Kicking at the darkness till it bleeds daylight

I have finished Brian J Walsh's wonderful Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination (Brazos Press 2011). It serves both as a great introduction to Cockburn's music - constantly sending me back to the CDs - and as an elucidation of Walsh's approach to worldviews (articulated elsewhere in his books with Richard Middleton).

What Walsh does particularly well is to help the listener get an over-view of the key recurring themes in Cockburn's music. He reminded me that we don't judge whether an artist is Christian on the basis of each creative product - I've lost count of the number of times Christians do this with U2 albums, tutting that a swear word there or an expression of doubt here signals the moment Bono lost his faith. A Christian artist looks at the world and reports what he's found in it in the light of his attempts to follow Jesus.

Cockburn has spent forty-plus years and 32 albums exploring the darkness and looking for glimmers of light and echoes of God within it. He has also wrestled with what the human calling is in 'the falling dark'; a call that is summed in the great phrase from Lovers in a Dangerous Time 'you've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight' (from where Walsh gets his title).

Walsh helpfully brings together common themes and images in the songs, shows how ideas have developed over the years and indicates that while Cockburn struggles with the label Christian (and who doesn't in this post-colonial, post-Christendom age?), he never ceases to be a witness to Jesus and his values in our messed up world.

This is a book well worth adding to your 'must read' lists. If you're a fan of Cockburn, it'll send you back to the songs with a fresh wonder; if you're not a Cockburn fan - where have you been, what have you been listening to? Read it, it'll make you want to work your way through the Canadian master's entire output.

A book to meditate over

I have just started reading Marilynne Robinson's When I was a Child I read Books (the title alone is worth the purchase price). Robinson is the author of Gilead and Home, novels of rich beauty and seering insight. She is a Congregationalist and has been a teacher and writer in residence at various universities across the States. She has a PhD in English literature and seems congenitally incapable of writing a dull sentence.

When I was a Child I read books is a series of essay on the place of literature and the role of faith in our lives. She writes as one unashamedly shaped by what she reads and how she thinks (and she is a rigorous thinker). She speaks of her current political context in the States (after Walt Whitman) as 'characterised by wolfishness and filled with blather.' She is one, I suspect, who feels that we need to read more and express opinions less.

And she worries for the people of faith. The passive pious, she suggests, just shrug and declare the whole enterprise bankrupt; while the active pious 'see some hope in a hastily arranged liquidation of cultural assets'. What a wonderful phrase that is and how it fingers the shallow activism of so much that passes for faith and theology. She laments the fact that people of faith have in recent years retreated from 'the cultivation and celebration of learning and of beauty, by dumbing down, as if people were less than God made them and in need of nothing so much as condescension.' See what I mean about her language!

I was having a Facebook exchange earlier this morning about Bishop Graham Cray. A friend is doing sessions at Spring Harvest with him this week. I was reflecting that back in the 70s Graham Cray - then a curate, I think, in York - opened up the world of popular music as a field of serious study for Christians. It was, literally, music to my ears; it gave permission for a life-long exploration of and grappling with the deep stuff of popular culture. It also told me - at an impressionable age - that ideas matter, that how we think about the world shapes the way we live in it.

Robinson stands in the same cultural stream as Cray, Christians who recognise that all truth belongs to God and reveals something about him wherever that truth is to be found.

Even on the basis of the fifteen pages I've read so far, I recommend you go and get this book and meditate over it of the rewards it yields will be rich indeed.

Reflecting on a great troubadour

Very excited to receive in yesterday's post a copy of Brian Walsh's Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination. Walsh is one of my favourite cultural theologians and Cockburn is probably the best troubadour of his generation - 31 albums in 40 years, a searing eye for justice and a heart open to the wonder and mystery of God's creation.

I'm really looking forward to digesting this volume. Expect to see many more references to Cockburn's output accompanied by Walsh's incisive reflection on it in coming weeks....

Having said that, I've just written my Easter perspective for our church magazine which is about the music of Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen (and I'll be posting something about their recent albums really soon).

Reading to give ideas a fresh hearing

Today I have finally acquired a copy of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God. I have resisted until now because of the sheer size and the vast price, so when I found a pristine copy going for a comparative song at a second hand book shop this morning, I thought 'oh, go on, then...'

