By Ricky, on November 28th, 2011
The Advent Ring in St. Clement's Church with the first candle lit for Advent Sunday © Ricky Yates
Yesterday was Advent Sunday which marks the beginning of the Church Liturgical Year. Contrary to what the manufacturers of Advent calendars believe, Advent only occasionally begins on 1st December. Instead it begins four Sundays before Christmas Day. With Christmas Day this year falling on a Sunday, (which is every clergyperson’s delight!), it means that this year, Advent begins on the earliest date possible and lasts a full four weeks.
In preparing for worship last week, I was particularly struck by the opening words of the Collect for Advent Sunday, “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light….”. It is a reminder of one of the great themes of the Advent season – darkness and light, and the need . . . → Read More: Advent Sunday
By Ricky, on November 20th, 2011
Charles Bridge, Prague © Ricky Yates
As I’ve written previously on this blog, ever since moving to the Czech Republic in September 2008, I have happily lived without having a television. Even in my latter years of living in the UK, I only tended to watch television in order to keep up-to-date with the News, together with enjoying the occasional major sporting event if it still was on terrestrial television. I refuse point blank to pay for satellite or cable TV, particularly as most of it is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. And we all now know quite clearly what journalists and others in his organisation do!
Therefore now, in order to keep abreast of what is happening in the world, I have become a very regular visitor to the BBC News website. I find its coverage to be fairly comprehensive, regularly updated and that . . . → Read More: The New Atheism and the BBC
By Ricky, on November 16th, 2011
The expats.cz Survival Guide & Business Directory 2012. Photo © Ricky Yates
In more than one previous blog post, I have mentioned the extremely helpful website expats.cz. For example, it was through the forum on their website that I found Adrian Blank of Nepomuk to help me through the various hoops in order to register my right-hand drive car here in the Czech Republic.
As well as their website, expats.cz also annually publishes the ‘Czech Republic Survival Guide & Business Directory’. A new edition comes out around the end of September each year. We discovered the then new edition of the ‘Survival Guide for 2009’ within a few days of our arrival in Prague back in September 2008. At that time, expats.cz were specifically asking for new locations from which the guide could be distributed to English-speaking expats. Finding it such a . . . → Read More: The Expat Bible without Religion
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Sybille has written a book ;-)
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