“To be quiet in the hands of the marvellous”—an intra-active meditation on part of Ammons’ poem, “Essay on Poetics”
To read this address please click on the following link: “To be quiet in the hands of the marvellous”—an intra-active meditation on part of Ammons’ poem, “Essay on Poetics”
Time will tell—‘It is impossible to think in advance of experience, and no experience is merely empirical’
After a long and challenging week (as I know it will have been for all of you) and having spent an entire day (Saturday) from dawn until dusk writing the following piece I find that, as 9pm approaches, I can no longer tell whether it contains anything more than mere, arrant nonsense. It’s certainly a flawed and […]
A Lucretian Mothering Sunday Meditation
Last year on Mothering Sunday I gave an address called ‘The maternalizing of matter and the materializing of the mother’—A poetic, supreme fiction for our age and, should you wish, you can read it again at the following link: The maternalizing of matter and the materializing of the mother—A poetic, supreme fiction for our age. The Roman poet, Lucretius (c. […]
Scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts; putting down the mighty from their seat; exalting the humble and meek; filling the hungry with good things — an Advent address written to outline the task before a progressive, liberal-religious, free-thinking community following Thursday’s General Election (2019)
READINGS The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) in David Bentley Hart’s translation (2017) And Mary said, ‘My soul proclaims the Lord’s greatness, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour, because he looked upon the low estate of his slave. For see: Henceforth all generations will bless me; because the Mighty One has done great things to […]
A few thoughts about the role an ontology of motion and a performative new-materialism plays in my work as minister at the Cambridge Unitarian Church
The park opposite the Cambridge Unitarian Church this morning In recent days I’ve had the opportunity to talk at length with a member of the Unitarian congregation here in Cambridge who is a philosopher with a Junior Research Fellowship at one of the nearby colleges. The conversation we had was both about conversation itself and […]
If anything will level with you water will—a meditation on flows, folds and fields, the material conditions of nature as she appears
Mary C. Durst, Bathing at Hunstanton Cliffs, Norfolk, 1888 READINGS Isaiah 26.4 Trust in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord God you have an everlasting rock. Isaiah 44.8 Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! […]
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, […]