For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
So here I stand, with the spectre of the cross looming large, staring up at a Jesus who seems to me to be at once completely alien and yet so intimately familiar. The more I have read, the deeper I have delved into Jewish thinking in an attempt to better understand this most beautiful of... Continue Reading →
All of us will have stories of teachers who have – for better or for worse – shaped how we see ourselves, who we have become, and – by extension – the children we raise and the communities we participate in. Many of us will have unwittingly adopted attitudes, paradigms, habits that were engendered in... Continue Reading →
I hope my regular readers will pardon my relative silence lately. I have been trying to get all my ducks in a row, workwise. To be honest, I am not even sure I own ducks anymore. Certainly we don’t seem to occupy the same farmyard. So I haven’t had time to do a lot of... Continue Reading →
Arguably the single most important concept in Christian theology is that of forgiveness. In fact, I am willing to suggest that without the uncompromising prioritisation of unconditional forgiveness, Christianity is only one more brutal expression of the kind of divisive religion that has plagued humanity since the beginning of our history. Now anybody who... Continue Reading →
Picture, for a moment, a hypothetical, completely dysfunctional family. The son’s academic performance is poor and he has become rebellious at school. The daughter’s devotion to her work borders on the obsessive and – although very few of her classmates know it – she cuts herself compulsively. Dad demands perfection from his children. For him,... Continue Reading →
All faith is derivative. In other words, because nobody (at least nobody I wouldn’t regard as either a fraudster or schizophrenic) has personally interacted with God, all faith is based on individual interpretations either of religious texts or of personal experience. This means that the nature of the values we believe God to espouse will... Continue Reading →
If you do not follow Game of Thrones, please keep reading anyway. I promise that I will not make this post about the series, although I do want to use an incident from one of the recent episodes to illustrate a point. The show is seven seasons and a few years in, and it was... Continue Reading →
It’s been a busy few weeks, workwise. In many ways, they have been very rewarding. But the last few weeks have been disillusioning too, and I have found it very difficult to write. I feel like I am beating the same drum, over and over again. But that drum is my heartbeat at the moment,... Continue Reading →
It seems that every day brings news of another hate-based crime. As shocking as Paris was, it was certainly nothing new. And as I have done the necessary reflecting, in the wake of each heart-breaking story, I have been struck by the realisation of how much the world needs to understand and practise forgiveness. I... Continue Reading →
After any tragedy, it is right to let the emotional flood subside a bit before thinking about it rationally. Emotional wounds need to be handled emotionally (not intellectually) , and people need to purge themselves of the emotional pain – through tears or anger, for example – before being able to make sense of things.... Continue Reading →
