Thought for the Day

A friend relates the stresses of getting up in the morning. Her child has stubbed a toe but is it broken, poor kid? Simultaneously, the radio on, there is news of bombs again in the Middle East. And then, another worry: the erratic weather and what that might mean for a shifting climate. On top of that again, a background of disturbed domestic politics. Where is that leading? A hotch-potch of anxieties mount up. My friend and I talked about how to handle these confused concerns, some smaller, some massive; some nearer, some afar. They crash in on us. Little wonder that some people become politically frazzled or mentally fatigued – or over-stimulated or drop out altogether. The wisdom traditions offer advice on how to deal with such turbulence. A label often given to this advice is non-attachment. The idea is not to not care. But rather to learn a skilfulness in how you care. Jesus was one figure who taught as much, captured in sayings such as: “Give no thought for the morrow.” To be preoccupied with what might happen, or how things might go, is paralysing. And freezing in the present moment, or conversely over-reacting, is a disaster because the present moment is the only one to which you can respond well. The advice continues with caring for the soul, or how we are in the world, which effects how we act in the world. Or to put it another way: tend to the jostling facets of ourselves, what might be called our temperamental inner community. That internal unrest shapes our interactions with the wider community that exists around and about us. How we are inside will much effect how we are in the outside world. Cultivating a non-attached attention also opens up awareness of something spiritual. Staying with what is present is an admission that there are many things that we cannot control and, crucially, that we will let them be. This is not a failure but the gaining of a wider perspective. And then, it is possible to see that the modest good we can do is part of a wider good, which can be called God. There is a mental cost to feeling trapped in myriad troubles, but there is a spiritual liberty to find. Care with our attention brings that freedom – which is what I found with my friend. Her child with the stubbed toe was OK. The wider world certainly knows suffering, but there is also a goodness in the world that we can find and amplify.

Good morning. For followers of football, this is an important day. The FIFA men's World Cup begins, and all around the world, fans are preparing themselves to cheer on their favourite team. Although the real stars of the competition are the talented players and their coaches, we should not underestimate the importance of supporters. Numerous pieces of research have shown that the presence of fans does have a positive impact on how well a team plays. So much so, in fact, that they're often called the twelfth player. This became particularly clear during covid when football matches were played without anyone else present. When this happened, the home team advantage melted away. Without a crowd in the stands to cheer them on, the footballers struggled to play their best. The sudden lack of the presence of supporters at games highlighted that fans really do make a difference to how teams play. Today, churches around the world celebrate the feast of St Barnabas. Born in Cyprus, he was originally called Joseph but was renamed Barnabas by the earliest Christians, a name which means ‘son of encouragement'. Stories in the Acts of the Apostles show that Barnabas dedicated his life to encouraging others. He was generous and supportive, brave and compassionate, so much so, in fact, that he is the patron saint of encouragement. This doesn't mean that Barnabas spent his life simply being nice to people. He was courageous. When the apostle Paul first converted, many other Christians were frightened of him and Barnabas stood up for him; but when Paul later fell out with John Mark, for abandoning his missionary journey and returning to Jerusalem, Barnabas supported John Mark against the more powerful Paul. An encourager stands up for you when you need it most. Everyone needs encouragement. We all need people on our side, cheering us on and giving us hope, confidence and the strength to continue. The people who have been most important my life are not the ones who have, entirely correctly, pointed out the many things I've done wrong, but the ones who have given me the vision of who I could be and the things I could do. We need people to believe in us; it is what enables us to do our best. Over the next five weeks, whether you are a football fan or not, perhaps you can take a moment to pause and give thanks for the people who have been your biggest fans in life, and to remember that no matter what form it takes, encouragement really does make a difference.

Good morning. What would you do if you came across a man in a park, sitting in front of a typewriter, offering to write a poem with you? I would avoid eye contact and walk away as quickly as possible. After all, the offer might just be a ruse to rob me, or worse. And even if its genuine, I suspect the outcome of our poetic collaboration would be cringingly bad. But there is such a man in the park, and I have, on reflection, come to think he's doing a good thing. Patrick Kruse, a Master's student in Belfast, has set himself up in the city's botanic gardens, encouraging passersby to write poems – every day for the next year. Perfect strangers report being charmed and moved by the experience. AI offers something similar, of course. Feed it key words and it can spit out verses in any style you like. So, what's the difference? Most discussions about AI focus on its supposed capabilities. But another approach would be to ask what it means for us humans when we give up certain of our own capabilities so that AI can perform them instead. Pope Leo XIV recently published an encyclical warning against creating a technological “Tower of Babel”. He emphasized that human dignity does not derive from productivity, that no machine can replace “the grandeur of humanity” revealed in the human heart. It's very well said. Yet there is, it seems to me, much more that still needs to said; in particular, on how AI is changing the way human beings relate to language. One of the greatest minds and prose stylists of the 19th century, Cardinal (now Saint) John Henry Newman described writing as a “thinking out into language”. Writing is not, he believed, simply a matter of expressing thoughts that are already in our heads. The act of writing is itself a form of thinking. As humans, we don't passively transcribe ideas into words on the page; we actively test, explore, refine, reimagine our ideas as we go. Writing is in that sense a unique and powerful tool not simply for communication, but for reasoning. Having machines write for us may be quicker, easier, slicker. But by outsourcing our struggles to find the right words, we also outsource the essential human struggle known as thinking. The new bard of Belfast's botanic gardens may not be producing high poetry, but his eccentric efforts are surely welcome in an age obsessed with efficiency and outcomes. It's good to be reminded that all of us have something worthwhile to say, including things we cannot fully know until we set our minds to dance with language.