I am due to teach a course on Romans from the beginning of February and since Campbell's book is seeking to make an argument about Romans, I thought it would be good to have it to refer to. I have read some bits and pieces of it before (in library copies) and remain to be convinced that his central suggestion that not all of Romans 1-4 represents the thinking of Paul but rather that of a rival teacher he is seeking to correct holds any water.

It's an intimidating read - there are 300 pages of thicket clearing before he actually gets to Romans! The introduction does contain one insight that has set me thinking, however - and augurs well for the journey ahead. He argues that 'at the heart of the conventional "Lutheran" approach to these texts...are powerful commitments to individualism, to rationalism, and to consent.' He goes on to suggest that Luther's reading of Romans (and Galatians) were heavily influenced by the prevailing renaissance culture with its strong attachment to humanism and individualism.

It is of course not new to suggest that protestant and evangelical formulations of the faith are deeply indebted to modern and even enlightenment thinking. But it is new (at least, it is to me) to have a scholar arguing that the very reading of the core texts of protestant Christianity owe more to the renaissance than they do to the apostle Paul.

I am interested to see what Campbell makes of this because one of my current study interests is the whole area of the relationship between literacy and spirituality - both in the NT world (where literacy rates were very low) and in our context (where literacy rates are high but people read less and less - especially in the areas of theology and Christian spirituality).I am wondering if we need to develop a hermeneutics of the faith that is based on oral culture rather than reading, much as the one Paul operated in; wondering if evangelical renewal will come via hearing rather than reading.

And I wondering if  a 1200+ page book is going to help me!

Are we good news to anyone?

At the end of our cafe church on Sunday, a man walked in looking for the pastor. He was looking for help, any help we could give him. He'd been a bike messenger in the City - carrying documents between some of the leading financial services companies in the country - and had a flat. But six weeks ago he'd lost his job and a month ago, lost his flat. He'd slept rough in Bromley the night before. What could we do to help him?

He's the tip of a vast iceberg; people who clung to a life through the boom who've been washed up on the rocks as the wave has broken.

As we phoned round the usual agencies, we discovered that there's virtually no help for such homeless people. Nearly all the hostels only take referrals from their respective local authority and have waiting lists as long as your arm; everyone tells you to call Shelter - wonderful organisation - but their helpline isn't available at 9pm on a Sunday.

We found him a hostel place - somewhere he'd stayed before but couldn't afford to to anymore - and booked him a couple of nights and wished him well. I'll call him at the end of the week to see how he's doing.

But is that it?

Sometimes in the face of need, I feel so impotent. More than that, I feel fearful; afraid that acting, doing something will lead to a situation where I am not in control. And so, I hesitate...

Over on thinking mission, David Kerrigan has mused on what it means to be radical. It's good stuff; go and read it. In particular, he's asked us 'why, if we are good news, do so few recognise us as such?' And he adds: 'I am pleading that we have the humility to look at how we live, how we gather, and how we express our Christian faith in a world riddled with injustice, where power is used and abused in a way that has little in common with the way Jesus encouraged his followers to live.'

London faces a housing crisis that if current projections are to be believed will get much worse over the next ten years because we are just not building enough homes for everyone who needs one. For those of us on the property ladder already, this is probably good news because it means rising property values. 

But for those in poor, inadequate, over-crowded housing and those sleeping on a mate's sofa or in a box in the park, this is really bad news. Their plight will get worse. Again, the poor land at the bottom of the heap. And who will lift them up?

It's trite to ask 'what would Jesus do?' But I think it is worth asking, as David does, because I think we need to look into our collective hearts and ask ourselves 'what kind of people do we want to be?' and 'what kind of people do we think Jesus wants us to be?'

Tom Wright lecture on government

The Tom Wright lecture mentioned last week can now be downloaded here (scroll down to find the link). It's well worth reading carefully and even using as the basis for a group discussion in church in the run up to the election.

Wright's lecture is a robust analysis of the issues facing British democracy seen through the lens of the Biblical narrative and the post-enlightenment history of the West. There's nothing in the lecture about the biblical story and especially that of Jesus as the bringer of the Kingdom that is emphatically for this world, for the here and now, that we haven't read in Wright before. But here it's delivered as a brief and accessible overview that's then applied to how Christians might think about the contemporary political process.

