Facts not fear. Clean hands. Open hearts.—An Epicurean/Lucretian meditation on how to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic

Lucretius contemplating how nature works Introductory meditation (excluding the Lord’s Prayer) adapted from ‘An Epicurean Gathering’ arranged by me, Lewis Connolly (until recently the minister of the Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House) and Dean Reynolds: The Roman poet Lucretius wrote:  In the murk of our darkness, you, Epicurus, raised your blazing lantern to show us the […]

Learning from Lucretius in the shadow of coronavirus

READING: Lines 78-58 from Book VI of the De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) by Lucretius trans. by David R. Slavitt (University of California Press, 2008, pp. 253-254) . . . But people / tend to revert under stress to their earlier superstitions and imagine cruel taskmasters, omnipotent beings we wretches / ought to fear and appease, […]

In this cockeyed world there are shapes and designs, if only we have some curiosity, training, and compassion and take care not to lie or to be sentimental—Some reflections following the discovery of the 39 men and women found dead inside a refrigerated lorry on an industrial estate in Essex. 

The Mann Gulch fire, 1949 Luke 12:54-57 Jesus said to the crowds: ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know […]