09 JUNE 26

08 JUNE 26

06 JUNE 26

Good morning. Economists, climate scientists and delegates are gathered in Paris to address what's called the polycrisis: climate breakdown, political extremism and rising social tension. They're considering taxes on billionaires, reductions in working hours, a change in diets and transfering investment from industry to education and health. Right now, attention is focusing on tech bros. Some believe a few geniuses will invent our way out of our multiple crises, and are entitled to the rewards. Others maintain only a flattening of wealth across our whole society will make life sustainable beyond this generation. It seems like a face-off between liberty and equality. What's seldom recognised is that these are originally theological notions. Liberty says we're fundamentally solitary creatures. Our well-being is for ourselves to determine; sin is a personal failure: repentance is a chance for individual renewal. It's an imposition for the state to inhibit that. By contrast equality says we're fundamentally collective beings. Our situation in life is profoundly shaped by the social, economic and psychological conditions around us; sin is about structural and systemic forces beyond our individual ability to withstand: by combining with one another we find power to address them. The state rightly steps in to assist and protect when we're struggling, and to catalyse and redistribute to make society fairer. There's plenty of support for both positions in the Bible and theology. But another thing that's often overlooked is how these rival perspectives shaped the most basic things about early Christianity. Women and slaves flocked to the first-century church because there they found dignity and security in the face of the predations of their masters. Early Christians shared material goods and supported the needy. These were significant practices of equality. But the church also called for individual conversion. It never forgot the centrality of personal relationships and discipline. Most tangibly, it created a weekly event in which each person, based on their individual income and material affluence, brought their respective gift to a common table; whereupon a priest described the personal and social transformation made possible by Christ; after which everyone gathered ate and drank – but crucially, each received the same. Over the centuries this came to be called the eucharist or the mass, and was ritualised into an elaborate ceremony. But originally it was a vivid social practice that harmonised a focus on the individual in their gifts as well as their need for repentance, with the collective ideal that all could flourish and none need be left behind. To get through the polycrisis we're going to need all the wisdom we can get. But sometimes that wisdom lies in the past, not just the future.

04 JUNE 26

Good morning. One of the clichés of the media industry is that the public have a ‘right to know' especially when things go wrong. It's often true. Think of the post office scandal or the recent investigations into some of our privatised water companies. It's important for the public to know when rules are being broken and when there's manifest injustice. But the right to know must be balanced by prudence. On issues of security or defence, or when vital decisions are waiting, secrecy can be important. The whole point of a democratic system is that it's for us to choose who we trust, who we allow to keep secrets on our behalf. And all this is fine of course, until it goes wrong. In recent days many files relating to Peter Mandelson have been made public. We've learnt of indiscreet remarks between him and the then Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden. There are scathing comments about the Prime Minister and other leading politicians which were never meant to see the light of day, and come across now as disloyal. Reading them I can't help but suspect part of this was simply letting off steam. Politicians have a right, as we all do, to trust that casual remarks sometimes made in frustration won't go any further. But of course they sometimes do and in the days of smart phones this trust is coming to seem naïve. Perhaps these days we could reflect that Jesus' prophecy: ‘What you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in an inner chamber will be proclaimed on the housetops'. This is very challenging. Who hasn't said something disparaging behind someone's back and then interacted with them as if they'd never spoken? Hypocrisy is part of the human condition. And Jesus himself warns against it. ‘Let your yea be yea and your no be no'. That leaves it up to us to make judgments about who we trust and why, who we can safely let off steam to and who it is better to avoid. The public's right to know has to be balanced by common sense, because in the case of secrecy, context is all: another journalistic cliché of course. But it's true. And perhaps we should extend our sympathy to those who carry the burden of secrecy on our behalf. Not everything is a plot. Not everything said in private actually matters that much, though its exposure can be deeply embarrassing. Jesus told his disciples to be innocent as doves but I don't think he was telling them to take everything at face value. In the same sentence he had advised them to be as wise as serpents.

02 JUNE 26

01 JUNE 26

30 MAY 26

29 MAY 26

Good morning. The late rock singer Ozzy Osbourne's son, Jack, spoke recently about the fact that the family have worked with an AI provider to make a digital version of his father a year after his death. Digital Ozzy, an AI generated life-sized avatar, will be able, from beyond the grave, to talk, laugh, answer questions from and tease whoever wants to speak with him; just as Ozzy Osborne did when he was alive. The CEO of the AI company making this, commented that the avatar's created from ‘authenticated source material, consented and controlled by those who love him most'. His choice of language is striking. Love and control. Living and consent. There is a growing market – estimated at more than £100 billion worldwide for the ‘grief tech' industry, including what are called griefbots: an AI tool that recreates the dead as a comfort for the living. Organised religion, until recent decades, exercising a near-monopoly on the rituals and processes around death, might reasonably be supposed to be against this. But as evidenced by Pope Leo's first encyclical released on Monday, which addresses humanity's relationship with AI, the need for public debate about the ethics and morality of the use of AI is urgent, given the speed of change in its capabilities. The starting point for the consideration of a grief bot is that the inalienable dignity of a human being who's lived, according to Christian teaching, as someone created in the image of God, continues after death. But we know too that at the point of death, we no longer have any control over how we're spoken about, how our past actions are interpreted. We're no longer able to explain ourselves or surprise even the ones who love us best and miss us most. We are, in a curious way, at our most vulnerable, to exploitation or misuse by anyone who might make money from our memory. In this way, dying is the ultimate act of trust - not only in God - but in the people we leave behind. We can ask them to promise us that they will say certain things, scatter our ashes in certain places, live a certain way themselves. But we can't make them, we have to trust them. Perhaps we begin by recognising that the messy, contradictory, heartache of grief is tender territory whenever it's invaded by commercialising forces. And in the use of a griefbot, the inalienable dignity of a person is under question at precisely the time when the person who's died has no voice to contest what's being done in their name. Love and control. Living and consent. The choices of individuals who have the funds to do this for the people they've lost raise fundamental questions not just for them but for all the rest of us in society – who, inevitably, will die one day too.

