· stillpoint ·

Black swans and the unexpected Audio file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WeXb-plO0jHKzv1uix9hfPhQS-8fqkti/view?usp=drivesdk I’ve just had an old friend stay for a few days who was giving a paper at a large scientific conference in Glasgow.   .His passion for science remains undiminished from his early days as a Phd student 25 years ago when we first each other and many of our conversations this last week have come back again and again to the commitment, challenges and breakthroughs of scientific research.    What struck me more than anything though was the openness to new evidence to be found in the relentless pursuit of more knowledge even if this overturns or modifies existing theories.    On the one hand the researcher builds on the knowledge accumulated over many generations which allows them to launch into the unknown.   On the other hand what they discover may lead to changes, sometimes profound, in the body of knowledge they have used to get them to where they are to

On the second half of life: celebrating plans B-Z Audio file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZvWSGLMo7m1vhtQitY4ftbats7cbgYSc/view?usp=drivesdk    I’m writing this on my 53 rd birthday and while I’m not assuming I’ll make it to 106 I’d like to reflect a little on the second half of life. I’m not sure if Richard Rohr came up with this phrase, but he has certainly popularised it and has made the point that it can start for some folk in their late twenties and for others much, much later, if at all.    Without unpacking what this means for him I thought I’d take this chance to think a wee bit about what the view from here looks like for me. A brief vignette of this precise time on Thursday morning gives a few of the themes of the second half of my life.    I’ve celebrated our mid-week Eucharist with a group of church friends, sharing my birthday cake with them afterwards.   I spent time printing a number of articles in the church office on current research on leadership a