What does it mean to flourish?
It’s become a bit of a catch word – one you find in vision and mission statements which commit to building flourishing communities of hope or whatever. It’s a noble and inspiring sentiment, but what does it mean to flourish? We could immediately dash to definitions. Depending on your source, you will be told that to flourish is to prosper, to thrive, to be in a state of activity or production. If you go to the Greek philosophers you might well come out at Aristotle and his idea of eudaimonia (roughly translated as flourishing) by which he was pointing to the life well...
Read MoreFaithful Improvisation: Following Jesus Today
I’m currently reading the revised edition (2018) of Samuel Wells’ book, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. It’s a great read, and tries to answer the question of how we should play our part in the drama of God’s work in the world when we have no closely worded script, and when we are constantly facing new challenges. What follows springboards both from ideas in the book as well as from insights in a Nomad podcast with Samuel Wells on 6 May 2020. Wells draws his key idea from the theatre, and in a similar way to Tom Wright suggests that though we don’t...
Read MoreQuotable: Glittering Vices – Rebecca Konyndyk De Young, Take 2
This is a second selection of snippets from Rebecca Konyndyk De Youngs intriguing 2009 book Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies. The title explains the book, which after an exploration of some of the historical understandings of the seven deadly sins (and the opposing virtues against which they were stacked), explores each in turn – envy (the bitterness that flows from believing others have it better), vainglory (believing that image rather than reality is all important), sloth (which rather than laziness, is seen as resistance to doing the work...
Read MoreQuotable: Glittering Vices – Rebecca Konyndyk De Young
This week our selection of quotes comes from Rebecca Konyndyk De Youngs intriguing 2009 book Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies. The title explains the book, which after an exploration of some of the historical understandings of the seven deadly sins (and the opposing virtues against which they were stacked), explores each in turn – envy (the bitterness that flows from believing others have it better), vainglory (believing that image rather than reality is all important), sloth (which rather than laziness, is seen as resistance to doing the work...
Read MoreIs narcissism becoming a virtue – or whatever happened to humility?
Yesterday I led a professional development day for staff at Grace Christian School, in Bunbury. One of the topics we explored was the rise of narcissism, and ways Christian schools can help provide a corrective for it. Of course there might be some readers who wonder if a corrective is necessary. After all, pendulum’s tend to swing back and forth, and the current wave of self love has followed hot on the heals of too long an era where the need of the individual was always seen to be subservient to the needs of the group, and when any delight in self was viewed as sinful and a display...
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