Tag: Religion
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Weaponising “Offence”
In Putin’s Russia, to say the slightest thing which in any way “offends” those in power means ten years in jail. Do we want that in the UK? It’s time for people who genuinely value freedom of speech, verbal or written (provided it breaks no law) to take a stand against the ‘shut them up,…
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“For All Beings”
Here, from Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, teacher and author, is a beautiful, meaningful, moving, timelessly relevant, “if only” vision of humanity at its very best. It’s also ‘religion’ at its very best. It comes from the ‘beating heart’ of Buddhism, but surely also from that of Christianity, and all other religions worthy of the name. It…
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“The Great Mystery”
“The Great Mystery” rightly says the also great physicist and thinker, Albert Einstein. But there are still too many people who imagine they alone know everything about it. That’s a hubristic folly, that can sometimes discount and even menace the rest of us. A lot more humility, width of receptiveness, and open-mindedness would better serve…
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“The Combat” – a ‘Sacred’ Poem by Edwin Muir
What is this strange, moving, fascinating poem about? It’s about an ongoing fight to the death between very different creatures. It seems to be a decidedly “unequal battle”. One of the combatants looks like a ‘no-hoper’. There is a “crested animal” resembling the mythical griffin, with “eagle’s head” and “whetted beak”; “body of leopard” and…
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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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The Non-Tribal Religion of the Future?
I stopped being a Christian minister forty years ago, and don’t now attend any church, but I’d gladly have listened to the late Bishop John Shelby Spong. And if I were to have my time over again, this is along the lines of what I’d want to say, not that it might be welcomed. Bishop…
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Let There Be Light !
The Greek philosopher Thales had an idea that was right and wrong. He thought there must be one thing from which all others were made, and decided this was water. It’s one thing, yet it can be solid, liquid or gas, and it’s essential for life – dead things dry up. That was a reasonable…
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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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“Here comes the Sun”
WE’RE inclined to forget that the Sun, which we so enjoy when it’s shining on us (but not too fiercely), and which we so much miss when the days are short-lived and freezing, is a furiously raging nuclear furnace. It’s turning hydrogen into helium, and releasing the resultant energy in everything from blistering surface bubbles…
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Jonah – A Good-Fun Read (ii)
We left Jonah on the boat to Tarshish, sleeping peacefully in his below-decks’ hammock, but that peace is about to be rudely disturbed. God has Jonah firmly fixed in his sights, and not only outdoes his Greek rival Poseidon, but even transcends the thunderbolts of Zeus, when he hurls such a horrendous gale onto the…
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