Blantyre Congregational Church wins award for its community work
The accolade came from the Congregational Federation.
Blantyre Congregational Church has come out tops after winning the national Serving The Community Award from the Congregational Federation.
The church is involved in so many community activities and that shone through as it scooped the prize at the annual conference in Nottingham in May.
Pictured is church minister Rev Malcolm Anderson alongside some of the church deacons with their much-deserved award.
A spokesperson said: 'The church meets every Sunday at 11am and is situated at the top exit of Asda Blantyre. Come along and hear how God's working in your local community.'
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Daily Record
a day ago
- Daily Record
Blantyre Congregational Church wins award for its community work
The accolade came from the Congregational Federation. Blantyre Congregational Church has come out tops after winning the national Serving The Community Award from the Congregational Federation. The church is involved in so many community activities and that shone through as it scooped the prize at the annual conference in Nottingham in May. Pictured is church minister Rev Malcolm Anderson alongside some of the church deacons with their much-deserved award. A spokesperson said: 'The church meets every Sunday at 11am and is situated at the top exit of Asda Blantyre. Come along and hear how God's working in your local community.'
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
The importance of feeling shame
In several homilies, the late Pope Francis spoke of the 'grace of feeling shame'. What a strange idea! Nobody wants to feel shame. Adam and Eve, after all, first felt shame only after being expelled from the Garden of Eden. Shame was God's punishment: they felt ashamed of what had never troubled them before, namely their nakedness and their sexual desires. But what the Pope meant, I think, is absolutely salutary for our age. Shamelessness is ubiquitous. It is the accelerant of social media that encourages us to narcissistically fire up our victimhood to a gimcrack blaze. It is why so many of us are chained to the brazen idea that we can never be wrong. It's the seeming life strategy of the most powerful man on Earth. In our fallen world, very few pray to God for the grace of shame, or otherwise come to feel ashamed. But for the French philosopher Frédéric Gros in this elegant book, it would be good if more did. Being a secular Parisian penseur, of course, Gros doesn't think we need God-given gifts. But we do need grace of some kind to confront our shame. He writes: The decision to confront [shame] amounts to a commitment to inner transformation. And this is where grace comes in, for it can be extremely difficult to completely eradicate the temptation to be lenient on oneself… We need external assistance, because otherwise it is too easy to downplay things. Without the help of others, that's to say, it's hard not only to develop a conscience but also to shine the light of that conscience on oneself – to expose what one might downplay as a peccadillo and instead see it as shameful. Both Christian spiritual advisers and Freudian shrinks, Gros notes, have delighted in the human capacity to blush. To feel a burning sensation in your throat and cheeks suggests something about you is wrong. That may well be the first step to purification, or at least ethical compunction. Instead, what most are happy doing is shaming others, revelling in schadenfreude. Hence the story told in Jon Ronson's harrowing look into the social media abyss, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. The PR executive Justine Sacco, before boarding her flight from London to Johannesburg in 2013, tweeted: 'Going to Africa. Hope I don't get Aids. Just kidding. I'm white!' By the time she landed 13 hours later, what Gros calls 'a deluge of digital hatred was raining down on her'. Staff at her hotel threatened to strike if she was allowed to stay there. Her South African family shunned her and she lost her job. Even though Sacco deleted her tweet and account, someone posted: 'Sorry @JustineSacco, your