On Monday over one and a half million Muslims from around the world began filling a vast tent city in Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage. Each year this religious practice which Muslims hope to perform at least once in their life, tests people's faith and physical stamina. But this year, there's another more sobering reality. Air defence batteries are positioned on the outskirts of Mecca, responsible for protecting the skies over the holy sites. And this is a consequence of the continued US-Israeli war in Iran and the most recent Israeli military strikes in eastern Lebanon, wars which are reconfiguring who gets to travel, how they get there, and at what cost. And amidst the hopes for an end to the war, I wonder how people living and affected by it think about such momentous rituals as Hajj, how they plan, save and travel only to return to continued uncertainty once the pilgrimage is over. Perhaps people have learned how to live beside ruins without letting the ruins destroy their soul. It is said that Lebanon in particular has always sung while burning. Its poets turned ruins into hymns and mourning into the resistance of stubborn hope. But it seems to me that wherever there is war and destruction in the world people learn to live with both grief and hope. Cafés and shops reopen after explosions, children play on the streets, weddings happen during ceasefires, cities still wake up to make coffee by the sea; survival itself becomes a kind of ritual. Maybe that is why so many people want to perform Hajj this year - ritual isn't escapism from the world's violence. It is resistance against becoming spiritually shaped by that violence. People who live close to loss ask deeper questions about God, justice, and meaning. The pilgrimage is a kind of surrender to a greater reality – everyone moves in the same direction, recites the same prayers, dressed in similar garments, and despite their different burdens, the crowds repeat the simple but powerful call ` here I am O Lord, here I am.' And for one suspended moment, as the pilgrims stand as the guests of God, they begin to realise something terrifying and beautiful- that every empire, every militia, every border, every war will one day become dust. That it isn't suffering but the need for divine mercy for us all which is the final truth about humanity.

Good morning. An odd group gathered this weekend at the Hay Festival for a simple but moving ceremony. Local authority officials joined storytellers and puppeteers beside the River Wye to launch a charter declaring that the river has rights – rights to perform its natural functions and be free from pollution. It's the latest expression of a global movement demanding that the law sees ecosystems as living entities rather than human property. I love walking the Wye. It winds 150 miles along the Wales-England border through lush pastures and rocky gorges. Yet, there are concerns that some industrial farming practices while not necessarily illegal are polluting the river and that species like salmon and native crayfish that depend on it are disappearing. The charter recognises an ecologist as the river's official representative at rive r management meetings. The Wye can't tell us what it wants, so she's charged to present what the river needs to flourish, setting aside human interests and preferences. This legal arrangement gives form to something we've long felt but struggled to enact. The poet William Wordsworth, who celebrated the Wye, sensed that people and rivers belong to something more fundamental, "more deeply interfused" as he writes. But I think the thirteenth century Japanese Buddhist teacher Dōgen Zenji saw most clearly what that perception really means. Dōgen knew that a river can be seen as a resource, a place of inspiration, and presumably it's something quite different to the fish. But all these perceptions fall short of a more elusive reality. As Dōgen writes, “It's not only that there is water in the world, but there's a world in water.” We typically live as though we were separate — each of us the centre of our own world, bending what surrounds us to our interests. Buddhism calls this the core delusion and the source of our suffering. So our response to nature is also a call to look at ourselves more deeply, asking not just whether a river is alive, but what it means for us to be alive, within a vast universe on which we entirely depend. The Wye is one of the most loved rivers in Britain, and one of the most damaged. The charter gives it rights. But the rights of nature return to us as duties of attention, restraint, and repair — not just in beautiful places, but at every point where our lives touch the world that sustains them.

25 MAY 26

Good morning. Those attending the National Cathedrals Conference in Bristol this week were asked a simple question: what is the role of a cathedral today? They reflected on a specially commissioned report Living Stones which offered some sobering conclusions about the future of English cathedrals. There was some good news. 77% of adults have visited a cathedral in the past three years. This suggests that many people still see cathedrals as “thin places” where they can glimpse heaven on earth and, as one of the Psalms says, “be still and know”. But the more worrying statistic is that three quarters of England's 42 Anglican cathedrals are in debt. The growing gap between income and repair costs is difficult to ignore. In his book How Buildings Learn, the American writer Stewart Brand argues that buildings survive by adapting to the people who use them. Cathedrals have done this for centuries. And, in a noisy digital age, they face a new challenge: how once again to reimagine themselves. Many cathedrals now rely on admission charges, concerts, exhibitions, cafés and other attractions to help cover their costs. . For some, this feels like an attack on the essential quality of what is after all a sacred building. It's a fine balancing act to be sure. My experience of cathedrals has shaped much of my ministry. York Minster was my home cathedral. I studied near Durham, I was ordained in Ripon, and now serve as an Honorary Canon of St Albans Cathedral. This has given me a closer understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing cathedral clergy and their lay colleagues today. Perhaps the real question isn't how cathedrals can survive, but why they still matter. When in the Cathedral, I often notice that many visitors still come looking for a moment - to pause, to light a candle to pray. I see people of all ages — including many young adults — wanting to stop, to rest, to listen to the silence, if only for a little while. The medieval builders of these vast places — vividly imagined in Ben Hopkins' novel Cathedral — could never have foreseen the technologies that now shape almost every aspect of modern life. But I'm pretty certain they understood that people would always seek out their wonderful creations: as a calm sanctuary in stark contrast to the world outside. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what our cathedrals are still for today and why we need them to survive.

