Love Your Enemies

How happy we were when a military postcard, or even better, a letter arrived from Reinach! He was stationed in the vicinity of Verdun. In one letter he once sent us each a snowdrop. He had picked them himself, and they were still fresh when they arrived.(Life in a Jewish Family, Edith Stein; Chapter VII)...

In Defence of (a sense of) Sin

“God help us!” said Holmes after a long silence. “Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.’”(The Boscombe Valley Mystery: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)...

Concealed Entrance

For a while now The Great Stoppage had been replaced by the Slow Reawakening. Life had visibly and audibly resumed something akin to its habitual rhythms. John Delacroix experienced this as a kind of loss and not, as apparently he was supposed to, as a definite gain, a victory even. During the stoppage he had...

Say His Name!

You don't need a horoscope or a microscopeTo see the mess that you're inIf you open up your heartYou will know what I meanWe've been polluted so longNow here's a way for you to get cleanBy chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free(George Harrison) A young monk was anxious about the eternal...

Of Peaceful Havens and Mind Palaces

'In this town it's a long time between breakfasts' (Brigadoon, 1966 TV Version) 'The Legend of Brigadoon' began as a Broadway musical and went on to become an Hollywood film. It tells the story of two Americans who stumble into a small Scottish town which, every hundred years, springs into existence for a day and...

Each Life Matters

Three word slogans where the words are chosen to fit the mood of the time can have great mobilising potential. In the United Kingdom 'Take Back Control' and 'Get Brexit Done' had the power to win a referendum and an election respectively. 'Peace, Bread, Land,' and 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' played their part in stupendous revolutionary...

Dæmon Haunted Minds

Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere. (Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily Climbs) ...the war which the demons wage against us by means of thoughts is more severe than the war they wage by means of material things. (St...

Jane Austen & the Spirit of Chivalry

Or: The Box Hill Dialogues Although the idea of privilege is rather over used at times it is a thing and it does have significance. It is, moreover, a universal phenomenon. There is no human society of which we know where privilege did not exist, if only that which accrues to the strong over the weak,...

Washed-Out Blue: A Poem

Dawn chorus, subdued and sparse, The birds of summer have flown. Washed-out blue, an autumn sky, Autumn life, drifting darkward. Pale gold late October sun. A soft light. Not a warm one. Each born thing comes to fruition, Welcome or not, still it matures. That which has been sown will be reaped. And yet, what...

On the Monkey Mind and Twitter Archaeology. Part II

Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in...