Category: Blog

The extraordinary brilliance of LLMs is often a cause for alarm. But theology suggests a less melodramatic and more marvellous understanding. New essay at my Substack, A Golden String.

An ancient intuition is that plants have souls and even participate in the life of God by virtue of being alive. But what sense can be made of that today? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon consider the Neoplatonic understanding that all living creatures, and perhaps all self-organising things,… Continue reading The Souls of Plants. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

  Ethics and identity, as liberals and nationalists respectively stress, miss the vastness of the human soul. New essay at my Substack, A Golden String. #Christianity #Nationalism #Humanism 

My Thought For The Day was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning. This is the script. August angst” has begun. The phrase describes the stress caused by psychotherapists taking their summer break over the month beginning today. Though, breaks are part of the therapeutic work – and that explains why August angst is felt… Continue reading August Angst. My BBC Thought For The Day

‘Tis a much challenged reading, but Kathleen Raine interpreted William Blake’s “The Sea of Space and Time” as depicting the seemingly marginal, but perhaps pivotal, detail in Homer’s “Odyssey” of the Cave of the Nymphs on the beach of Ithaca where Odysseus is left by the Phaeacians, which Porphyry interpreted as a Neoplatonic key to… Continue reading Odyssey’s homecoming, the Cave of the Nymphs, Raine and Blake

I’ve been reflecting on the discussion of the gods in The Odyssey, following the release of Christopher Nolan’s film, generally unsatisfied by what is made of the awareness of deities conveyed by Homer and the earlier parts of the Hebrew Bible, too. There is another story to tell. New article at my Substack, A Golden… Continue reading When Gods Walked Amongst Mortals and Mortals Loved Violence

The new movie telling of the Odyssey epic is Nolan’s epic telling. The opening title reads: “A time of apparent magic”, which is a clear signal. But the original tale asks more: who are we, not merely, how should we behave? New post at my Substack, A Golden String.  

Does art need to have a sacred dimension to be art at all? What are the sources of inspiration? In this dialogue, which is the 102nd in our series, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon, explore how meaning and beauty, truth and connection might be manifested in the arts. What is the role of reverence and… Continue reading Art and the Sacred Today. A Dialogue between Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon

Mary Beard has begun a new series of BBC radio programmes. In each episode of Being Greek, the Cambridge historian examines a character from ancient Athens or the city-state’s environs with the aim of glimpsing the lives of ordinary folk, not the elite. Beard is an excellent broadcaster, leading the listener along paths littered with… Continue reading In Search of Lost Gods. Tales of Greek sexual cheating and election by democratic lot

Last weekend I was at St Giles House, Dorset, with the Realisation Festival, of which I am a director. The beautiful country house is the home of the Earls of Shaftesbury, one of the which, the 7th Earl, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, is remembered as a remarkable Victorian social reformer.When he died, it is said that half… Continue reading Anteros: the forgotten brother of love