Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections

I first encountered this book through a conversation with a colleague at Sarum College about pastoral supervision.I was aware of Nancy Kline and her transformative Book Time to Think. My first encounter with her thinking was through Christopher Spence with whom she produced A Hundred Principles of Love. Both Christopher and Andrew Henderson profoundly shaped […]

This is a short, readable, challenging and deeply transformative book. The author is Rt Revd Dr Alastair Redfern, who chairs the Clewer Initiative, and the Sarum College Trustees, and is a theological educator of significant skill and generativity. Organised into four parts, the book explores the theme of slavery and salvation within our Scriptural and […]

I cannot now remember when I first encountered a piece of art by Frost. I do remember the vibrancy of the colour and the freedom of the form. Here – I sensed – was energy and life. His pictures of the sea and boats inspired by Cornwall remain iconic images of British modern art. This […]

This is an appealing and fluent book with a story and a purpose. I read it in one siting on a train from Durham to London and as I passed through York (just under half way through the book) I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the 98th Archbishop of York and this book. […]

Most of us live ordinary lives making the best of time and circumstance. We do our best. We sometimes fail. We deal with whatever the days of work bring. We dream. We hope. We cry. We wonder about roads not taken. We (mostly) do our best. We look forward to holidays and try to keep in […]

I have recently invested in a Kindle as part of an aspiration to travel a bit more lightly. The conversion will take some time but here is the first marker – this memoir is the first that I have read on the ‘neat’ and ‘light’ tablet. A great start helped by an amazing story vividly […]

I have had a busy week at Sarum College catching up with students, moderating assignments, a meeting of my body of Trustees as well as the usual range of unpredictable listening, mediating and resolving. Not all questions or difficulties move too quickly into the resolving zone ! I read for a small part of the […]

by Brent Peery, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2021, 121 pp., £18.99 (PBK), ISBN 9781785926822 This is a well-researched, grounded, and passionate text that makes a persuasive case for Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy (OOC). This process embraces a methodology of care that articulates the difference that a chaplain can make to patients, their families and the health […]

Bird by Bird : Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott Google informs me that around 4,500 books are published each day across the world. This is daunting, by any account, for both reader and writer! How do we make what we write count, be read and make any kind of difference? For those […]

Honest Sadness Lament in a Pandemic Age John Holdsworth Sacristy Press 2021 Many of my friends have commented on their weariness with these weeks of lockdown. Government heralds progress with statistics about vaccinations delivered and the reducing infection numbers – and all that is all good – but these months have taken their toll. Uncertainty, […]

What Does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain, by Suzanne Heywood (Collins 2021) In these days of zoom TV interviews it is not unusual to see the learned and powerful sitting in front of (usually) tidy rows of books. It is impossible to not to notice what these shelves hold and […]

The Power of Ritual : Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices Casper Ter Kuile William Collins 2020 I am indebted to my friend Jane Shaw for pointing me in the direction of this rather stimulating and wonderful book. It came out of a conversation about what learning might look ( and feel ) like at […]

Finishing Well – A God’s Eye view of Ageing by Ian Knox ( SPCK 2020) Ian Knox is an experienced, wise, creative priest and evangelist. His love of people, of life, of Scripture and learning are all present in the fourteen chapters of this book. His scope of reading and listening to a range of […]

More than 80 years ago, in Greece, 60 thousand Jews lived peacefully in Thessaloniki. It was a vibrant and valuable community, with most of these Jews working in the port. So much so that the port of Thessaloniki was even closed on Saturday, Shabbat. There also lived and studied great rabbis emeritus. Everyone hung out […]