Tag: Love

• Love – Open, Honest and Unconditional

  These words, moving and heartening, are from the blog of Bart Ehrman, the perhaps uniquely agnostic/atheistic Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. He tells how his mother found it very hard to understand and accept his eventual departure from his early evangelical Christian faith. Their relationship, however, managed to work through […]

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  24th Nov 2022

  Religion, Jesus of Nazareth, Philosophy, Current Affairs, Christianity

  God, Love, Conflict, Religion, Unconditional, Faith, Openness, Evangelical, Honesty, Charities

• Heart on (heretical) Sleeve

  After sharing some thoughts with a friend, I want to try to put into words what ‘religion’ means to me. It’ll make sense to some, though not perhaps to all. Joseph Campbell describes the “game of belief” that leads to a “divine seizure”, his use of the word ‘game’ (as in Wittgenstein’s philosophy) not meaning […]

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  8th Oct 2022

  Buddhism, Christianity, Composer, Consciousness, Music, Mythology, Philosophy, Religion

  Bach, Belief, Buddhism, Coleridge, Compassion, Gospels, Jesus, Joseph Campbell, Kathleen Ferrier, Love, Religion, St Matthew Passion

• Unconditional Love (ii)

  I wrote in a previous post that, for me, the symbolic image of Jesus with his arms outstretched on the cross, is a movingly powerful symbol of ‘unconditional love’, which I see as the ‘beating heart’ of Christianity, and its greatest gift to the world. I also noted that my own journey towards this persuasion […]

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  7th Sep 2022

  Christianity, Consciousness, Jesus of Nazareth, Literature, Mythology, Philosophy, Religion

  Abelard, Christianity, Crucifixion, Divine, Hellfire, Jesus, John Powell, Liberation, Love, vision

• Rethinking Jesus (09) The Pharisees (ii)

  The previous post outlined the origins of the Pharisees, and suggested that they and Jesus, in many ways, ‘sang from the same hymn sheet’. It also, however, outlined reasons for the antagonism that grew between Judaism and the ‘Jesus movement’, once it began to become the ‘Christian Church’, rather than a Jewish ‘sub-group’. This increasing […]

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  11th Feb 2022

  Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth, Literature, New Testament, Poetry, Religion

  Jesus, Judaism, Love, Pharisees, Purity, Ritual, Social Outcasts, The Law

• 2022

  THIS would be a good “fingerprint” for all of us to ‘make our mark’ with on the year ahead – whether religious or non-religious …..

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  1st Jan 2022

  Buddhism, Christmas, Current Affairs, Literature, Philosophy, Religion

  Healing, Hope, Justice, Love, New Year, Peace

• The Nativity Stories (v) Unconditional Love

  I’ve been suggesting that the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are two different stories that invite us, while enjoying what’s on the surface, to think a little more deeply. Some people might imagine that because I don’t regard these stories as historical, their meaningfulness for me must be sadly impoverished, but not so ! […]

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  23rd Dec 2021

  Buddhism, Christmas, Jesus of Nazareth, Literature, New Testament, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion

  Buddhism, Christmas, God, Gospels, Jesus, Love, Nativity, Poetry

• The Gospels (10) ‘Loaves and Fish, and Love’

  We’ve reached the 4th ‘sign’ in John’s Gospel, and should recall that his primary concern isn’t simply to record historical events, but to tell stories illustrating his beliefs about Jesus. Jesus was also a story teller, and used humour and exaggeration to heighten their impact. There’s the man with a plank of wood in his […]

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  8th Oct 2021

  Jesus of Nazareth, Literature, Mythology, New Testament, Poetry, Religion

  Gospels, Hyperbole, Jesus, Love, Miracles, Sharing, Signs, Stories

• Elegy (Dylan Thomas)

  Love rather than friendship … This, though not finished, is the last of Dylan Thomas’s poems. Completed in a notebook were the 17 lines quoted above, along with 2 following lines which he crossed out. In the notebook there were other lines not made use of, though some might have been if he’d lived to […]

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  28th Mar 2021

  Literature, Poetry, Religion

  Afterlife, Elegy, Friendship, God, Jesus, Love

• A Unique Love Story (Brahms and Clara Schumann)

  This tender and beautiful poem, about the deep though troubled relationship between Brahms and Clara Schumann, was written by Lisel Mueller (a German-born American poet).  On October 1st, 1853, 20 year old Johannes Brahms knocked on the door of Robert and Clara Schumann’s home in Düsseldorf. Schumann was one of the first composers of the […]

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  6th Mar 2021

  Composer, Music, Poetry

  Brahms, Clara, Love, Music, Relationship, Schumann

• A Transcendental Teashop Moment !

  Even if the teashop is in the renowned city of Bath, the title of this delightfully whimsical little poem isn’t instantly and ear-catchingly promising. Whiling away the time with idle chitchat and the latest gossip is what we’d most likely expect. The first two lines, however, are decidedly not what we’d most expect. The curtain […]

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  5th Feb 2021

  Literature, Poetry, Religion

  Bath, Betjeman, Love, Redemption, Teashop, Transcendent