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The runner and the stag
Richmond Park is an ideal place to go running. It's large, scenic, hilly in parts, and almost all off-road, with many trail routes supporting a variety of runs. My favourite is the Tamsin Trail, over 7 miles in length, following the perimeter all the way round the
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Stung with Love
Sappho: the poet and her work The Greek poet Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos from c.630BC to 570BC. She came from an aristocratic family and had independent means. She was a poet, and a teacher of songs and singing. She was the leader of a group of
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I shall stand for love
I have come to dread reading the news. Almost everything is bad news. Violence, hatred, greed, climate change, the fascist resurgence, genocide, natural disasters… Was it always this bad? It feels like doomscrolling is a fact of life. How should we respond? We have to stand firm, and maintain our
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The wisdom of the desert
I wanted to pass on some insights on prayer that I have gained through reading Peter Tyler’s book Christian Mindfulness. These are based on his chapter 2 which is concerned with the spirituality of the Desert Fathers. Just as the early Christian pioneers went into the desert to find
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The Doll Haters
Until now, parkrun has been Mr Blue Sky. Everything is good and there’s not a cloud on the horizon. Enter the Doll Haters. This is my name for the new Reality Rules Runners UK running club. According to media reports, this organisation represents female runners who object to the
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The joy of parkrun
In 2004, a man called Paul Sinton-Hewitt got out his stopwatch and timed about a dozen friends running a 5K round Bushy Park in London on a Saturday morning. He had no idea where this would go but he committed himself to being there every week to watch it
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Mindfulness as 'bare attention'
I am reading Peter Tyler’s book Christian Mindfulness: Theology and Practice (SCM, 2018). He distinguishes between two kinds of mindfulness in current usage. The first is ‘bare attention’: what the American mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn described as ‘paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present
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Contemplation 5: The ethical life
There is a close connection between prayer and life. Prayer changes us: we live differently. What does this mean in practice? What sort of people do we become when we pray? We very soon realise that the prayer of silence and our way of life need to be in harmony
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Electoral reform in the UK
These are exciting times for electoral reformers. The Representation of the People Bill currently before Parliament includes a number of provisions designed to widen public participation in elections: lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, introducing automatic voter registration, and widening the forms of ID that must be produced
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Betrayal
The actor Rupert Grint made his name through playing the character of Ron Weasley in the hugely successful film adaptations of the JK Rowling Harry Potter novels. These were released in the period 2001 to 2011. Later, he distanced himself from Rowling when she began her campaign of persecution against
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Responses to bullying
In the early 1990s I was working in Prison Service Headquarters in London. One of my tasks was to write an anti-bullying strategy for prisons in England and Wales. This was commissioned following a series of incidents of self-harm in prisons which were attributable to bullying. As part
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Contemplation 4: Always and everywhere
If we are faithful in the practice of silent prayer – if it becomes part of our life on a daily basis – then a number of changes will take place inside us. These are the fruits of prayer. They are not the direct result of anything we do. Instead this is
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