More salvoes in the election campaign

There's an interesting page in today's Times that says something about the forthcoming election and how Christians will be challenged by it.

At the top of the page the ever-sensible Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, expresses concern that God is being squeezed out of politics by the way the current government does business - though he does reckon this process started under Mrs Thatcher.

At the foot of the page is a report of a David Cameron interview in the gay magazine Arena where he says that churches have got to accept gay people into their ranks as equals.

For some Christians this could well leave no party worthy of consideration when it comes to casting their vote!

Clearly that's not a sensible position, so there's going to be a need for some really careful thinking to take place between now and 3 May. Deeply held opinions need to be challenged and fresh reflection on what scripture and Christian tradition says about crucial issues will have to take place.

That thinking will undoubtedly be helped by the lecture that Tom Wright is due to deliver at the synod next week and a book co-authored by Nick Spencer and Jonathan Chaplin that's coming out this week.

Resources are one thing, but I also think we need to be serious in prayer for our civic society. There are fault lines that can become fractures; there are deep differences of opinion even within congregations that need to be prayed about and talked out.

So, let the conversations begin - and those that have already started (and there are lots, I know), spill over into the public domain so we can all benefit from them.

Finding the key to the good life

'Give me abundant, clean, reliable and cheap electrons,' says Thomas Friedman, 'and I will give you a world that can continue to grow without triggering unmanageable climate change.'

In a very thorough and accessible survey of the energy options facing the planet, Friedman argues that electricity generation is the key to sustainable development. This means that governments as well as the private sector needs to be putting research funds into innovating in the area of electric transport and electricity generation from renewable resources.

But in a crucial section, he argues that the planet cannot just change its energy supply and carry on as it has before. Conservation must go hand-in-hand with changes in the consumption habits of the world, especially the rich world.

His thinking is influenced by political ethicist Michael Sandel who urges that we need to strengthen (perhaps in come cases develop) a sense of responsibility for and stewardship of the natural world.

The key thing for Friedman is that this cannot be legislated by governments. Arguing that as societies, we need to develop an ethic of conservation. 'Ethics are not laws. They are not imposed by the state. Rather, they are norms, values, belief, habits and attitudes that are embraced voluntarily - that we as a society impose on ourselves. Laws regulate behaviour from the outside in. Ethics regulate behaviour from the inside out. Ethics are something you carry with you wherever you go to guide whatever you do.' (p237)

The trouble is that our good ethics are so often let down by our bad behaviour. This is what Paul is talking about Romans 7 and Titus. We all agree on the basics on how people should live - in Paul's day it was that people embody the cardinal virtues of sobriety, justice and piety, virtues that would lead to the good life in a good society. The issue is where do we get the power to live such virtues?

Our calling

I came across this great quote about Karl Barth (I don't usually say that, not being a systematic theologian in any way shape or form) by Robert McAfee Brown: 'For Barth the tasks of exegete and preacher, scholar and proclaimer, teacher and witness, are all combined in one vocation'. (the quoue came courtesy of David Guretzki. Thanks for stopping by and introducing me to your blog. Lots of Barth to check out - I think I'll give it a go and see if I understand any of it!)

I think the quote is very pertinent to the last posting here and the comments it's attracted. Ministers need to see their vocation in these terms. it's not enough to speak, we also need to be scholarly in our engagement with every facet of the world around us

This doesn't mean that we'll be experts at everything. But it does mean that we'll seek to be well-informed, aware of the issues and thoughtful about how the gospel and our theological reflection inform our response to what's going on in and around us.

Global weirding

As I sit and watch people struggle past in the couple of centimetres of snow that have fallen over night, I'm reflecting on Thomas Friedman's description of climate change as 'global weirding'.

In a very good chapter on climate change, in particular the way the science is treated by those who are politically sceptical about the need to change our way of life, Friedman offers an excellent guide to what is happening, what the science is actually saying and how policy makers ought to be reacting to this.

one sentence jumped out and stopped me in my tracks. In a section detailing recent climate events, including hurricane Katrina, Friedman noted: 'Katrina wasn't so much an example of global warming as it was an example of the long-term infrastructure decisions society needs to make in order to survive. The weather is so much more than "do I need an umbrella?" It's also "should I buy a condo on the coast?" and "did we build those levees high enough?"'

