In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: General

  • The Dance of the Emperor who Wears no Clothes

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    The Brexit dance continues. And in London, a court case has just come to an end, in which lawyers have been debating whether or not Parliament should have influence over the Brexit process. We shall hear the result of that court case in the near future. But its implications are profoundly important and the discussion…

  • Autumn UK 2016

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      Today our skies evicted the swallow and the swift was banished weeks ago and in Dorset the house martin whose tiny mud globes once crammed the eaves was simply absent all year.   And last week Putin, unrestrained, bombed hospitals in Aleppo and Trump continued his debasing of America and Theresa May declared the…

  • The late David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham

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    Following the death of David Jenkins on September 4th, I want to bear witness in my own small way to his great stature as a man and true priest. The first obituaries I read gave prominence to his Virgin Birth and Resurrection “denials.”  And of course, in his time, he was called “The Red Bishop”…

  • Poems for… Self at Sea

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    Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmtDPbcyves for a new collection of 30 poems on mental distress. Various authors have contributed, some of them psychiatric in-patients, one a prisoner. The video is a recording of my voice as I read each short poem. You can see the text of the poem onscreen at the same time. It has taken…

  • Sayings

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    Reaching for words is like searching the earth for stones and then shaping them one after another into a path.     Your words took my breath away. They killed me with their song. They made my womb turn over. Sing to me again.   The words I must speak will sentence me to death.…

  • Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?

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    Can liberal democracy survive our tumultuous, bewildering, frightening, dangerous times ? Can it surmount them ? Can it contain and even direct the flailing social forces at work towards positive solutions, a viable human future ? As things stand, it seems not to be coping at all. It is surely in great danger of allowing…

  • Post “Brexit” Blues and Bubbling Ferments

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    Here I have collated various addresses I have come across or been sent during the past few weeks. They link to various initiatives and/or reflections which I find interesting and helpful, following the referendum decision and the course – “Brexit means Brexit” – which appears to have been set for our unknown destination on the…

  • Democracy & the Lie: do they go hand in hand ?

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    During July, two articles by Andreas Whittam Smith appeared in The Independent newspaper on successive days.  Here are the links to them: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/broken-democracy-spin-doctors-destroyed-uk-politics-theresa-may-repair-it-a7135146.html ; http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/fix-broken-democracy-smash-political-class-two-simple-things-a7137131.html Whittam Smith co-founded The Independent and his two pieces are worth reading. They explore the Brexit campaign’s “victory” and contain proposals for starting a process of renewal of the UK’s…