I don't really follow football but this past week there seemed to be a lot of it in the news. One of the most contentious stories has been that of Southampton who admitted to spying on their opponents training sessions. They've now lost their appeal against expulsion from the Championship play-offs, which they described as `manifestly disproportionate.' For many of the fans who are hurt it may seem like an unfair and collective punishment. But while the fallout has been enormous, the issue isn't really about the consequences for breaking a rule. Football survives mistakes, controversy and questionable refereeing decisions every week. What it can't survive is the erosion of trust. Once clubs begin believing covert spying and deception are acceptable routes to competitive advantage, the integrity of the sport itself starts to erode. Competition in all areas of life must still have moral boundaries because if winning becomes the only value left, then every other principle gradually becomes negotiable. Whether in football, politics business or our relationships, a culture obsessed purely with outcomes eventually loses the moral language needed to restrain itself. Success begins to justify deception and eventually people no longer even recognise dishonesty because it has become so normalised by success. But if restraint is important so is the principle of proportionality. The Qur'an says, ` we have made you a middle nation' a verse which inspired Muslim thinkers to regard balance and equilibrium as a spiritual act. A small wound shouldn't become a lifelong bitterness, a mistake shouldn't lead to total exile and justice should always be distinguishable from revenge. This isn't weakness, its God consciousness contained in the sacred words, `By justice, the heavens and the earth endure.' When so much of our culture encourages us towards extremes, cutting people off, letting disagreement turn to dehumanising, and destroying peoples reputations, the courage to remain fair even when you're hurting or angry is a difficult but necessary virtue. On losing their appeal Southampton issued a statement apologising to their fans and supporters stating that `trust now needs to be rebuilt' and that they were determined to act with humility and `put things right.” And in the end that is all any of us can hope to do whether in sport or in life in general. All of us carry a relationship we could mend, a trust we can uphold, and while its not always easy, perhaps one of the quietest forms of spiritual maturity is the ability to put something right before time makes the repair impossible.

21 MAY 26

Good morning. “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” I was reminded of that quip from G. K. Chesterton last week, when I visited The Old Ferryboat Inn in Cambridgeshire, which not only claims to be the oldest pub in England (serving ale since 560AD, apparently), but also to have a resident ghost. A young woman took her life for love almost a thousand years ago and local legend has it she's haunted the place ever since, appearing each year on the anniversary of her death: the 17th March. That date also happens to be St Patrick's Day, which is perhaps not the ideal occasion for sober eyewitness testimony. But it's easy to be sceptical…. According to a recent National Folklore Survey, more than a third of people in England believe in ghosts, and many like the idea of them too. “A haunted house at the top of your street is fantastic,” said Caroline Gibson from Pontefract in Yorkshire, speaking to the BBC about a poltergeist who is currently trending on social media, after featuring on the paranormal podcast, Uncanny. The occult does not sit easily with mainstream Christianity. The Church warns against séances, spirit-hunting and attempts to conjure the dead. Yet in an age inclined to explain everything materially, Christianity insists that the world does indeed have a spiritual dimension. A problem remains, however, of how to discern between spiritual reality versus superstition — or for that matter, between good versus evil spiritual forces. “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out” doesn't really help us with that discernment, but Chesterton, himself a Christian, followed up with another one-liner that might be more useful. “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” That gets us closer. Open the mind, just not endlessly, to no purpose: open it up to close it again. The risk of being open-minded is that you may sometimes look foolish or naïve. But there is risk too in being so determined never to be gulled, or seemingly unscientific, that you refuse in advance the richness that comes with leading a spiritual life. Ghost stories challenge us to believe that there's more to the world than what we can understand in purely physical terms. Christianity goes further still, teaching that we ourselves are more than merely physical beings. If a haunted house in your street can be called fantastic, then why shouldn't a church be called the same – in both meanings of the word? Fantastic in the modern sense of being great, but also in the older sense of being extra-ordinary. A place for open minds to shut down on something solid.

Good morning. As the sun finally begins to coax flowers into bloom, the Chelsea Flower Show will open its gates today. The Royal Horticultural Society's annual event sees organisations create beautiful planted spaces, which inspire and educate visitors. With our news headlines full of unremitting contempt and calamity, millions of us will tune into coverage of Chelsea this week for relief. I'd like to think this is more than just a comforting distraction.Christian writer CS Lewis wrote about his vision of hell in the novella ‘the great divorce'. Hell was a place of continual twilight where people moved further and further apart into infinite space, driven by mutual suspicion and a sense of time ticking down. Paradise, by contrast was a place of colour, fruitfulness, and sunshine – open to anyone bold enough to stay. In paradise, people were unafraid of each other or the future. They sought out newcomers, working to convince them to remain.The show gardens at Chelsea may be sanctuaries of beauty, but they are also about shared spaces and living well together. Many, like the Trussell ‘together' garden, are inspired specifically by the way communities deal with hardship – the Trussel Trust's foodbanks tackle food poverty. Like Lewis' paradise, communal gardens like this one combat the notion that safety and solace can only be had by building walls and retreating from the world.John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote a collection of health remedies based on what people could grow or source themselves. Titled ‘Primitive Physick' and published in 1747 it would run to 23 editions during his life. Although his remedies were of their day, his commitment to people's access to healthcare and use of what was readily available still bears weight. Today, the rooftop garden of the national Methodist offices in London is planted with herbs and flowers used in Primitive Physick, recognising the importance of gardens to our collective mental and physical well-being.A reality of life in Britain today is that access to outdoor space is not equal: many do not have gardens. A Christian vision for good community still resists the notion that beautiful outdoor spaces are only the preserve of private wealth. After the show, all of the Chelsea gardens will find their way out into communities around the country – plants will go to balconies, windowsills and neglected urban spaces, gardens to hospices, schools, and the verges of motorways. They will join many other community gardens schemes, allowing even those of us who live surrounded by pavement, to put our hands in soil and see something grow. These gardens are places of retreat, yes: but also places of truth telling about the quiet work of living peacefully together.