tweet lives on forever.' True enough. One stupid, racist and otherwise hurtful message defined this woman for all time. One might feel sorry for Sacco (as well as hoping she has the grace to feel shame), and wonder why so many who joined the Twitter pile-on didn't look into their own hearts. Maybe those jonesing for the hit of another's misfortune should better do the hard work of developing humility, restraint and shame. Gros, best known for his delightful A Philosophy of Walking, has written another lovely little book that might start toxic haters on a different path. But I boggled at its subtitle: 'A Revolutionary Emotion.' One might think that experiencing shame isn't revolutionary but a terrible thing to feel. Consider rape victims, whose testimonies included here show how we feel shame for things of which others should properly feel ashamed. Or think of poor Annie Ernaux. The Nobel Laureate recounted in her memoir A Woman's Story how at school a fellow pupil recoiled because her hands smelled of bleach. Little Annie, you see, had washed her hands in the kitchen sink, only to learn that bleach was a marker of social class. The life she once took to be normal turns shameful. Her schoolmates consider that she lives in a shabby grocery-cum-café frequented by drunks and that her diction needs work. Sensitised to shame, she averts her eyes when her mother uncorks a bottle of wine, trapping it between her knees. 'I was ashamed of her brusque manners and speech, especially when I realised how alike we were.' Shame is different from guilt, Gros explains. One feels guilty about what one has done. By contrast, shame is 'the state of being able to conceive oneself only within the constraints… imposed by another'. That is to say, shame is catalysed by others, particularly voyeurs – a very French theme. In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre imagines a Peeping Tom looking in at the keyhole of somebody's apartment. He only feels shame when he finds himself observed by a third party. Shame is a mirror others hold up to us to make us realise what we are. Or what they think we are. How, then, can feeling shame be a good thing? In his fabulous book Shame and Necessity, the late philosopher Bernard Williams gave us a clue. He cited Ajax rousing his friends to battle in the Iliad: Dear friends, be men; let shame be in our hearts…Among men who feel shame, more are saved than die. Ajax regarded shame as the desirable compunction that stopped one from fleeing battle like a coward, that steeled one to fight and perhaps die honourably before the approving gazes of one's comrades. The Greeks called shame aidos and made it a goddess whose name also means modesty, respect and humility. But we aren't ancient Greeks. They lived in a society of honour; we in one of shameless disinhibition. Gros writes that shameless behaviour is 'an absence of reserve. I flaunt myself, my qualifications, my personality, my success, my private life and my body'. We all know people like that. Perhaps you voted for them. Contrast such shamelessness with what James Baldwin felt one day strolling past newsstands on a Parisian boulevard. A single image screamed from the world's papers: 15-year-old Dorothy Counts being spat on and reviled by a white mob as she became the first black pupil admitted to a North Carolina high school. 'It made me furious, it filled me with both hatred and pity,' wrote Baldwin. 'And it made me ashamed. Some one of us should have been there with her!' Gros glosses Baldwin's fury, suggesting it was not just the feeling of shame of a black American looking back to his hated homeland and wishing he were there to support the poor African-American girl (which is what I took Baldwin to be saying), but as a stain on humanity, shaming each of us. 'What did I do to prevent this?' Gros writes. 'Nothing.' We should blush for shame. Nietzsche thought shame was a poison, and his Übermenschen were utterly shameless (no wonder Hitler liked Thus Spake Zarathustra). We have become too Nietzschean. We need the wisdom of the ancient Greeks and of the late Pope, or to read this elegant book. In any event, we need to blush more.
