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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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: […]