envy of the dalesmen.
The upper Swaledale is known as the country of the naturalist brothers Richard Kearton(1862-1928) and Cherry Kearton(1871-1940). They were born in Thwaite.
Cherry, an active man, is said to be the first big-game photographer in the world and also an adventurer. Richard, being gentle and sensitive, was a writer and lecturer on ornithology. He had disability in one of his legs, which was caused by the dislocation of his hip when he fell from a tree while looking for bird's nests. Later, this damage prevented him from continuing active fieldwork. So, he turned to be a writer and lecturer of nature and wildlife, particularly birds. Cherry took photographs for Richard's books.
I have seen the very interesting photograph taken in the 1890s. It shows that Cherry is taking photographs of a bird's nest, standing on Richard's shoulders.
Living in Thwaite, they went to school in the neighbouring village of Muker. I suppose they enjoyed the way to and from the school everyday, seeing beautiful landscapes of the dales and watching birds and flowers. I heard that today's bird-watching and nature reserves of Yorkshire owe very much to the two brothers. I must appreciate their activities, too, as a bird-watcher and a fan of the Yorkshire Dales.
Speaking of bird's nests, I remenber seeing many large nests of rooks in woods close to the fields in winter. As I had not seen them before, they were very interesting for me. Those nests are often illustrated in picture books for children.


You can learn in this sample how to enable sorting for the Telerik MVC grid. Since this functionality is built-in, all you have to do is to set the sorting configuration via the Sortable attribute. The supported sorting modes are single and multiple, which can be specified through the SortMode property.


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An integrated 'omics' approach to epilepsy - Vadlamudi Group
COSMOS - O'Sullivan Group
Language Neuroscience – Copland Group
N-of-1 trials and sleep research
Neuro Mental Health – Dissanayaka Group
Neuroimmunology – Greer Group
Ataxia Research – Lavin Group
Neuroimmunology – McCombe Group
Epilepsy Research - Epilepsy Genomics and Epigenomics
1 in 26 people will develop epilepsy during their lifetime, and management challenges arise as two-thirds of patients do not have an identifiable cause, and more than one-third of patients have drug resistant epilepsy. For any given patient, it is often impossible to predict which drug will be effective and the current standard of care is a trial-and-error approach, often with lengthy sequential regimens of anti-seizure medications. This current medication odyssey imposes an enormous burden on patients and their families, due to a lack of seizure control and associated side-effects.
Our research is focused on better answering the two most common questions our patients ask their neurologist in the Epilepsy Clinic "What is the cause of my epilepsy" and "How can my epilepsy be treated?".
"What is the cause of my epilepsy"
The role of genetics has been well-established in epilepsy, initially with family and twin studies and then with the discovery of single genes causing epilepsy. What has evolved is that the vast majority of epilepsy patients have a more complex genetic basis for their epilepsy. Integrating genetic testing into clinical care provides a better understanding of the cause of epilepsy for a particular patient. This will end the diagnostic odyssey of searching for how and why they developed epilepsy and will enable more precision-based treatment approaches.
"How can my epilepsy be treated?"
To fundamentally change the way drug resistant epilepsy patients are currently being treated we are developing a patient-specific, in vitro brain organoid drug-screening platform that can identify effective anti-seizure drugs. We plan to test whether such in vitro identified drug regimens are "real-world" effective in treating epilepsy in a particular drug-resistant patient.
Our clinical and basic science team
A/Prof Lata Vadlamudi who has been a researcher in the field of epilepsy for over 15 years and has been a neurologist in clinical practice for almost 20 years. She is a Principal Research Fellow and group leader at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research and Senior Staff Specialist at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.
Prof Ernst Wolvetang is an international leader in the field of pluripotent stem cell biology and functional genomics for almost 20 years. He is the senior group leader of the Stem Cell Engineering Group at The University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and Co-director of the Centre for stem cell ageing and regenerative engineering (stemCARE).
Our team also collaborates with A/Prof Jeffrey Craig from the Deakin University in Victoria, who is an epigeneticist and twin researcher with over 20 years' experience. He is the Deputy Director of Twins Research Australia.
