On full stops and commas…
Let me start with a brag, and follow it with a confession. I won the English prize at school. True, that was not far off 50 years ago but I haven’t forgotten the thunderous applause as I walked up to receive my prize. Well – that’s how I remember it, though others might say they simply recall yawning quietly and longing for speech day to end. But here is my confession. In spite of that prize I have always been grammatically challenged. For example, I’m never quite sure when a sentence requires a comma, though I do know that it is different to a full stop, and that it signifies...
Read MoreWhen Confidence is a Curse..
Swamped as we are with endless courses aimed at enhancing our self esteem and confidence, it might seem passing strange to suggest that confidence can be a curse. But it can! True, lack of confidence can also be a curse, but for a while ponder the other side of the equation – for although our many self esteem courses might suggest that the absence of a worthy self image is a wide spread problem, the hard evidence suggests otherwise. David Brooks in his book The Road to Character notes that in 1950 when asked if they considered themselves to be a very important person, 12% of high...
Read MorePraying the journey…
My Sabbatical leave is almost over, and what an unusual season it has been. I spent part of it at Carson Newman University in Tennessee, and after seven wonderful weeks close to the Smoky Mountains, Rosemary and I had to dash back to Australia to avoid being locked out, potentially for many months. It did make for an abrupt end, though the major task for my Sabbatical, remained. That was to make significant progress on a book on the formation of spiritual leaders, which is my current writing project. I am now at the two thirds through stage, so am pleased about that. Naturally because I am...
Read MoreHope’s Beautiful Daughters…
It is alleged that St Augustine said that hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage. Without these, Augustine argued, hope comes to nothing. Why these two daughters? (And although off the point, why daughters? Don’t we usually see anger and courage as male qualities? Clearly Augustine didn’t, and perhaps his 5th century wisdom should cause us to reflect on where we most often spot valid expressions of anger and courage). Returning to our question – why these daughters? Take anger… Instinctively we default back to the status quo. While we might quietly wish that things...
Read MoreQuotable: Eugene Peterson and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
I have always appreciated the work of Eugene Peterson, and was recently re-reading Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, first published in 2005 and in my opinion, one of his finest works. Here are some insights from the book… Endings take precedence over beginnings. We begin a journey by first deciding on a destination. Eugene Peterson, p1 Story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality, and then enlisting us as participants in it. Stories open doors to areas or aspects of life we didn’t know were there, or had quit noticing out of over-familiarity, or...
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