18 MAY 26

Good morning. Reed Hoffman, one of the founders of Linked In, tells us that typing is over and voicepilling is here.This is the word he has coined to capture the way, he says, we are set to bypass keyboards. After the quill the pen, then the typewriter, the text, the voice note… but in voicepilling entire articles, essays or books - everything actually - is spoken directly to the machine for production. Hands-free.Is voicepilling a word that will stick? Sounds unlikely but who knows? New words seem to be invented more rapidly than ever but then language is always being born again.At an open mic event I was at this week one poet used the beautiful expression ‘sonder' - the kind of neglected word from Chaucer or Shakespeare which etymologists and crossword compilers love to rediscover. Sonder is defined as one's realization that each person you pass by ‘is the main character in their own story, in which you are just an extra.'The definition comes from John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of words he created to capture emotions that he says, ‘we feel but don't have the words too express'.Some words or phrases disappear, some morph into new meaning… while others stick around for ever.Few writers have had more stickability than William Tyndale. The 500th anniversary of his English New Testament is currently being celebrated in an exhibition at the British Library and, from next month, at St Paul's Cathedral.Tyndale believed it shouldn't only be priests who could access the Bible, but that everyone should hear it in everyday English. His translation, published in 1526, was so popular that when King James commissioned his 'Authorized Version', nearly a century later, the royal translation team ripped ninety percent of their text straight out of Tyndale.His phrases continue to haunt the language: 'from strength to strength'; ‘for better or worse'; ‘lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'; ‘salt of the earth' and ‘fight the good fight'.Tyndale was after a poetic language understood by ordinary people and was so successful that, as someone said, ‘No Tyndale, No Shakespeare'.Or as playwright David Edgar put it: ‘No Tyndale, No Kindle'.But in democratizing religion, in translating the divine into the human, he was branded the ‘most dangerous man in England' and burned at the stake. The political powers could see, to use another of his phrases, ‘the writing on the wall'.Words are dangerous. Once you can speak the divine in your own tongue then you can bring god down from heaven onto earth and decide for yourself what your religion means for your life.You can, as Tyndale wrote, ‘let there be light'

Sometimes, digging into the origins of a word can help with real insights into a contemporary issue. Take the meaning of the word person. The ancient Greeks used the word for face – prosopon – to mean a person, while in Latin, the word persona, from which we get the English person, owes its origins to sonare, which means to sound. So ideas about a person in these ancient languages focused on what can be seen and heard – the face and the voice. They're integral to how people connect with one another. This importance of the person came to mind when I read reports this week that the revamped NHS app, sold to the public as providing patients with a doctor in their pocket by digitising services, has had a distressing unforeseen drawback. Some patients, according to these reports, discovered test results for serious illnesses, such as cancer, by them being uploaded on the app. The NHS has said it has reissued guidance to stop this happening, confirming the importance of the soothing voice of a doctor breaking bad news. As one patient who says this happened to them, put it: “Seeing someone face to face is so important”. Technology can speed life up and be super-efficient, but there are clearly alienating, impersonal drawbacks too. When Pope Leo was elected a year ago, he said he was going to make artificial intelligence a key priority of his work. He's about to release his first encyclical, or teaching document on AI, focusing on the importance of human dignity as the world undergoes such profound technological change. He's also released a message on AI for the Catholic Church's annual World Communications Day, being marked this Sunday. It warns AI can erode people's ability to think analytically and creatively. Not that Pope Leo is a Luddite opposed to change. He's comfortable with technology. One of his brothers told a reporter that when he got locked out of his computer recently, he phoned the Pope who quickly told him what to do to get back in. But Leo's concern is that if AI takes over areas of life where human interaction used to be essential, it damages the deepest levels of human communication. People of faith, like Pope Leo, believe that faces and voices are sacred because God created humanity in his image and likeness. Back in the fourth century, St Gregory of Nyssa said that preserving human faces and voices means preserving an indelible reflection of divine love. It's as true today as it was then. For a patient facing bad news, a gentle voice and a consoling look can mean the difference between what you can bear and what you cannot.

14 MAY 26

Good morning, In Monday's speech, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer used the word ‘hope' 14 times. He said the country would see hope reflected in government policy, and that “people need hope.” Today, faith groups and civil society organisations have launched a week-long initiative called A Million Acts of Hope – a nationwide invitation to celebrate the everyday acts of kindness, care and connection happening across the UK to combat the growing sense of division and polarisation so many feel. Many of us in Britain today can't help but sense a growing hope-lessness. Perhaps it's long been there and it's the ever-present drum of social media and a 24-hour news cycle that have made it feel like it's taken root. Politicians of all parties have long employed the language of hope in their speeches. It's an appeal to the very human instinct to believe there's a future state or condition that will be better in some way. But as a Christian, I believe hope is something much deeper than optimism, more than a sometimes blinkered decision to always look on the bright side. When in the book of Jeremiah God speaks of giving “a hope and a future”, it's a profound promise of what's to come, regardless of current circumstances. Hope itself is also active and not static. As Emily Dickinson described in her 1861 poem, it's like a bird, a thing with feathers, that “perches in the soul” and “never stops at all”. As a nation – and as a world – we've been through so much in recent years: the worsening climate crisis, a pandemic, economic instability and turbulent politics. It feels like the nation can't catch a break, and that we are breaking apart. But by engaging in these million acts of hope, those participating are offering an alternative narrative. As American episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge said this week, stories of acts of kindness across political divides help foster hope. For her, such illustrations “arouse feelings of neighbourliness where there might otherwise be only estrangement”. The sense of us all being in this together needs to be supported “not with morality lectures but with examples”. Don't tell me! Show me!” There's an active selflessness to these hopeful acts of kindness – the millions we see and experience every day. A reminder that we as a nation are capable of acting beyond our own self-interest to look at the needs of those around us, to participate in hope-making. In these turbulent times, I find hope when I encounter others who show profound kindness. I feel most hopeful when those acts come from a group I've been told are ‘other' to me in some way. None of us should put our hope in politics alone, but perhaps each of us might see the face of God in the million small kindnesses of others that together point to a hope that's much bigger, and much more profound.

