Culture Articles
Conscientious Objector
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death. I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor. He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning. But...
Reading the Bible
The Book of the People – How to Read the Bible is a new book by A N Wilson, a prolific writer of histories and novels. As the title implies, his concern here is more about the readers than the writers of the diversity of books that comprise it.
Poem: The Listening Walk
Brag, sweet tenor bull, descant on Rawthey’s madrigal. Basil Bunting, Briggflatts We straggle across a stubble field, tuned in to the rasp of straws, squeak-clunk of a kissing-gate, our own breath as we climb to a solitary oak, its bell of shade.
Spiritual activism: leadership as service
‘Activism is all about putting our highest values into practice in the world. Spirituality involves an awareness of where those values come from… our motives, passions and drives.’ This is the crux of the message of Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service by Alastair McIntosh and Matt Carmichael. It is a...
A New Zealand Psalm 23
How the shepherd loves his little woolly charges! Trot, trot, trot they run on their little stubby legs towards the spring green pasture tingling in their nostrils where he has brought them.
Old Man
By your side There is peace, A quiet place Of beauty and realisation, Where wisdom Seeks reason and understanding, Where myth is laid to rest By the reality of knowledge.
A life in science
The second volume of Richard Dawkins’ autobiography is entitled Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science and is more interesting than the first. As Dawkins has engaged in a herculean contest with religion, now, near the end of his life, one would expect his view of it to...
How good can we be
This book is a rant. But what a rant! It is unputdownable. This is extraordinary for a piece of non-fiction, much as was Will Hutton’s The State We’re In, written twenty years ago. How Good We Can Be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country reads...
Simple Gifts for a King
When as a child, I came into the world Helpless and lying in a draughty shed Your wisest men, they say, brought gifts to me: Of gold – for crowning of an infant King; And frankincense – for raising prayers to him; And myrrh – portending burial and death.
James and the Jerusalem Church
If you enjoy ‘whodunnits?’ and jigsaw puzzles, the chances are you will enjoy this radical exploration of Christian origins. Alan Saxby, in James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church, has examined in detail the situation in Judaism during the lifetime of Jesus, and the following seventy years. He follows...