· stillpoint ·

In various conversations recently I’ve heard people’s stories of what they have been ‘sorting out’ and ‘getting rid of’.   Perhaps the long lockdown has forced us into taking spring cleaning more seriously.   As we move towards the summer we want to be less encumbered with …stuff! It's been said that one of the skills of a great artist is knowing what to leave out.    Sculptors need to leave out stone, painters can't fit everything in, poets certainly have to work hard at getting the words just right, and of course writers have to be really strict with themselves.  Being creative is hard work and sometimes means letting go of the good so you can create the best.   Life also is a creative endeavour and hard work.  One of the big questions that the ancient philosophers used to ask was 'how to live well' or 'what does it mean to live a good life'?   A virtuous character became the Greek ideal. A virtuous character was important t...

  We have a new pup at home and recently she has discovered a new favourite sleeping place, below the armchair.    In a few weeks Bella will be too big to fit under there, but along with her bed which has high walls around and sleeping against our legs or against the sofa, it’s clear that she likes to sleep in a place that has a measure of safety and the reassurance of some kind of shelter.    Harriet and I have been attending an online Anglican conference earlier this week called ‘Beyond the Storm’, full of really helpful talks and seminars and discussions as church leaders look at where we have got to and start to look at the new landscape emerging as the storm of Covid slowly passes on(we hope).     It’s a little like the closing scenes of a disaster movie that I watched in which a family just makes it to a remote place for shelter as   a cataclysm shakes the world ( I can’t actually remember what it was now) in an extinction level eve...

A world of wonder. Albert Einstein once said that we have two choices about how to live in this world.  As if there are no miracles or as if everything is a miracle.   Although Einstein was not a conventional religious person, he had seen too much of the universe to be an atheist.   His sense of wonder grew the older he got and the more he discovered, and discovered that he didn't know.    To live as everything is a miracle is not to believe that God keeps jumping in and suspending the laws of nature.  Rather it is a sense of wonder that so much of what comes to us in life and happens is gift.  That, given the almost statistical impossibility, the very existence of our goldilocks planet is a gift and should not be here by any law of averages at all. Most of all though it is an appreciation that the ordinary stuff of life matters and that each person we meet bears the divine image...there are no ordinary people.      ...

"Once upon a time..." those words have invited children (and adults who know what's good for them) on journeys of imagination and excitement, suspense and hope, even courage and danger.  There is nothing like a well told story to capture our attention, expand our vision and leave us transformed.  Stories can also bring comfort and calm and I know one or two folk who listen to stories on sleep apps when they wake up at night, carefully chosen to settle and reassure us.  And all of us who have been parents know that young children love being read to and especially hearing stories that include them in roles that shape events and show they matter. We are a story telling people and one of the greatest gifts we can give another person is the time and attention to listen to their story, however mundane it maybe.   I once had a friend who would take his young daughter to visit a gentleman who had early onset dementia.  He would repeat the same stor...