Contentment as a countercultural virtue
One of the many joys of my role as principal of Vose Seminary is that I fairly often get sent complimentary copies of books from publishers who hope I will put in a good word for their publication. Sometimes that is possible, at other times I read a few pages of the book, push it to the one side and diplomatically say no more. Happily, Simon Carey Holt’s book Heaven All Around Us: Discovering God in Everyday Life (Cascade, 2018) is definitely in the first category. Actually, it’s sensationally in the first category – an absolute delight to read, deeply thoughtful, often...
Read MoreManaging Monday with Walter Bruggemann – Take 3
Walter Brueggemann (1933- ) is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars. Though in the first instance a distinguished academic, his work has reached a far wider readership, and the depth of his insights have spoken to many. Here is a third and final taster of some of his work… Prayer is a refusal to settle for what is. Walter Bruggemann I intend to focus on the question of truth. That means I do not inquire about facticity – what happened – but what is claimed, what is asserted about reality. Walter Bruggemann Cynicism always comes clothed in...
Read MoreRoad Rage in London: Reflections on having to give way…
Let me start this post with some disclaimers. No, the road rage I am about to talk about was not my own. I have not driven a car in the now 10 weeks that Rosemary and I have been in the UK – and have had the luxury of being driven by others, using public transport (which overall, is amazingly effective), or walking (which is a wondeful way of bumping into unexpected delights, as you discover endless houses previous occupied by genuinely famous people). But today I observed road rage from the comfort of our one bedroom flat whilst marking student assignments – which sadly...
Read MoreManaging Monday with Walter Brueggemann – Take 2
Walter Brueggemann (1933- ) is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars. Though in the first instance a distinguished academic, his work has reached a far wider readership, and the depth of his insights have spoken to many. Here is a second taster of some of his work… The Gospel has gotten all tangled up with a sense of Western white entitlement. Walter Brueggemann How God works among us is mysterious. It cannot be laid out rationally. And the sacraments create space for exactly that liminal mystery of how God does transformation among us. And the churches that have gotten...
Read MoreManaging Monday with Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann (1933- ) is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars. Though in the first instance a distinguished academic, his work has reached a far wider readership, and the depth of his insights have spoken to many. There is no final reading of the text. We will always read it again, and it will take us somewhere else. Walter Bruggemann Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does...
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