So often, the evangelical imperative (typically preached by a male from the pulpit) to just ' believe' is too bewildering and too difficult. Yet, when doubt creeps in, the experiential and the emotional pulls me back. Please, let us embrace these more holistic notions of faith!

I love how the word 'atone' wears its heart on its sleeve. It began as 'at one', because to atone is to bring back unity. Atonement is really 'at-one-ment'.

In the same way, 'alone' began as 'all one'.

A tangible sense of solidarity among all those in long distance relationships in the post office queue today, either clutching parcels or red envelopes

I think that therapy culture, the medicalisation of everything and seeing all distress in terms of mental illness is a product of the fact that secular liberal modernity cannot process or deal with the fundamental, ineliminable fact of human suffering

Any worldview that doesn't recognise that sinfulness can flourish in any sphere - the state, private groups, communities small or big - is wrong. If you think that people are magically without sin when they are in your ideologically favoured institutional realm, you're deluded

I fear that we are seeing the cultural and social decline of the teapot. I've noticed several shops recently that sell kitchenware, but no or almost no teapots. A little indicator of the acid of liberal modernity: the individualist teabag over the social teapot.

Co-suffering presence is the greatest theodicy we can find. The God who became present with us in suffering by becoming human wins as the deepest response to the mystery of evil and suffering I know.

At least as an unelected peer Cameron cannot once again gamble the prospect of a hugely divisive referendum for the support of those at the fringes of his party/their voter base...

For those who don’t know it and might need it (I think we all do), ‘apricity’ is the warmth of the sun on a chilly day.

Forwarding this to my mother to prove that my fear of picking up the phone only to be told bad news is genuine and not an excuse for laziness

Westminster’s ignorance and an inability to overcome it was and still is one of the reasons for the perpetuity of this island’s political problems

For some reason, my Lib Dem dad isn’t celebrating his party’s first PM in a century…

Northern Ireland could do with some murals like this.

Trying to book a vaccine and got told that ‘the different parts of England have different booking systems’…I don’t know what’s worse; the fact that the booking system, which should be co-ordinated across the 4 nations, is not, or that NI has been delegated to a ‘part’ of England

Only when we have a notoriously sexually unfaithful female prime minister with 6 kids by 3 different men, whose career is entirely undamaged by a kiss and tell story in the paper, will women have finally achieved social equality in the UK.
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