Culture Articles
‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’, by Yuval Noah Harari
This book gives a serious assessment of the challenges facing our world. Its author, Yuval Harari, is a professor of World History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This work consists of twenty-one essays on a wide variety of contemporary topics.
‘A Word from the Lost’, by David Lewis
This fine book is both scholarly and approachable. The author sets out to explore James Nayler’s thought and theology and reflect on its relevance today, by contrasting it with later Quaker thought as shown in our books of discipline since Nayler’s time. He achieves his aim with aplomb,...
Why I Wear Your Socks Today
I wear your socks today so that I can see more deeply into the old woman ahead of me in the post office. She is ashamed to be so slow. She says sorry, sorry to the queue as she shakes in her girlish jeans. I repeat the words you taught...
‘There is no audience quite like a prison audience.’
October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and those who noticed were encouraged to wear purple to show their support. I have to ask, who actually did know? At Journeymen Theatre, as we engage with audiences all over the UK, performing our play on domestic abuse Rock And A Hard Place,...
‘No one is too Small to Make a Difference’, by Greta Thunberg
The upcoming Christmas story takes place in obscurity. Bethlehem is the least, the smallest, of villages. Mary and Joseph are among the least of society. The baby is born into physical smallness and social insignificance. I am struck in these times by smallness. This small book (eighty pages) is by...
Poem: A Friend reads Psalm 139 in Meeting
I sit in a different seat today. Cutting it fine, Friends slip in, join the deepening stillness. The crunch of tyres on gravel, a door-tongue carefully released, the known slow tap of ferrule on floorboard: the small sounds stir the silence which settles again, as water over a pebble or...
‘Bridgebuilding’, by Alastair McKay
This book was launched at St Ethelburga’s in the City of London. The church was rebuilt from the ruined shell that was left after the Bishopsgate IRA bomb of 1993. As a centre for reconciliation it claims four striking values: crisis as an opportunity for change; spiritual values into action;...
Silent school
Three high windows deliver the movement of summer trees and light on a central table, water jug, vase, flowers, books.
‘Into the Depths: A chaplain’s reflections on death, dying and pastoral care’, by Rosie Deedes
Rosie Deedes works in spiritual care at the Mountbatten Hospice on the Isle of Wight. She has also worked as a chaplain in prisons and at a university. She draws on that experience in this book, which, though not an easy read, is very readable.
‘The Silence Diaries’, by Jennifer Kavanagh
I should begin with an honest disclosure: I was duty-bound to read this short novel. The author had asked me to interview her as part of its launch, so it became a work task. Fortunately, it was no chore. I’m confident I would have read it anyway. Jennifer Kavanagh...