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The Bookshop’s Darkest Recess

There’s a certain ordering to bookshops’ shelves that tells us something of the owners’ expectations of their customers. Popular Science is often followed by Psychology, for instance, which is followed by Religion, which is followed by Self-Help. The ordering, it seems to me, follows the pattern of an increasingly desperate search for truth – especially perhaps, the truth about oneself. That awkward endpoint – the Self-Help section – is often in the bookshop’s darkest recess, tucked away out of sight of other bookshop customers. Here, you might claim to be looking for a book for a friend, or had simply stumbled in there by accident. I have to confess, at this point, that on occasion I have visited the self-help dark recess. I’ve returned, mostly unscathed, and with a few nuggets of wisdom that might be worth sharing. The first two are easy to state. Let go and let be. Watch and wait. The third takes a bit more unpacking, but let’s just call it ‘striving’ for now and unpack i...
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A Little Cheerer-Upper About Annihilation

He’d been a strong man in his time. I remember him from way back. Tall and strong. Even well into his 90’s – he still stood upright and took on some gardening work to supplement his pension. But the Reaper will have his way, and shortly before his 100th birthday the man breathed his last. It was what came next that disturbed me the most though. I had not realised that the man had even been married, let alone that he had children. But after his death the relatives duly arrived to go through his things. A skip was planted at the front of the house. And it looked like everything went in there – furniture, clothes, books, cd’s, dvd’s – everything. It just seemed desperately sad, seeing all that stuff sitting out there. Not even a yard sale. Not even a charity shop. Just everything junked. I looked around at my own possessions of books, drawings, paintings and writing. I wondered what my relatives will do with all that, when the time comes. But, some might say, it’s just stuff....
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Freedom is Power

He was a big man – peering from beneath his hat with an unfaltering gaze. There was no arguing with the big man – it was, do what he says, or get out. But the group had another big man, and one day the two of them clashed. Like so many arguments, it was over something trivial. The roof of the building had a water collection system. The water had turned cloudy. Was it the roof or was it the filtration? The two big guys screamed at each other. Everyone else kept an embarrassed silence. This went on for half an hour or more. Then a small weedy guy spoke up. Surely the water in the storage tank would decide the matter one way or another. If the water was cloudy then the fault must be with the roof. If the water was clear then the fault must lie further into the system, that is, with the filtration unit. There was a few moments of silence as the inexorable logic of the weedy man’s words sunk in. Then everyone bundled up onto the flat roof and the hatch to the water tank. A glas...
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So Do You Believe or Not?

Religious people sometimes tell us that it’s best not to pick and choose things from their faith in which to believe. It is more of an all or nothing affair, they will say. Either you believe it or you don’t. This is certainly true of the Christian faith – which is my focus in this essay. Fair to say that there’s been quite a bit of picking and choosing, down the centuries. For instance, we no longer seem perturbed by people moving an ancient boundary stone, we no longer seem to care about celebrating years when debts are cancelled, or jubilee years, and, for the most part, we no longer practice stoning as a means of public execution. Indeed, there are several capital offences listed in the Bible that don’t carry the death penalty in most of today’s nations. Well, dear reader, you may point out that all the items I’ve listed are moral precepts that were perhaps suitable for their time. But now we must use our judgement (and/or God’s guidance) to discern what moral rules are appr...
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The Good Doctor

The Good Doctor appeared and disappeared in my life over a period of several years. There was always some confusion about him and who he really was. I used to confuse him with someone who came and went in the office where I worked. They dressed in a similar manner. The guy at work was called Brent. He dressed mainly in black. A large black duffel coat, black trousers and shoes. Usually one of those self-coloured textured shirts that tie up at the collar with a strip of leather. Like the good doctor himself, Brent came and went. He did not arrive at the office to do any work, he just chatted with folk for a while, then a secretary would hand him a brown envelope and he was gone. The brown envelopes appeared to bulge with banknotes. Brent invited me around to his home once. It was a basement apartment in Edinburgh’s New Town. There were snacks and excellent wine to start. Food would arrive soon, he assured me. Brent just chatted and we both drank quite a bit. The place was s...
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The Third Alternative

Surely, by now, everyone has heard of climate change. Everyone has some kind of ‘climate story’ — ways we understand and reconcile our lives to the predicament in which we find ourselves. So as part of that love for people (which is surely the first requirement of any activist), let’s hear people’s stories. And yes, I include the climate sceptics and the doom-mongers in this too. In fact, especially the deniers — their stories need to be heard above anyone. It’s a climate story of my own I’d like to describe in this essay. It’s not one I usually tell, because it seems so far out. But I’m going to share it and you can judge for yourself. What is climate change about really? Is it an economic question, is it an aesthetic question, is it even a theological question? Yes, it’s all of these! It just depends on how you frame the question. One way of thinking about climate change it to ask ourselves how far back in time we would be willing to live in order to have a sustainable p...
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The View from the Mountaintop

If you’re someone who wants to figure out the fickleness of human nature, then perhaps there’s no better place to start than with our sense of the sacred. Or actually, to start with what we find profane – a desecration, a violation. There are many strange examples of this. One is the reaction people have to strange clothing – or the lack of clothing altogether. Or perhaps it’s a person’s race or sexual orientation that offends. A person thus offended will get angry in often a completely incoherent way. The pre-frontal cortex is by-passed and they emit strange utterances straight from the reptilian brain! We could say, it’s pure emotion – a visceral sense of outrage and violation. If only – we might speculate – if only people got as upset as this by war, torture, rape, cruelty and the like. For these really are violations of the sacred – the sacredness of human life. But no! Often we are outraged by the trivial and indifferent to truly global problems. What to make of this? W...
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