Thought for the Day

21 MAY 26

Good morning. “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” I was reminded of that quip from G. K. Chesterton last week, when I visited The Old Ferryboat Inn in Cambridgeshire, which not only claims to be the oldest pub in England (serving ale since 560AD, apparently), but also to have a resident ghost.

Good morning.

Christian writer CS Lewis wrote about his vision of hell in the novella ‘the great divorce’. Hell was a place of continual twilight where people moved further and further apart into infinite space, driven by mutual suspicion and a sense of time ticking down. Paradise, by contrast was a place of colour, fruitfulness, and sunshine – open to anyone bold enough to stay. In paradise, people were unafraid of each other or the future. They sought out newcomers, working to convince them to remain.

The show gardens at Chelsea may be sanctuaries of beauty, but they are also about shared spaces and living well together. Many, like the Trussell ‘together’ garden, are inspired specifically by the way communities deal with hardship – the Trussel Trust’s foodbanks tackle food poverty. Like Lewis’ paradise, communal gardens like this one combat the notion that safety and solace can only be had by building walls and retreating from the world.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote a collection of health remedies based on what people could grow or source themselves. Titled ‘Primitive Physick’ and published in 1747 it would run to 23 editions during his life. Although his remedies were of their day, his commitment to people’s access to healthcare and use of what was readily available still bears weight. Today, the rooftop garden of the national Methodist offices in London is planted with herbs and flowers used in Primitive Physick, recognising the importance of gardens to our collective mental and physical well-being.

A reality of life in Britain today is that access to outdoor space is not equal: many do not have gardens. A Christian vision for good community still resists the notion that beautiful outdoor spaces are only the preserve of private wealth.

After the show, all of the Chelsea gardens will find their way out into communities around the country – plants will go to balconies, windowsills and neglected urban spaces, gardens to hospices, schools, and the verges of motorways. They will join many other community gardens schemes, allowing even those of us who live surrounded by pavement, to put our hands in soil and see something grow. These gardens are places of retreat, yes: but also places of truth telling about the quiet work of living peacefully together.

18 MAY 26

Good morning. Reed Hoffman, one of the founders of Linked In, tells us that typing is over and voicepilling is here.

This is the word he has coined to capture the way, he says, we are set to bypass keyboards.

After the quill the pen, then the typewriter, the text, the voice note… but in voicepilling entire articles, essays or books - everything actually - is spoken directly to the machine for production. Hands-free.

Is voicepilling a word that will stick? Sounds unlikely but who knows? New words seem to be invented more rapidly than ever but then language is always being born again.

At an open mic event I was at this week one poet used the beautiful expression ‘sonder’ - the kind of neglected word from Chaucer or Shakespeare which etymologists and crossword compilers love to rediscover.

Sonder is defined as one’s realization that each person you pass by ‘is the main character in their own story, in which you are just an extra.’

The definition comes from John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of words he created to capture emotions that he says, ‘we feel but don’t have the words too express’.

Some words or phrases disappear, some morph into new meaning… while others stick around for ever.

Few writers have had more stickability than William Tyndale. The 500th anniversary of his English New Testament is currently being celebrated in an exhibition at the British Library and, from next month, at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Tyndale believed it shouldn’t only be priests who could access the Bible, but that everyone should hear it in everyday English.

His translation, published in 1526, was so popular that when King James commissioned his 'Authorized Version’, nearly a century later, the royal translation team ripped ninety percent of their text straight out of Tyndale.

His phrases continue to haunt the language: 'from strength to strength’; ‘for better or worse’; ‘lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’; ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘fight the good fight’.

Tyndale was after a poetic language understood by ordinary people and was so successful that, as someone said, ‘No Tyndale, No Shakespeare’.

Or as playwright David Edgar put it: ‘No Tyndale, No Kindle’.

But in democratizing religion, in translating the divine into the human, he was branded the ‘most dangerous man in England’ and burned at the stake.

The political powers could see, to use another of his phrases, ‘the writing on the wall’.

Words are dangerous.

Once you can speak the divine in your own tongue then you can bring god down from heaven onto earth and decide for yourself what your religion means for your life.

You can, as Tyndale wrote, ‘let there be light'

Sometimes, digging into the origins of a word can help with real insights into a contemporary issue.

14 MAY 26

Good morning,

Good morning.

Good morning.

Ocean transport has rarely left our news headlines over these last few weeks. The ongoing efforts of the USA and Iran to block or open up the Strait of Hormuz now being joined by the plight of passengers on a virus struck cruise ship, finally docked in Tenerife.

It’s tempting then, to think of the world’s oceans primarily as means of transporting travellers and goods. Yet, as ocean naturalists, from Rachel Carson to David Attenborough, have repeatedly reminded us, the seas are home to a vast array of amazing species.

The wonders of our oceans are however, now at significant risk from two direct consequences of human activity, climate change and pollution. Indeed, it’s widely argued by scientists that, for the seas to recover, a minimum of 30% of the world’s oceans will need to be protected by 2030.

The challenge, as so often with regard to environmental damage, is our human reluctance to take short term sacrifices for longer term gain. Or else we so frame the actions required by way of sacrifice that they fall disproportionately on the poorest among our communities and nations. It is here that two core aspects of my own faith come together.

First, as Psalm 95 in the Hebrew Scriptures asserts, “The sea is his, and he made it”. That tells me, our human accountability to God extends to our treatment of the oceans just as much as it does the dry land.

Second, those of us with greater wealth or assets are expected to shoulder the heavier burden. As Jesus says in Luke 12: 48, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

Governments have a vital part to play. The High Seas Treaty, which came into force earlier this year, and the UK Parliament has now legislated to ratify, affords opportunity for safeguarding large swathes of the oceans. The Sargasso Sea, surrounding the Island of Bermuda, and home to a rich and diverse range of species, is a prime candidate for environmental protection measures that avoid destroying the livelihoods of local fishing communities

I’m grateful too for the work of campaigning organisations, such as Greenpeace, whose ship Witness, I was privileged to visit, with other parliamentarians, recently. Along with sister vessels, it monitors biodiversity and plastic pollution in sensitive areas, exposing behaviours that jeopardise the seas and challenging us all to do better.

Together, treaties and campaigners offer me hope that we can yet treasure the world’s oceans for their true value, a value far far beyond their immediate usefulness as means to transport the world’s supplies of oil. But, as Jesus stated so bluntly, our own individual practices matter too.