Good morning. A German holiday maker has successfully sued his tour operator alleging that he had spent 20 minutes every morning trying, without success, to find sun loungers by the pool. He was on the case at 6 a.m. but the loungers were already covered in towels, though they often remained unoccupied through the day whilst he and his family lay on the ground. The Court awarded him damages. Another tourist commenting on this story gleefully recalls an alternative solution to the problem: 'it soon stopped when some lads were going down in the middle of the night and throwing all the towels into the pool.' But our more law abiding litigant hopes that the fear of legal action will spur tour operators and hotels to devise fair and rational allocation systems for these highly contested spaces. As far as I know, Thomas Hobbes never took a package holiday, but having lived through the turmoil of the English civil war and its aftermath, he would not have been surprised by stories of so called 'sunbed wars': 'during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe' so he tells us in his great work Leviathan, 'they are in that condition called war'. Hobbes' father was a vicar, and his relationship to Christianity is complicated, as is perhaps not uncommon in such circumstances. But Hobbes' views are not so different from Augustine's, who was in the habit of noting that just as divine history begins with the story of Cain killing Abel, so world history begins with the story of Romulus killing Remus. For Augustine, it is 'every man against every man' as Hobbes puts it, and not just poolside. I know nothing about the personal beliefs of our German litigant, but I think he is a bit of a hero for spurning two obvious but unhelpful responses to this gloomy diagnosis of the human condition. One is to take the law into your own hands - throwing the towels in the pool - which could end rather badly of course. The other is just to grumble - and who doesn't enjoy a good grumble? Of all the things in the world which are unfairly and irrationally distributed, sun loungers are by no means the most significant. Houses lie empty, while children sleep on the streets. Food goes to waste while there is hunger. Medicines expire on shelves, and diseases go untreated. Christians have never needed to be told that humans can be deeply selfish, but everywhere the faith is truly alive there have been dreamers and prophets, from St Francis to Martin Luther King, who have contended that the world doesn't have to be determined by our flawed natures, even if we need to reckon with their existence and character. Who knows whether the sunbed wars will come to an end, but Mr Eggert - let's give him his name and due credit – by pushing the tour operators and hotels into action has given us hope for bloodless revolutions.

Good morning.Ocean transport has rarely left our news headlines over these last few weeks. The ongoing efforts of the USA and Iran to block or open up the Strait of Hormuz now being joined by the plight of passengers on a virus struck cruise ship, finally docked in Tenerife.It's tempting then, to think of the world's oceans primarily as means of transporting travellers and goods. Yet, as ocean naturalists, from Rachel Carson to David Attenborough, have repeatedly reminded us, the seas are home to a vast array of amazing species. The wonders of our oceans are however, now at significant risk from two direct consequences of human activity, climate change and pollution. Indeed, it's widely argued by scientists that, for the seas to recover, a minimum of 30% of the world's oceans will need to be protected by 2030.The challenge, as so often with regard to environmental damage, is our human reluctance to take short term sacrifices for longer term gain. Or else we so frame the actions required by way of sacrifice that they fall disproportionately on the poorest among our communities and nations. It is here that two core aspects of my own faith come together.First, as Psalm 95 in the Hebrew Scriptures asserts, “The sea is his, and he made it”. That tells me, our human accountability to God extends to our treatment of the oceans just as much as it does the dry land.Second, those of us with greater wealth or assets are expected to shoulder the heavier burden. As Jesus says in Luke 12: 48, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”Governments have a vital part to play. The High Seas Treaty, which came into force earlier this year, and the UK Parliament has now legislated to ratify, affords opportunity for safeguarding large swathes of the oceans. The Sargasso Sea, surrounding the Island of Bermuda, and home to a rich and diverse range of species, is a prime candidate for environmental protection measures that avoid destroying the livelihoods of local fishing communitiesI'm grateful too for the work of campaigning organisations, such as Greenpeace, whose ship Witness, I was privileged to visit, with other parliamentarians, recently. Along with sister vessels, it monitors biodiversity and plastic pollution in sensitive areas, exposing behaviours that jeopardise the seas and challenging us all to do better. Together, treaties and campaigners offer me hope that we can yet treasure the world's oceans for their true value, a value far far beyond their immediate usefulness as means to transport the world's supplies of oil. But, as Jesus stated so bluntly, our own individual practices matter too.