Daily Mail
12-06-2025
- Daily Mail
Passenger hails 'divine intervention' after twist of fate saw her miss Air India flight by just ten minutes
A woman has hailed divine intervention as she told how she missed being caught up in the deadly Air India plane crash today by just ten minutes - after she got stuck in traffic. Bhoomi Chauhan was due to fly to London Gatwick airport onboard the ill-fated flight AI171 that crashed just minutes after takeoff in Ahmedabad, west India today. Ms Chauhan said she was 'devastated' and left shaking upon learning of the flight's fate after she was ten minutes too late to board the plane due to a lengthy traffic jam. She told Republic: 'I am completely devastated after hearing about the loss [of lives]. My body is literally shivering. I am not able to talk.' 'My mind is totally blank now after hearing all that has happened,' she continued, adding she is 'thankful to God' for saving her. Video footage shows how the plane lost altitude rapidly after takeoff, with its nose upright and its landing gear seemingly deployed. It landed amid a residential area also home to offices and a doctors' hostel. Aviation experts say that Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, may have suddenly lost power 'at the most critical phase of flight' after takeoff at 1.38pm local time. Authorities previously said they feared all of the 242 people onboard, made up of 230 passengers and 12 crew, had died after the plane crash-landed and burst into flames after smashing into offices and a doctors' hostel. But miraculous footage has since emerged of one survivor, believed to be British, named as 40-year-old Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, walking away from the wreckage. So far, rescue teams supported by the military have recovered 290 bodies, with casualties from the plane and the area surrounding the crash. The passengers included 159 Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian. Eleven of those on board were children, including two newborns. Ms Chauhan narrowly avoided a similar fate after being scheduled to return to London, where she lives with her husband, after a vacation. 'I am thankful to God. My Ganpati Bappa saved me,' she said. A video of the incident circulating online shows the Air India aircraft flying over a residential area before crashing, creating what appears to be a huge fireball followed by large plumes of black smoke. Images of the aftermath of the crash showed parts of the plane embedded into a residential building as firefighters continued to tackle the smoke. Pieces of the aircraft's landing gear, fuselage and tail could all be seen protruding from the building. Officials now face the challenging task of recovering the aircraft's black box and piecing together what happened in the moments before the crash. Remnants of the fuselage and the landing gear were seen dangling through a gaping hole in the side of what appeared to be a canteen, with half-finished plates of food clearly visible on benches inside Rescuers work at the site of an airplane that crashed in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025 The King said he was 'desperately shocked' by the incident and Buckingham Palace said he was being kept updated on the developing situation. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the crash was 'devastating', while his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi said it was 'heartbreaking beyond words'. Air India chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran described the incident as a 'tragic accident' and a 'devastating event', and said emergency response teams are at the site. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has stood up a crisis team in India and the UK, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said. The Reuters news agency reported 217 adults and 11 children were on board the flight. So far only one survivor has been identified, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh who was seated in seat 11A. The passenger, who was in his seat when the plane came down in a residential area, recalled: 'Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.' 'When I got up, there were bodies all around me,' he told local media. 'I was scared. I stood up and ran. 'There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.' Mr Ramesh, who has lived in London for 20 years, said his brother was seated in a different aisle on the same flight. Astonishing footage showed the passenger walking away from the scene with some visible injuries to his face. Gatwick said a reception centre was being set up for relatives of passengers on board the Air India flight. The Boeing jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad Airport in Gujarat at around 1:40pm (0810 GMT), officials said. India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation said the plane sent a mayday call moments before the tragedy unfolded. Ahmedabad, the main city of India's Gujarat state, is home to around eight million people, and the busy airport is surrounded by densely packed residential areas. 'When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,' resident Poonam Patni said. 'Many of the bodies were burned,' she added. 'Our office is near the building where the plane crashed. We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames,' said one resident, who declined to be named. It is the first crash involving a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Flightradar24 said flight tracking data shows after taking off, the plane reached a maximum altitude of 625ft, which is about 425ft above the airport. It then started to descend at a rate of 475 feet per minute. Air India was acquired by Tata Group from the Indian government in January 2022 after racking up billions of pounds of losses. The airline's UK operations are at Birmingham, Gatwick and Heathrow, with routes to a number of Indian cities such as Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It started operating flights to Gatwick in March 2023, with 12 weekly departures and five weekly departures to Ahmedabad. Gatwick said there was no impact on wider flight operations at the airport, but a Thursday evening flight to Goa had been cancelled. Recent analysis by the PA news agency found it was the worst airline for delays to flights from UK airports last year, with planes taking off by an average of more than 45 minutes later than scheduled. The airline has gained a poor reputation for delays and cancellations in recent years, partly caused by a lack of funds to purchase spare aircraft parts, which led to some of its fleet being grounded. The first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft involved in the crash was in December 2013. The plane was delivered to Air India during the following month.
