Author: jmarkloughridge

In the news recently a Church of England minister was found guilty of indecent assault. In Ireland, we know the cost of clerical abuse of power all too well. We could add to the list the prosperity ‘preachers’ who fleece the vulnerable with their mega-ministries on TV. There’s a passage in Malachi (chapter 2) addressed…

I came across an interview with Leonard Cohen recently. It was towards the end of his life, and he spoke about preparing for death—and it was strangely pragmatic for such an enigmatic poet! I was struck by a couple of things he said: “I am a tidy kind of guy. I like to tie up…

As I sit down to write this column, news is coming in of tragedy in the Donegal International Rally. It’s utterly heart-breaking—a sunny summer’s day of laughter and excitement closes wrapped in the dark clouds of numbness and grief. Storms come uninvited and unexpected into our lives—three Sundays ago, as I came out of church,…

Sometimes on holidays we find ourselves in interesting places by accident. Last year we were in Austria and took a bit of a detour just to avoid a tunnel—not much scenery to be seen in a 13km tunnel! At the summit of a mountain pass we noticed, off to the side of the road, a…

On Saturday 18th April the National Archives made freely available over 700,000 individual household returns from the 1926 Census of Population—the first census conducted after the foundation of the Irish Free State. Within hours, four million hits had flooded the site. Across Ireland and the diaspora, people leaned into their screens, searching for grandparents, great-grandparents,…

Easter is just past. An annual reminder that evil does not have the last word—even when it looks to have had it. Jesus Christ rose from the grave, conquering death and having paid the price for sin. But it is not simply a past event. It is a picture of now and a promise for…

Last summer I read an excellent book called Margin, about creating margin in our lives so that we aren’t running ourselves into the ground. Space to rest, to wind down, to think, space for the unexpected. We have become fixated on time. Everything has to be fast—we time things to the second. We move from…

90 seconds: the difference between life and death; salvation and catastrophe. In the unlikely event of an emergency evacuation of an airplane, the crew’s goal is to get every single passenger out of danger and onto the ground before one and a half minutes is up. The target is taken very seriously. Before a new…

“Oh those sheep are so cute!”—said no farmer ever! Tourists or Instagrammers driving around Ireland might think so as they see sheep scattered across fields or wandering scenically along the road. Those who know better, know better. I recently saw a video of a farmer—he sounded like a Donegal man—looking at some straying sheep and…

You’ve probably seen the photo by this stage of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being driven away from the police station after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office after documents from the Epstein files were disclosed. The photo shows a man who looks like he’s just seen the future unravelling before him, in slow motion…