What porcupines can tell us about loving our neighbour who is also our enemy
An Old World Procupine (Photo: Andrew Butko) INTRODUCTION After last week’s address I had a very interesting and helpful conversation with C about what might any actual attempt to follow Jesus in showing love our neighbours look like, particularly those whom we feel to be our enemies? The conversation was had because, when all is […]
The subjunctive of potentiality—a meditation on some words by Robert Musil pushing against the rhetoric and reality of nationalism
READINGS Matthew 5:43-45 NRSV [Jesus said:] You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on […]
Short-circuiting the parable of the mustard seed—a harvest meditation giving thanks for all the children involved in the School Strike for Climate movement
Jan Luyken from the Bowyer Bible. Photo: Harry Kossuth INTRODUCTION Today is our Harvest Festival, a time when, as the author of Exodus in Tyndale’s memorable English we give thanks for reaping ‘the first fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, in the end of the […]
The cost of civility—A politico-theological meditation following the judgement hand-down at the Supreme Court this week
READINGS Exodus 19:16-25, 20:1 (NRSV) The moments before God gives the Ten Commandments and other laws to the people On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in […]
The Muslim/Unitarian encounter and some personal reflections following a visit to the Darul Uloom Birmingham Islamic High School
Darul Uloom Islamic School INTRODUCTION On Monday last week I had a very interesting and positive visit to the Darul Uloom Islamic School in Birmingham. I was invited by the school’s new headmaster, Dr Dawud Bone, who is an old colleague and friend of mine (click on this link and go to page 11 of […]
A non-prophet organisation?
In his memoir, the philosopher Norman Malcolm recalls that Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed “that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).” (Norman Malcolm in “Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir”, p.28) This thought, to which I will return in a moment, was very much in my […]
Working Together in Conversational Motion—or why we are more like a wing than a conventional church community
READINGS: WORKING TOGETHER by David Whyte from The House of Belonging ©1996 Many Rivers Press We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible working together in common cause, to produce the miraculous. I am thinking of the way the intangible air passed at […]
Not the beginning of a new religion (re-ligio) but its end (de-ligio)?—A new-materialist reading of Pentecost
READINGS: Poem No. XXII in “A Shropshire Lad” by A. E. Housman From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky,The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I. Now—for a breath I tarry Nor yet disperse apart—Take my hand quick and tell me, What have you in your heart. Speak now, […]
The freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today “The newer testament—the Gospel according to this moment”
Becoming “Free Spirits” and “Archeologists of Morning” Andrew J. Brown Second Edition—2019 A revised version of a talk given at the “Sea of Faith” Annual Conference, Leicester University, July 2016 A INTRODUCTORY CAVEAT I publish this talk with one important caveat by borrowing some words by Herbert Fingarette (“The Self in Transformation”, Basic Books, New […]
The case for an Ecstatic Humanism—being “skeptics with naturally religious minds” or “open-minded ‘reverent’ humanists”
READING Some of you will recall that I recently introduced you to a passage by the philosopher Henry Bugbee, a key part of which used the word ‘ecstasis’. He wrote: But patience is not postponement, not falling away from on-goingness; it is the readying to step clean forth (ecstasis), and there ever comes a time […]