Connecting with Culture - Books and Literature

Struck by the Power of Now

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:46:11 +0100

It’s hard to learn from someone who doesn’t seem to believe the same as us. If we’ve made up our minds that they’re ‘unsound’, our curiosity tends to wither on the vine.

Imagine my own disbelief, therefore, when a ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’ bestseller I’d bought (to check out the opposition) crept up on my blind side and helped me to see things afresh.

Eckhart Tolle’s star is in the ascendant right now; suffice to say he’s the subject of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club ‘Summer School’ this year. Russell DiCarlo’s introduction to Tolle’s The Power of Now sets an intriguing scene: ‘Our ultimate destiny’, he writes, ‘is to re-connect with our essential Being and express from our extraordinary, divine reality in the ordinary physical world, moment by moment.’ Sounds dodgy on one level, of course, but so did Jesus. On another level it resonates deeply.

darwin’s angel

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:29:13 +0100

Richard Dawkins has long been recognised as Britain’s grumpiest atheist, our very own Darwinian Victor Meldrew, screeching ‘I don’t believe it’ at anyone who will listen. Readers of his recent God Delusion will have enjoyed him harrumphing his way through modern religion, vanquishing the faithful by the power of ridicule and rhetoric alone.

it all works out in the end

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:18:25 +0100

So, where were you at midnight last Friday? Tucked up in bed with a Horlicks and a John Grisham novel, or standing in a motley queue of striped stockings and pointy hats, itching to get your mitts on the latest (and last) Harry Potter?

welcome to everytown

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:58:49 +0100

Is there an English philosophy? Do the English see the world in a particular way?

These were the questions that the philosopher Julian Baggini set out to answer in his book Welcome to Everytown. Identifying the most typical postcode in the country – that is, the one that most accurately reflected its demographic and economic mix – he ended up going to live in S66 in Rotherham for six months.

the reporter

Fri, 11 May 2007 08:24:51 +0100

‘Is the surface ultimately all there is?’ It could easily be the title of a book by John Stott, but this is the question currently confronting audiences at London’s Cottesloe Theatre in a new play by Nicholas Wright.

The Reporter is based on the remarkable life of the BBC correspondent and film-maker (and former MI6 agent) James Mossman, and specifically his last eight years. It begins with him ‘reporting’ on his own death, reading the suicide note he left behind in his Norfolk cottage: ‘I can’t bear it any more, though I don’t know what “it” is.’

In his distinctive BBC tones, he comments: ‘The “it” is cradled inside a pair of inverted commas, as though to protect it against enquiry. But a reporter must enquire. It’s what we do. What is “it”? How could a man in whose death “it” played such an intimate part not know?’

The purpose of the play thus declared, The Reporter goes on to examine the social climate in the years before Mossman’s death in 1971 and searches for the truth behind his bewildering end.

roots to happiness

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:16:53 +0000

Recently, I’ve been wondering: Does my ‘community’ work for me any more? I’ve been part of a little gathering of Christian searchers, church refugees, dreamers and mavericks for several years now, but it’s hardly a model of church growth to rival Mars Hill…

spiritual fitness

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:06:39 +0100

If readers of Connecting with Culture are typical of the British population – and surely they are?! – then around a thousand will be members of a gym. (And if they are really typical, most of them will rarely use their membership.)

district and circle

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:46:12 +0100

In one of his gloomier moments, the Welsh priest and poet R S Thomas wrote of his homeland:

There is only the past/Brittle with relics.

That weight presses down on us all. We are born into stories that have been told for countless generations, plots that long predate our arrival on stage. This is where we get our identity, our security. Yet we also long to be unbound from the past, free to tell our own stories, to work out our own plots.

capitalism as if the world matters

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:49:50 +0100

'We are convinced that Evangelicals must engage with climate change… Love of God, love of neighbour, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for (us) to respond with moral passion and concrete action.’

capitalism as if the world mattered

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:10:46 +0000

capitalism as if the world mattered

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:10:25 +0000

capitalism as if the world mattered

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:11:07 +0000

God's Politics

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 10:32:26 +0000

Jim Wallis likes to make connections. The best-selling author, political agitator, Harvard lecturer and founder of the Sojourners Network may enjoy breakfast with Bono or Bush from time to time, but he’s quick to return to the poorest area of Washington where he lives and works.

the return of the king

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 09:08:57 +0000

The Return of the King
(article first published in Christianity magazine, December 2005)

Mark Greene finds plenty to enjoy in the wardrobe.

“It’s a very big wardrobe”, says Lucy as she finds herself contemplating the expanses of Narnia. Indeed, it is. And a very credible one too, though rather bigger and grander than the smaller, plainer wardrobe that was Lewis’ inspiration and now sits snugly in Wheaton College in Illinois, complete with a range of mainly American-brand overcoats. Certainly for Narnia-philes, there will be details to cavil at but overall the filmmakers have succeeded in creating a coherent, alternative world with such affectionate wit, and with such skilful computer-generated graphics that you hardly even question the presence of galloping centaurs, talking horses or cor-blimey beavers. And if there are any beasts that we do question it is the curiously orc-like creatures that serve the White Witch. In fact, it is their very orcishness that makes them feel like strays from some other rather less likely world.

fact and fantasy

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 19:39:40 +0000

This Christmas, the big fantasy treats are The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With the rest of the Narnia books, possibly two more Harry Potters, and Philip Pullman’s works, there are plenty more Christmases catered for.