These are profoundly theological questions that I'm not sure we're asking in our churches even if we've started asking them in our theological colleges.

For me, this whole issue raises questions about how we are training ministers for mission for today's world. Courses in ministry formation should engage with the likes of Friedman. But such engagement would mean that ministers-in-training need to be engaging with economics as much as Calvin, the principles of scientific enquiry as much as Karl Barth, public policy as much as pastoral theology.

But I'm not sure there's room in the curriculum. More pressingly, I'm not sure there's the will to make it. And the reason for this is that churches still want ministers who will fulfill the traditional roles of preaching and leading worship and reassuring our folk that God's on the case and all will be well in the end. Is it any wonder our churches are still emptying? And, in particular, that thinking people under 35 do not consider the Christian Faith has anything intelligent or effectual to say about the world or to the world as it teeters on the brink of the consequences of global weirding.

Insight into Iraq

We went to see Andrew White at the LICC yesterday evening. He's the vicar of Baghdad, very opinionated and politically incorrect; very funny but also very moving. Life in the city is improving but many still die unnecessarily - among them large numbers of the Christian community.

Andrew still feels that the invasion was absolutely right and the removal of Saddam was the only option available to the world. I'm not sure I agree - I think the war lacked legality and the aftermath still seems worse than what was removed. But I was grateful for his insight and impressed by his faithfulness in really difficult circumstances. I will pray for the country with more knowledge.

Good too that LICC is still putting on events like this - it was not as well attended as I'd expected and the buffet lacked a little something for those of us coming straight from work. But the centre in Vere Street does remain a key place where christians engage with the difficult issues of the world intelligently and prayerfully. long may it continue.

Unsettled in a good way

As part of my preparation for part four of our series, Why Follow Jesus? which is exploring why the world's in such a mess if there's a loving God, I have started reading Christopher Southgate's new book - which I first came across late last year on Robin Parry's always-readable blog.

Called The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), it is an attempt to create a thorough-going evolutionary theodicy. It is extraordinarily well-written and clearly argued (speaking as one who often finds systematic theology thoroughly opaque and unreadable) and it does what all good theology should do: it's making me think afresh about some pretty basic positions I hold.

For example, in accepting Darwin's theory of evolution as the best explanation for how life arose on earth, Southgate questions whether it's really realistic or plausible for a doctrine of 'the Fall' to be used to account for all the bad things that happen. After all, dinosaurs walked the earth tearing each other to shreds long before people arrived on the scene. And parasites are among the earliest life forms and they live by devouring other forms of life. in other words, predation is part of creation. I'm not sure what I make of this yet... It has big implications for how we read Paul and understand the cross (Southgate, however, believes the cross and redemption to be at the heart of his theology - but I haven't got there yet; his title is taken straight out of Romans 8, of course).

This is challenging, unsettling theology of the very best kind. I have found myself excited and anxious in equal measure as I've read it. But having said that, I will not have time to process this by Sunday so it's unlikely to appear much in my 25 minute reflection on how we speak about God and suffering.

Why, O why do we sing in church?

I think Richard has a valid point (comment on the last post) that the aim of modern forms of worship was to help people who weren't connecting with God in traditional services an opportunity to make some connection with him. And I would say that there have been times when I have connected with God using a mix of vehicles including modern worship songs.

But I also think that anonymous (comment to same post) has touched an issue at the heart of the contemporary church's struggle to connect with people. Put baldy, it is that we are generally frothy and irrelevant, inward looking and a wee bit smug about our relatedness to God.

Now, I wouldn't want to go overboard here. I've met loads of Christians who are getting their hands very dirty in some places where people need help and only Christians are there to do anything. I've been to estates in inner cities in the UK where the only 'welfare' provision of any kind is that offered by Christians who sacrificially give of themselves, their time and their resources to make a difference and bless their neighbours.

And I'm writing this the day after a British Christian aid worker was shot dead in Kabul for doing exactly that as a Christian. So I don't think we can tar the entire church as self-obsessed. It dishonours those who are worshipping God with their bodies laid on the line day, day out.

But sadly, the contemporary worship scene is part of a wider malaise in the western church that sees offering people what we think they want is the way to attract people. And while there might be some superficial appeal for some in the entertaining mix we serve up, the longer term danger of the whole approach is that we are only offering an hour's mildly spiritual diversion.

