Pastoral Cycle Research Articles

Lessons on Love and Family from Mill Grove for an Ordinand and Theological Educator

An integral part of theological education for ministry is placement experience. How that learning impacts current and future practice varies widely. In this article I explore a placement undertaken as part of ordination training at Mill Grove, a witnessing ecclesial community which has been a home for over 1,000 children over the past 113 years. I discuss a range of issues relating to placement learning. In exploring the context and then using a version of the pastoral cycle I identify a range of insights and implications for my future practice both as a theological educator and a priest particularly focused around the theme of love.

The Greater Stonehenge Cursus – the Long View

The WSW–ENE alignment of the Greater Stonehenge Cursus appears to have been prefigured by the line of Mesolithic post-holes found in the Stonehenge car park. If this is not a coincidence, a means of transmission must be hypothesised since the posts could not have survived the 4000 years separation. The fact that a significant number of henges in western lowland Britain adopt the same broad alignment hints at a very long-lived mental template. That, it is argued, is likely to have been celestially triggered and tied to seasonal rhythms. Simple luni-solar calculation (akin to that determining events as disparate as the ancient Olympic festival and present day Easter) rather than precisely measureable astronomical events, would create such azimuth clustering. The focus on April sunrises or October sunsets argues for an association with the pastoral cycle.

Shepherds, cowherds and site function on middle Neolithic sites of the Rhône valley: An archaeozoological approach to the organization of territories and societies

Our understanding of the organization of the territories and the Neolithic societies of the north-western Mediterranean region remains incomplete because of the preference long accorded to caves and rock shelters in archaeological research, and because these sites are closely linked to one taxon, the sheep and goats. In the middle valley of the Rhône, comparison of the pastoral practices specific to cattle and to sheep and goats, in relation to cave as well as open-air occupations, enables definition of the relations that existed between the sites during the late phase of the Chassean culture. It is demonstrated that the different stages of the annual pastoral cycle were distributed among several sites, whether for sheep and goats or for cattle, and that the large open-air sites had distinct functions according to the species exploited. The discovery of a specialization of places and of practices (general for the caves, partial for the large open-air sites) then leads us to propose the existence of a specialization of individuals or at least small groups (shepherds and cattle herdsmen) as of the beginning of the fourth millennium BC in this region. These elements suggest that population movements of different kinds occurred in the Chassean period in the middle Rhône Valley.

Minding the Gap: White Theological Reflection on Racial Justice

At beginning of twentieth century, W. E. B. DuBois stated that problem of century is the problem of color-line—the relation of darker to lighter races of men.1 One hundred years later, problem remains. Artist Doris Salcedo's giant crack in floor of Tate Modern Turbine Hall in London provokes us to contemplate problem. This article proposes a method of theological reflection to enable White people to reflect and respond to gap between White and Black, using a modified Pastoral Cycle model that begins with contemplation of God of justice, invites emotional engagement with events in Black and minority ethnic people's lives, and requires examination of Whiteness.