l.vadlamudi@uq.edu.au
Associate Professor Lata Vadlamudi
Principal Research Fellow
UQ Centre for Clinical Research
Mrs Carmen Bennett
Ms Melanie Tom
Genetic Counsellor – Research & Research Assistant
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology
Professor Ernst Wolvetang
Senior Group Leader, Head of the Stem Cell Engineering Laboratory, University of Queensland
Email: e.wolvetang@uq.edu.au
Dr Hannah Leeson
Email: h.leeson@uq.edu.au
Dr Mohammed Shaker
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Organoid Biology
Email: m.shaker@uq.edu.au
Zoe Hunter
Honours student (2020-2021)
Email: z.hunter@uq.net.au
Priyanka Sain
Student, Masters of Biotechnology (2020)
Email: p.sain@uq.net.au
Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
Namitha Mohandas (2015-2020)
Email: namitha.mohandas@mcri.edu.au
Early Life Epigenetics, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Melbourne
Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne
Yuk Jing (Jane) Loke
Email: jane.loke@mcri.edu.au
Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Melbourne
Stephanie Hopkins
Honours Student (2018)
Email: stephanie.hopkins@mcri.edu.au
University of Newcastle, Newcastle
Associate Professor Jeffrey Craig
Deakin University, Centre for Molecular and Medical Research, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health
Email: Jeffrey.craig@deakin.edu.au
Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne
Patient-specific, in vitro brain organoid model
The creation of a human, patient-specific in vitro epilepsy model and drug screening platform will facilitate a new era of personalised care and establish critical methodology for future research. We have established resources to enable functional studies of identified variants; potential for gene-editing capabilities; and pharmacogenomic studies. Hence, this project has great potential to improve clinical outcomes from this debilitating disorder.
The goal is to demonstrate that integration of genomics into the clinical care of refractory epilepsy patients will significantly improve their healthcare and show that this can be delivered using available resources effectively and efficiently. This project involves the creation of a diagnostic genomic testing pathway for known genes associated with epilepsy.
The mission will be accomplished by creating a diagnostic algorithm which incorporates accessible genomic testing for the treating neurologist, a multi-disciplinary approach for report generation, enabling a clinically meaningful report to the neurologists as well as individualised reports to patients. This process is supported by a genetic counsellor working with the research team and treating neurologists. By better understanding the cause of epilepsy, a more personalised approach to treatment can be achieved.
Epigenomics is the study of changes in gene expression without changes to the DNA sequence. Twins studies are an ideal paradigm to help differentiate between the three major components of phenotypic variation: genetics, shared, and non-shared environment. The discordant monozygotic twin model provides an elegant study design that controls for shared genetic and environmental factors, enabling a greater focus on the non-shared environment.
Towards personalised care for epilepsy patients: Using a patient-specific, human organoid platform for disease modelling and drug screening
The brain organoids are derived from pluripotent stem cells that are created from blood cells from epilepsy patients that are drug responsive or drug refractory. We next examine their brain activity patterns to discover drugs and drug combinations that are effective in treating the drug resistant patients (using the responsive ones as controls). We envisage that this unique approach will dramatically shorten the "medication odyssey" that almost one third of epilepsy patients have to endure without finding an effective treatment.
This project is in collaboration with Prof Ernst Wolvetang from The University of Queensland Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
Developing a Queensland neuro-genomics service to underpin the era of precision-based medicine
To utilise genomic and neurological expertise to improve the diagnostic pathway and to facilitate personalised management of patients with neurological conditions. A neuro-genomics service supports the complex process of assessment, testing and return of results, in order to facilitate ongoing care for the individual and their family, in close conjunction with their treating neurologist. This genomic information will enable a personalised treatment approach and underpin the era of precision medicine, which holds great promise for treatment advances such as gene-specific therapy, where genomic information can be used to better treat or cure disorders.
Piloting a neurogenetics service for drug resistant epilepsy patients
The goal is to demonstrate that this model of care in drug resistant epilepsy patients will significantly improve their healthcare and show that this can be delivered using available resources effectively and efficiently.
Genetic networks in epilepsy; A tissue specific approach
This singleton project utilises brain, buccal and blood derived samples from temporal lobe epilepsy patients to look at genes and genetic pathways where the epigenetic state links with epilepsy. By comparing different samples, we will be able to address the issue of tissue specificity in epigenomic studies. This project is in collaboration with A/Prof Jeff Craig, Centre for Molecular and Medical Research, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, Deakin Universit.y
The epigenetic and genetic landscape of idiopathic epilepsies: the testament of twins
This project provides a novel approach to deepen our understanding of phenotypic expression of idiopathic epilepsies by studying discordant monozygotic twins. The aim of this project is to focus on generating peripheral biomarkers for idiopathic epilepsies to aid in the diagnosis of idiopathic epilepsies and also act as specific markers for idiopathic epilepsy subtypes. The long-term hope of a peripheral biomarker will be the development of disease-modifying treatments. This project is in collaboration with A/Prof Jeff Craig, Centre for Molecular and Medical Research, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, Deakin University.
Genetics of epilepsy: A twin approach to complex and non-traditional inheritance patterns
This project builds the resource of an epilepsy twin cohort in Queensland and investigates the role of complex and non-traditional inheritance patterns through twin studies.
We wish to thank all those who have been so generous and supported this vital epilepsy research, to improve the lives of epilepsy patients.
This research has been funded by competitive research grants including Metro North Hospital and Health Services Clinician Research Fellowship, Queensland Genomics, University of Queensland Mayne Bequest Funding, Queensland Health Research Fellowship, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital Research Project Grants, Viertel Charitable Foundation Establishment Grant, Ramaciotti Establishment Grant and RACP Servier Barry Young Fellowship in Neurology.