Essays, thoughts, poems, prayers and quotes:
Among a million Russian huts you will never find even two that are exactly the same. Everything that lives is unique. It is unimaginable that two people, or two briar roses, should be identical… If you attempt to…
The most promising way for a society to avoid widespread differences in self-esteem would be to have no common weighting of dimensions; instead it would have a diversity of different lists of dimensions and…
Central to my work over the last 23 years has been the idea of citizenship. One central idea has been that the organisation of the social care system (and many other public services) operates in a way that is hostile to…
Behind the man with the knife is the man who sold him the knife, the man who did not give him a job, the man who decided that his school did not need funding, the man who closed down the branch plant where he could have…
Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to…
For there is no other heaven - the hierarchy admitted, there is, it seems, no hierarchy at all; no higher or lower; all is here, in the first. "Only," and as if (lover-like) Beatrice exerted herself to explain to her…
We often want to do everything ourselves, but that is a mark of false pride. Even what we owe to others belongs to ourselves, and that is part of our own lives. And when we calculate just how much we owe to others, it is not…
The word institution has at least two very different meanings. It can mean something good. It is something that we have established and which we may respect and value - a constitution, an organisation or even a…
Solzhenitsyn says "Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig." Dante places Pride at the foot of Mount Purgatory and imagines how it might take hundreds of years for us to pay its price. First we must wander…
In one institution they painted a zebra crossing on the floor of the recreation hall - in order to help people safely cross the road. Can you imagine anything more dangerous? We often do this. We teach a skill but in…
At the time the French conceived a desire for political liberty, they were imbued with a number of notions on the subject of government which were not only difficult to reconcile with liberty, but were almost hostile…
Love needs reality. What is more terrible than the discovery that through a bodily appearance we have been loving an imaginary being. It is much more terrible than death, for death does not prevent the beloved from…
Love is bornWith a dark and troubled face,When hope is deadAnd in the most unlikely place;Love is born,Love is always born.Love is born by Michael LeunigThanks as always to John O'Brien for sharing this Christmas…
In Greek, the word "fileo" means the love of friendship, tender but not all-encompassing; instead, the word "agapao" means love without reserve, total and unconditional. Jesus asks Peter the first time:…
The Englishman does not like rows. It is almost impossible to get him to disturb himself, unless you are fool enough to make him both afraid and angry… To understand the point at which the English patience breaks,…
[I updated this blog in November 2013 with more recent data and graphs.] I find the repeated use of the word austerity very annoying. It implies that what is happening in the UK today is unfortunate - but somewhat…
I know a wise old Buddhist monk who, in a speech to his fellow countrymen, once said he'd love to know why someone who boasts that he is the cleverest, the strongest, the bravest or the most gifted man on earth is thought…
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." Where is the newness to which Jesus refers? It lies in the fact that he is not content with repeating…
Why did not the Risen One reveal himself to his enemies in his full glory in order to show that it is God who is victorious? Why did he only manifest himself to his disciples? Jesus' answer is mysterious and profound. The…
We do not have to acquire humility. There is humility in us - only we humiliate ourselves before false gods. Simone Weil from Gravity and Grace How well this point is put. We worship what we lower ourselves…
Discussions about dependency and welfare dependency are full of illogicality and moral confusion.Within the political system the term 'welfare dependency' has become code for a bad thing which is damaging the…
The Pharisees were people who relied on their own strength to be virtuous. Humility consists in knowing that in what we call 'I' there is no source of energy by which we can rise. Everything without exception…
…for slander is a most grievous thing: in it the wrongdoers are two, and the person who suffers wrong is one. The slanderer does a wrong in that he speaks against one who is not present, the other in that he is persuaded…
When it's Christmas we're all of us magi.At the grocers' all slipping and pushing.Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavoured,is the cause of a human assault waveby a crowd heavy laden with parcels:each one his own…