Reignite

 

I've been meaning to write this for a while. I was thinking of it as a new year's post to reflect on 2025. But time has got away from me and we are already well into 2026 now.  The world feels apocalyptic. Even more so now with war spreading in the Middle East. Of course it's easy to exaggerate these kinds of claims. Even generation faces challenges and every generation faces wars. When we consider the meaning of the time we live in we should do so with a sense of historic perspective.  Nevertheless, writing purely personally I feel more a sense of the apocalyptic than ever before. I don't mean that I think "the world is ending" - what I mean is that the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings and insights make more sense to me than ever before.  What has changed for me personally is a sense of the hostility of the world. What I mean is that "the world" feels like it is out to get me, and to get people like me. "The world" is not friendly...

 Here's a podcast interview I've done recently:

  I've just heard the extremely sad and shocking news of the death of Unitarian Minister Art Lester. It shocked me even more as I was emailing him a few days ago as he spontaneously emailed me thanking me for my book and offering to send me a copy of his latest one (pictured above).  I already feel like I've missed the opportunity to get to know him better, as he's the kind of person I would really have liked to have been a mentor as he always seemed wise and spiritually rooted, in a mischievous, not-taking-himself-too-seriously way (which is a good sign of spiritual maturity I think).  He ended his email with, "I attach a portion of a sermon I’ll be giving at the Paris Fellowship next month.  It’s my 29th service over the past 27 years and possibly my last.  I wouldn’t normally bore a colleague with my scribbles, but I think you might like this one."  I do. I do like this one. And as he now won't deliver this at Paris Fellowship I thought it was worth shar...

  "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...