Now some will protest that worship songs are not entertainment; they are a means of lifting up the name of God in a way that draws people to him and therefore are the essential component of what we do as churches. Sadly, as anonymous' posts so eloquently attest, such an approach repels rather than attracts some, perhaps many people.

We do seem to be afraid of thinking, of asking the hard questions about our faith that would stretch our faith both intellectually and emotionally. As an author, I am frequently asked to remember my audience doesn't want to be too taxed. I need to write in a way that will be accessible to people who don't read books - tricky when I write books!

I had some interesting conversations as I was putting the finishing touches to my recent short commentary on Galatians that I was possibly entering into discussions and debates about the text that were not appropriate for the general Christian public. The idea seems to be that the average church person can only cope with a pre-digested, entertainingly served up gobbet of something to believe rather than a range of possibilities to think about.

This could indeed be why the church in the UK is losing people. But it also highlights a real problem that churches have and it's this: who is our audience and at what level do they wish to be engaged? I have said for a number of years now that I do not believe there is a one-size fits all way of being and doing church. I am neither original nor alone in this view, but it is depressing how few of us there still are who really believe it and are prepared to practice it.

There are a load of people who think seriously about the world and their place in it and who might well find that the Christian faith has something intelligent and helpful to say that would help them engage with and think through these deep questions. At the same time, that process might well help them to meet and engage with God with every fibre of their beings - body, soul and, equally importantly, mind.

Sadly, songs like I can only imagine will only repel those with an ounce of intellect and musicality. I am sorry for anonymous' poor experience of church so far. Keep in touch. I'll return to this theme.

The slow road back to wellville

Well, here I am still struggling to throw off this flu bug. It's left me feeling drained with a tightness across my chest and a bit of hacking cough. Still, life goes on...

Nearly finished Rob Warner's book. The second half - on the theological changes - has been fascinating. I was particularly heartened by his account of the adopting of the new basis of faith by my old Alma mater, London Bible College, under its now former principal, Derek Tidball.

I found the accounts of the various bases of faith a tad dull and dis-spiriting, the latter because it seems to confirm that evangelicals are pathologically obsessed with circling the wagons and keeping out the enemy - even when the enemy turns out to be Bible believing Christians with a slightly different take on some arcane point of doctrine.

For a movement heading for the rocks - and potential oblivion - shuffling who sits where on the poop deck seems a calamitous waste of resources!

I've been preparing some thoughts on how we do mission for delivery to Spurgeon's students in the morning. I'm looking forward to it - it'll be the first work I've done for a week!

And my spell-checker has returned - thank you blogger central (or whoever you are)!

More thoughts on Rob Warner

I am continuing to enjoy Rob Warner's Reinventing English Evangelicalism. I think it almost ranks with Pete Ward's Growing up Evangelical for its ability to give narrative shape to significant moments in my life.

I have particularly enjoyed and winced at Rob's description of Spring Harvest and his account of magazine publishing. Some of his insights are worth pondering long and hard.

For example, 'the multiple-choice approach of Spring Harvest's programme introduced many evangelicals to a comodified concept of worship and teaching: the autonomous individual makes an independent selection from the programme and may come to expect a similar autonomy in choosing local church activities.'

He adds that the Spring Harvest diet is therapeutic rather than theological and has led to the increasing ghettoisation of evangelicals. it is hard not to share his scepticism when he suggests that far from equipping evangelicals to live more effectively in the world, Spring Harvest has contributed to the creation of an evangelical family that 'looks less like a community gathering for advance than a remnant withdrawing into subcultural segregation.'

He is wonderfully acerbic on some of the music to have come out of this subculture in the past decade (joining Pete Ward and Nick Page) suggesting 'while singing songs that herald an army mobilised to take the land, Spring Harvest's evangelicals functioned increasingly as a gated community, a ghetto on holiday.'

I shall be at Spring Harvest this year working on the pastoral team as I have done for the past five years, seeking to help particpants make the most of any encounter with God that they have during their week away. But I know exactly what Rob means!

His analysis of evangelical magazines also looks spot on. As the launch editor of Christianity in the autumn of 1996, I am one who contributed to the demise of the evangelical monthly!