Good morning. After another tense night watching football in the pub, my friend reminded me of how different the experience is to when we were younger. How do you mean I asked. Well, we don't reek of smoke, he said. And I remembered what it used to be like. How after going to a gig, or a bar, everyone stank of someone else's smoke afterwards. And now we never do.It was twenty years ago this year that the Health Act passed, banning smoking in enclosed spaces… and today we take it for granted.Last month, almost under the radar, another law passed so that anyone born since January 2009 will never legally be able to buy tobacco products. Smoking will become rarer and rarer…but so gradually that we won't realise.We don't notice change as it's happening, it's absorbed into the new normal.If the morning news is immediate and dramatic, history is often incremental and invisible. It happens on the quiet.Until you stop to notice that it's hiding in plain sight. Or you measure it against a greater span than a news cycle. A life span, for example, a centurion like David Attenborough.Penicillin, discovered when Attenborough was two, has a reasonable claim to being the best invention since sliced bread… except that sliced bread was also invented in 1928.My uncle Dave, who died the other day, was the last of my mothers eleven siblings. One didn't survive into adulthood due to polio, a disease almost eradicated today. People no longer have 12 children like my grandparents, - the NHS, born when Attenborough was 22, introduced the contraceptive pill and family sizes fell.Then there's electrification or the mobile phone - when Attenborough was 50 … as well as, on the down side, the atom bomb and global warming.Just as we might wonder how our ancestors tolerated slavery or hanging maybe our descendants will wonder how we tolerated the industrial production of animals for food or tearing down rainforests. The American essayist Rebecca Solnit, who calls herself, in a winning phrase, an ‘ambient Buddhist,' says that it's not heroic leaders who change history but the seeds planted quietly by communities acting together… who may not live to see those seeds flower. Seeds of equality or justice or peace which, once planted, may seem to disappear. In her new book, The Beginning Comes After The End, Solnit calls these seeds ‘imaginal cells' which hold ‘the instructions for transformation'. Or as Jesus of Nazareth told his friends, ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.'

Good morning. If you live to be one hundred, will you still be the same person inside who you've always been? Will the same things still make you laugh? Will you remember the best moments of your life…and the worst? Will you still care about the world and will it still care about you, if you live to be one hundred? Let's ask Sir David Attenborough, who today reaches one hundred. He's helped create some of the most beloved and respected nature programmes ever made. But he's a mere whippersnapper in comparison with some of the antediluvian patriarchs from the book of Genesis. There is Methuselah, of course, who is listed as living 969 years. He appears in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, who only lived for 950 years. After the flood, the patriarchs got younger. Moses, for example, only lived for a mere 120 years. There are symbolic and literary interpretations for why these men were described as being extraordinarily long-lived. These stories tell us that ageing should not be feared but revered. That the older a person was, the more respected they were, the more important they were, and crucially, the closer they were to God. Today, ageing is more feared than ever before. We have an obsession with artificially preserving youth to an unnatural degree, as if ageing were a shameful secret. The middle-aged are spoken of with a hint of derision. Our parents dismissed as privileged, clueless boomers. And the generation before them? Silent. Of course, old age doesn't always lead to wisdom, but anti-ageing rhetoric, however subtle, does lead to a disquieting erosion of worth. To see the elderly as God sees them would be to regard ageing as a privilege, and to see those older than us as repositories of wisdom and experience, instead of a burden on public resources. It is the elderly who engage most in public service, making up an army of volunteers who do everything from maintaining communal outdoor space, helping run various social groups, and caring for grandchildren. They are the custodians of the Christian faith, valued elders who play a vital role in the life of the church. Psalm 92 speaks of cedars planted in the house of the Lord, how in old age they're still green and produce fruit. In every community there are to be found inspiring archetypes of ageing. We place all our hopes in the young, for they represent the future, but our elders don't just belong to the past, they are the present too. They still have the ability to take the world by surprise. Happy 100th birthday Sir David. If I live to be one hundred, may I too be green and full of fruit.

07 MAY 26

Early one morning last week, I was taking a walk from the church to the park in central London where I live. I walked down Waterloo Place, named after the battle more than 200 years ago when on a June Sunday, 60,000 casualties and thousands of horses were killed on a muddy field in present day Belgium. Past the memorial to the war in Crimea fought three decades later when hundreds of thousands of men died, many from infected wounds. Historic acknowledgement of terrible bloodshed collided with the present day as I noticed a new statue, as yet without too many crowds to see it, had appeared overnight. We now know it was put there by Banksy. Up on a plinth is a well fed man, dressed in a western style business suit. In his right hand, he holds high a huge flag. His other hand is in a fist. He is marching forward. But the flag he's carrying has blown into his face and he can't see where he's going. As the viewer, we witness his next step taking him off the plinth, marching into thin air. One more step and he will fall. The man's distinctive posture lionises individual autonomy, allied with what seems to be a determination to dominate in the name of whatever's on the flag he's holding. But the flag, presumably the reason he's marching in the first place, is itself the very reason he can't see the way ahead. I found myself addressing the man as he towered over me…. Sir – you're holding your flag up proudly but you can't see where you're going. I don't know what made you think you should be up there, but you don't have to stay. Now, the only way is down. But when you're scrambling to get up - in the mud of the wars similar to the ones that are commemorated all around you – there's a chance you could recover yourself, and turn your flag, no doubt colourful and vibrant, into a symbol of a different kind of unity. You could use it to bind the wounds of war, to wipe the face of Christ on his way to be crucified. You could use it to make shade in the heat, bring warmth in the cold. In addressing the man in my mind, I thought of the prodigal son in Jesus's parable, leaving his community to seek autonomy, marching off his own particular plinth, finding to his surprise, off his pedestal, that his father still welcomed him home. I found myself feeling compassion for hubristic and lonely humanity, as we consistently choose domination over cooperation, clenched fists not open hands. And for evoking these reflections, I thanked God for the inventiveness of artists, who in these bellicose and dysregulated times, powerfully and provocatively show us another way.

