Category: Blog

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via your podcast feed. Owen Barfield was the friend of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. He championed the importance of imagination and poetry. But what can be missed is the transformative depth of his ideas. They can revolutionise our perception of… Continue reading The Scandalous Radicality of Owen Barfield’s Thought. Landon Loftin, Max Leyf & Mark Vernon

An audio version of this conversation can be found at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Terminal lucidity is the phenomenon of individuals who are dying receiving a surge of life, perhaps to say goodbye, as their death approaches. So what is the nature and meaning of such well-attested experiences? In this… Continue reading End of life experiences. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

A review of Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, published in the Church Times. WE ARE not human beings who have spiritual experiences, but spiritual beings who have human experiences. So wrote Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this important and challenging cri de coeur, the psychotherapist and erstwhile Anglican priest Mark Vernon confirms that “spiritual intelligence… Continue reading “Important and challenging cri de coeur.” Review of my spiritual intelligence book

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Safety, confidentiality and trust are key parts of psychotherapy. That almost goes without needing to be said. But what is enabled by these qualities of the frame? How do they open up less conscious thoughts and feelings? In… Continue reading What makes a place safe to talk? Psychotherapy and the frame

An audio version of this talks is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. The anxiety about AI has reached hysterical proportions. Luminaries are declaring that every last human being is at risk. Which suggests a panic not about the future, whatever it may bring, but about the present, and what has… Continue reading How Jesus can save us from AI

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. William Blake was against the monarchy. But might his Georgian loathing of the homogenising, conforming tendency of tyrannical rule have been utterly transformed by the coronation that opens the Carolean era? My piece at The Idler, “The Marvellous… Continue reading Monarchy, diversity & William Blake. An Idler Drinks thought

Did the earth move for you? This is a crucial question for we Brits in the glowing, or is it glowering, aftermath of the coronation. You see, the thing about rich symbols and elaborate rituals is not whether you believe in them or understand them, whether you reckon their venerable nature is reason enough to… Continue reading The esoteric is political. Thoughts on the coronation

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An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Therapies of various kinds are routinely in the news. And there is much to be said for the ease with which people talk about mental ill-health. But psychotherapy, in particular, can also received critique. What works on the… Continue reading Good & Bad Therapy. A conversation with Robert Rowland Smith

An audio version of this talk is on my podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy, available via podcast feeds. What is the meaning of Easter? How might Holy Week be more than an occasion for its retelling? Can death and resurrection live today, as they once did, 2000 years ago? Dante’s journey, in the Divine Comedy, begins… Continue reading Dante and the Meaning of Easter