Our aim had been to produce a magazine that reached beyond the ghetto, found its way into news agents and Smiths and addressed the world through the prism of a carefully thought-through broad evangelical theology. What were we thinking!

Christian publishers were not prepared to invest the sums required to create such a product and Christian readers were not prepared to support it. Both seem to have opted for the easier task of talking to the converted and reinforcing their prejudices about the world and the church.

Rob is spot on when he says: 'Evangelical faith, at least in Britain, appears to have entered upon a consumerist trajectory, privately engaging but publicly irrelevant. The quest for an evangelical meta-narrative has been aborted in favour of inspirational entertainment. The secularizing process has produced evangelicals whose faith is compartmentalised and privatized according to the prevailing cultural pattern. Perhaps it is the evangelicals, to adopt Postman's polemical description of TV, who are 'amusing themselves to death.'

This might be a slight hyperbole but it contains enough truth to send us to our knees and our bibles in search of a genuinely culture-transforming expression of faith.

Christmas reading

It's unusual for good Christian books to published in the run up to Christmas (some irony there?!)

Today I took delivery of Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope (SPCK £12.95). This is a semi-academic book - based on lectures in various places, including the 2005 Didsbury lectures - looking at what Christians hope for. As with everything Wright writes, it looks essential reading.

Michael J Gorman's Reading Paul (Cascade books - though being published by Paternoster in the Spring of 2008) is an introduction to the apostle by one of the most creative and stimulating Pauline scholars I've encountered of late. His Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross is a fabulous book, brimming with fresh insight into familiar texts as well offering a rich overview of Paul's spirituality. This new book is an introduction to Paul's gospel written for pastors and undergraduate students and looks really good.

Rob Warner's Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966-2001 (paternoster - Studies in Evangelical History and Thought) is a revised version of his PhD written under Andrew Walker. Those of us caught up in the roller coaster ride of the past 25 years - with Spring Harvest and Toronto, restorationism and the rise and rise of the Evangelical Alliance in the 1980s - will find a companion to their memories here that helps us makes sense of our lives. I've only dipped into it, but already I put it alongside Pete Ward's Growing Up Evangelical as essential for any understanding of our lives, if, like me, you were converted into free church evangelicalism in the 1970s.

Each of these would be a great gift to a reader you know or even yourself (because you always ought to buy yourself something for Christmas - then at least there'll be one thing you'll actually want under the Christmas tree!)

In a galaxy so close to home...

I've been discovering Battlestar Galactica (not the dire 1970s Star Wars rip off but the new Sci Fi/Sky TV series) and it's riveting stuff.

I've read a couple of pieces on this series - which hasn't made it to terrestrial TV over here yet - which whetted my appetite so when I found the whole of season 1 ridiculously cheap in the HMV sale, I thought 'why not'.

The guy behind this revival cut his teeth on Star Trek - so the space sequences and battles are well done. But nothing prepares you for the politics of it. Here is mainstream US TV addressing issues of war with unseen enemies, suicide bombings, how much civil liberties can be sacrificed in the name of security, etc. One episode takes place on a prison ship where all the inmates are in cages wearing orange boiler suits. The scripts are sharp and the characters are pretty well drawn - at least they seem to be people of depth and contradiction.

Oh and everyone's religious. The humans worship a pantheon of gods, the cylons, who have now evolved 'human' characteristics, are fundamentalist monotheists. So, in the midst of battle, theological discussion ensures, people pray for deliverance, others stress that everything that happens is willed by God or the gods.

If you've not seen it, it's worth checking out.

What's belief like?

Last night I started reading Tobias Jones' Utopian Dreams (the night before I'd finished Bruce Longenecker's excellent the Lost Letters of Pergamum)

Jones' book is a travelogue of his journey to a number of intentional communities in the UK and Italy - the two places he knows best - in a bid to see whether such alternative communities offer a way of living in today's world.

I've only read the introduction so far but it contained a sentence which I thought cast interesting light on our mission as intentional disciples in today's world.

Having said that he grew up at a time when there were micro-beliefs but no macroscopic, cosmic creed, he said: 'I was fascinated simply to find out what it feels like to believe in something, actually to believe that the world could get better rather than worse.'

That set me thinking. And will set me blogging once I've had time to see where my thinking leads. I share it as a thought for Sunday. have a good one.