with Rachel Mackintosh

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Rachel Mackintosh © 16 May 2021

The pandemic is a great rupture. Those who seek hastily to sew up the rupture and return to pre-pandemic normal are seeking to preserve a world where wealth is funnelled to the already wealthy at alarming rates, while millions upon millions pay.

The alternatives to a return to normal are political. It is a cliché that politics is the art of the possible. We are at a moment in the arc of history where what once was politically impossible is possible. We can now perform the art of the impossible. It will take all of us.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 9 May 2021

My first academic assignment in seminary is still very much a part of my memory. The reason is that it made me wonder if I was cut out for this new path I was taking. I was to write an essay on Rudolph Otto’s work The Idea of the holy. Otto, an early 20^th century German theologian, argued that the holy was to be addressed with fear and trembling, which he called awe. I know I was a neophyte theologian but I did not get his conclusions. They did get clearer years later when George W Bush attacked Iraq with “Shock and Awe”. That was definitely an Old Testament kind of holy. But anger, vengeance, oppression, and indiscriminate genocide do not instil me with awe. Ever since then, I have wrestled with the idea of the holy.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 2 May 2021

One of the more influential, life-shaping memories I store in my dishevelled filing cabinet of a brain, is reading King Lear when I was 16. It may have been my first in-depth encounter with the Bard of Avon. While I can give a basic outline of Shakespeare’s tragic play, it is not the story itself that haunts me, but one particular interchange between Lear and his Fool. The Fool tells him, “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 11 April 2021

The Sankofa Bird

Sankofa comes from the Twi language of Ghana in West Africa. A common English translation is “go back and get it.” The sankofa bird is an example of adinkra. Adinkra symbols make up a highly symbolic language—similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. They are common among the Akan people of Ghana, and have made their way into the wider African diaspora. The symbols express complex thoughts and proverbs. The sankofa bird’s head faces backward as it attempts to catch its lost egg in its mouth. Its feet face forward. One translation is, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have lost,” or “that which was taken.” Learn your past so that it may guide your actions in the present for the purpose of shaping the future. Another translation: “remember the past to protect the future.”

Whether it is a story about Rip Van Winkle or A Wrinkle in Time, sentient and self-aware beings cannot escape their enchantment with time. It wasn’t only Unitarian Charles Dickens who used time travel as a device to offer Scrooge redemption by visits to his Christmas’ past, present and future. Time like threads woven into the warp and weft of our lives connects us and all that followed the big bang. Tracing those threads as we seek to know where they lead has been a human endeavour since the ancient past.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 28 March 2021

I have a bone to pick with my daughter. In a recent FaceTime call she was appalled to learn I wasn’t familiar with a TV series called The Walking Dead. I reminded her that I do do dragons and wizards — and werewolves if Michael J Fox is one. I don’t do horror films or at least not since I was 14, when I “watched” Hitchcock’s The Birds with my jacket over my head. A book about vampires is okay, but I don’t want to read about or watch zombies.

Then while looking for a new series to watch I saw that Neon had just made The Walking Dead available — all ten seasons. Just to be more up-to-date with cultural references I decided to watch just one episode and then tell my daughter it was a waste of time. I’ve just about completed season four.… I am thoroughly hooked.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 21 March 2021

From my experience, one of the most difficult things to do in life is to cross a threshold. I would like to be able to claim that I do so bravely and boldly. Sadly, human frailty being what it is, that has often not been the case. Sometimes it has required tornado public transport to move me from Kansas to Oz. Sometimes I have crossed by accident while playing hide and seek with myself and my fears in the back of a wardrobe.