I am writing this immediately following the return to the UK of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori following their detention in Iran. Most of us will have no idea how it feels to be held without reason and without any idea when or if release will come. Similarly, ordinary people condemn such dreadful treatment of…

To my mind, an essential ingredient of spring is primroses in the ditches and later on cowslips too. I love the snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and others in the garden but wild primroses are on a different level. They are all muddled up with the remains of the die back from last summer, the still raised…

Three weeks ago this morning Russia invaded Ukraine. Terrible things have happened that people prayed would not happen again in Europe, or anywhere else in the world. We have been reminded of the extreme fragility of peace between nations and that despite all that is enshrined in our hopes for a world of united nations,…

For people of a certain age brought up in a particular world, to sit by an open log fire is to be content. A sense of security and of warmth leads to relaxation that may be entirely unjustified. While I sat beside the fire in the photograph, happily and sleepily reading a book (in hard…

I am writing this in Cornwall just after storm Eunice has passed by on her relentless journey up country. We drove down to Porthcurno beach where we watched huge waves rolling in and producing a mat of surf in the afternoon sunshine. A couple of seals were fishing in the shallow water and seemed unperturbed…

Traditionally people talk about what they ‘give up for Lent’; at work I hear it said by colleagues who may know little more than that about Lent, or what the season is about. If Lent induces a sense of self-discipline, then who are we to criticise. Committed Christians may not find it adequate to ‘go…

We have woken up to the reality of the damage the human population is doing to the environment. Carrying capacity is the limit to the size of population that the planet can sustain; the more the population demands from the environment the smaller the population the environment can support but the population grows anyway. All…

This coming Sunday, 20th February is ‘United Nations World Day of Social Justice’ which has social justice in the digital economy as its focus for this year. The entire digital world has grown in importance for us all since COVID related restrictions have prevented face to face meetings and limited gatherings. The use of the…

I was only about thirteen when I first came across a bigoted, racist attitude. No doubt I had met such a person before but in my youthful shyness I had not noticed but then this lad at school came over my horizon. Looking back I realise that he was being fed lines by his father…

(Part of the fresco cycle inside the church at Nohant-Vic (France) represents the sixth chapter of Isaiah) The first time I encountered Isaiah 6:1-8 I was captivated by the contrast between the small man and the great big God. Previously my youthful picture of Isaiah was of a great prophet some of whose words I…