The virtual reality church segment on BBC Radio Sunday piqued my interest. While there is a pastor and there are people, there is no church building as such and the congregation meets in virtual reality or by watching it online. The pastor said that…
Writing these ‘blurbs’ is always interesting in terms of fast and slow. Sometimes the idea or incident or trigger just leaps onto the page and at other times I am in the Outback with not even a drop of an idea. It occurred to…
As part of BBC Radio’s ‘Forest 404’ – a sci-fi thriller set in the 24th Century in a world where forests have been erased from history – I listened to a talk ‘Death in the Digital Age’ by Katie Thornton – researcher, public historian,…
The interconnectedness of things today –and of life –can take my breath away. Last Sunday morning I drove down to BBC Radio Essex to give the Reflection –a 3 minute one-take, live, try-and-make-no-mistakes reading which is topical in terms of the latest news and…
I had the misfortune of working on the wrong version of an essay this week. A student had emailed me a draft for comment. I am usually pretty meticulous about naming the files but this time I simply got it wrong and forgot that…
I do not wish to be morose at this Easter time – and I don’t think I am in chocolate withdrawal – but there does seem to be a lot of death around. I noticed it at the First Aid course I attended at…
Earlier this year the news came from South Africa that 3 funeral companies were suing a pastor regarding his stunt of raising a dead man from the coffin because the funeral companies believed themselves to have been played off against each, duped, and suffered…
Recalling Sesame Street which was brought to us by particular letters and numbers, today’s news and views and social commentary seem to be stuck on the letter ‘B’. It is so dominant that it sucks in everything near to it. It consumes inexorably. Nothing…
I am writing this when the cross party political talks in Westminster are entering another day, when there is criticism that a backbench bill cleared all the stages in hours in the House of Commons when such a process is usually months and is…
The letter is from a 2016 claim for asylum here in the UK. The letter denied asylum to the claimant. The Home Office letter to this Iranian Christian disputed the claimant’s assertion that she/he became a convert to Christianity because it was a ‘peaceful’…
