A Thinking Man

There is a lot of loss around.  And I’m not just referring to people mourning the loss of  a loved person.  When someone is bereaved you would expect the mourning.  It is natural and understandable.  But apart from the loss of human beings, there are many other kinds of losses, and many people in [...]

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Matthew Parris on his death:
When I die, and if I have to arrange it myself, I will consult nobody, and do it unassisted if I can. I entertain not a flicker of moral or practical doubt on the subject, and never have. Speaking only for myself — in such matters one should never judge for [...]

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I remember the sinking feeling when a former colleague spotted me on the home station and decided to sit next to me for the whole of the two and a half hour journey. He had retired about 5 years previously and although I had worked closely with him in a professional capacity, to be honest, [...]

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Suicide is a painful subject for many - especially those who have lost partners, children, siblings, and friends.  It is the final statement in a relationship - a statement made by the other person, something that you cannot argue with, but something that those who are left behind want to argue with so badly.
Whether the [...]

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I really didn’t intend being unusually churlish on Easter Sunday, but when I received an email from Theos claiming that over half the people in Great Britain believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I just couldn’t let the supposed facts stand without at least questioning their apparent solidity.
Theos describes itself as a public theology [...]

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One the Death of Summer

Day was a bright one,
A summer, a rain -
Your kiss was a grey one,
A dying, a pain:

And earth was unending,
A round one, a ball -
But love had its ending,
The finite - the gall

Of a life-time,
A season, a year,
Like the dawn of a day-time,
The dew, and the fear

Of a noon-tide,
The parchness, the [...]

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Throughout my life I had heard rumours that things change when you reach your fifties. In my twenties, thirties, and forties I laughed at men who grew fatter, lost most of their hair, staggered sleepily to the toilet in the middle of the night, and who mysteriously talked about bits that struggled to function. It [...]

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Throughout my life I had heard rumours that things change when you reach your fifties. In my twenties, thirties, and forties I laughed at men who grew fatter, lost most of their hair, staggered sleepily to the toilet in the middle of the night, and who mysteriously talked about bits that struggled to function. It [...]

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I learned today that Albert Ellis (or Big Al as I and a few friends fondly referred to him) is dead. Apparently he died on 24 July, 2007, of natural causes. He was 93. I feel both relieved about, and saddened by, his passing. To be perfectly honest, I felt that in his latter years [...]

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Why is it that real, gut-wrenching grief is so difficult to handle in other people? Why is is that we can respond to broken bones but pretend that broken hearts are unimportant?
Just imagine that you are paddling your canoe down a river, watching the birds and bees and butterflies. You are so relaxed and enchanted [...]

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