05 MAY 26

05 MAY 26

I don't know about you, but May is my favourite month: spring in its pomp and the blessing of light, warm days to come! And with ‘international dawn-chorus day' tomorrow, too, it's an invitation to hear nature's songs of praise sung from the treetops afresh.If you struggle to rise early, you could follow the advice of journalist Henry Porter and drink a lot of water before you go to bed.Though some may not have been to bed at all! — a report out this week says that birdwatching is now the second most popular hobby among “Gen Z”. Almost three quarters of a million 16-29 year-olds bird-watch regularly, which has to be good news. A young woman called Jess Painter, of the RSPB youth council, said that by pausing “to be curious, to watch, listen and learn, you open yourself up to endless small moments of wonder.”With so much strife in the world, it's surely one profound way of clearing our heads.Yet as Jess hints, getting out to watch the birds, or to listen to the dawn chorus, is not merely escape from what's wrong, but embrace of what's right: nature calls to our own better nature, too — to give the gift of our attention, so desperately fought over by the tech giants, to what's natural, beautiful. And as a Christian I'd say to sense the Creator's presence, too, within the awe-inspiring symphony of Creation.Such awe is so good for us — our ego knows it can't possibly compete with a choir of blackbirds, robins, warblers, even a nightingale if we're very lucky — so it quietens, and lets the soul stir to become part of ‘the family of things' again, as the poet Mary Oliver puts it.And in such moments, shift happens. Recently, I interviewed the eminent ecologist Tom Crowther, who says that nature is filled with feedback loops — some of which are destructive, when the balance of an ecosystem has been upset (so often by humans); while other loops are restorative, regenerative — and we can be part of them.As a scientist, he said that it's crucial his discipline learns spiritual practices of contemplation, meditation, prayer, as ways to help break the circuit, to step out of our personal feedback loops of despair, into ones of hopeful uplift instead.Take joy in nature, as we rediscover our own nature singing its song, too. Watch the birds of the air, as Jesus said for good reason.It may start simply with setting an alarm for tomorrow — or by drinking that large glass of water tonight. Whatever helps us best to catch this polyphonic wake up for the soul.

Good morning. 75 years ago this weekend saw the Festival of Britain open to much fanfare. In 1951, cities were being rebuilt from the rubble of war, there were food shortages and rationing, and there was uncertainty in everyday life. But instead of retreating into itself and just focusing on the practicalities of post-war life, Britain decided to do something remarkable and celebrate itself. The Festival saw the SouthBank of the Thames in Central London transformed into a cultural and entertainment hub, much as it had been centuries earlier, and it left a lasting imprint, shaping modern British design, architecture, and public art for decades to come. But perhaps its most powerful legacy was in creating a shared collective national experience, a moment in time where people felt like belonged to something far greater than themselves. We've had glimpses of that more recently, and the London 2012 Olympics carried a similar energy. I vividly remember how, for those few weeks, there was a real sense of shared joy and excitement across the country, no matter who we were. The opening ceremony showed a Britain that reflected its modern identity, whimsical, eccentric, confident and diverse, with a keen sense of our history and an eye for what the future may hold. Collective moments like this matter, because they bring the nation together and remind us of who we are and who we can be. Sadly, that sense of togetherness is perhaps more fragile today. Differences feel more pronounced, more obvious than ever. Some seem more inclined to destroy rather than build bridges, and we have seen the horrible consequences of that this week in Golders Green. In the Sikh scriptures, one of the revered saints of the faith, Bhagat Kabir, says “When the difference between myself and others is removed, then wherever I look, I see only You, the Divine”. At a time of polarised communities both here and abroad, some minorities feel under threat, particularly when it's easier to withdraw into our own perspectives than it is to convene with those who may see the world differently. But if we look beyond those differences, I believe we are far stronger as a country than some – both inside and outside the UK - might give us credit for. 75 years ago, the Festival of Britain was special because of its spirit of hope and togetherness. Likewise with London 2012. They weren't times of perfect agreement, in fact far from it, but they remained moments of shared experience nonetheless because they celebrated us – every single one of us – in our United Kingdom.

30 APRIL 26

Good morning I'm a bit biased, but the River Wear might be my favourite river in Britain. Winding through the city of Durham and connecting the Pennines to the sea, it has witnessed some of my happiest moments and easily absorbed any personal crises I might wish to throw at it. This week marks the completion of a major restoration project for the Wear; 1,700 saplings have been planted along its banks, in the hope that the new trees will safeguard both the health of the water and the creatures who live in and alongside it. The project is welcome news in an otherwise bleak picture for our rivers, many of which are in an active state of decline. This is not unique to Britain – around the world, rivers are not flourishing as they used to do. In his book Is A River Alive, Robert Macfarlane has proposed that this global decline in river health is not just a failure of legislation, but a failure of imagination. If we imagine a river as an isolated resource for our use and disposal, we will treat it that way. But if we imagine a river as a living being amongst other living beings, we will not only better protect and nurture our rivers. We will also better see the ways rivers protect and nurture us. Can we really think of a river as living? It certainly feels like a linguistic stretch. But it isn't a new idea. Cultures all over the world treat rivers as having a life of their own, with a particular power to sustain and restore both human and nonhuman creatures. This includes my own tradition. The Bible is rich with images of rivers as the source of blessing and renewal for the people. For the first Christians, it was no coincidence that Jesus chose to be baptised in a river. This vital act of initiation belongs in water that moves and brings life. Early Church teaching encouraged Christ's disciples to follow his example; where possible, their baptisms should likewise take place in running or living water. And while baptisms have since moved indoors, there are still Christians around the world who gather by rivers to welcome new members into the Church. They understand something that we have, perhaps, forgotten; rivers can and do spiritually and physically bless us – if only we can let them live.

28 APRIL 26

27 APRIL 26

25 APRIL 26