Links to books which I have been previously reading...
Benjamin Myers, The Perfect Golden Circle
Granta 90: Country Life; Summer 2005
Anna Jones, Divide: The relationship crisis between town and country
Rebecca Smith, Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside
Naomi Klein, Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
Kristin Hersh, The Future of Songwriting
Uniform annual twenty eighteen
Waiting for You: A Detectorists Zine. Issues 1, 2, 3, 4.
Clinton Heylin, The Double Life of Bob Dylan Vol. 1: A Restless Hungry Feeling: 1941-1966
Timothy Morton, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology
Mick Houghton, Fried & Justified: Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns in the Record Business 1978-98
Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts.
Ian Clayton, Anne Scargill, Betty Cook, Anne & Betty: United By The Struggle.
Raphael Samuel, edited by Sally Alexander, Gareth Stedman Jones and Alison Light, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain: Theatres of Memory, Volume II
Toni Morrison, Home
Richard F. Thomas, Why Dylan Matters
Greil Marcus, Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs
Danny Dorling, Carl Lee, Geography: Ideas in Profile
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Seumus Milne: The Enemy Within:The Secret War Against the Miners
Tribune 23, Spring 2024: Civil War Without Guns
David Peace, GB84
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
Kali Akuno and Matt Meyer, eds, Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present
Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation
Bill V. Mullen, James Baldwin: Living in Fire
David Baddiel, The God Desire
Stephen Ellcock and Mat Osman, England on Fire: A Visual Journey through Albion’s Psychic Landscape
Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion Volume 1 / Issue 1
Weird Walk: Wanderings and Wonderings Through the British Ritual Year
Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past
Jarvis Cocker, Good Pop, Bad Pop
Lee Scott, Swan Songs
Mark E. Smith and Graham Duff, The Otherwise: The Screenplay for a Horror Film that Never Was
Ian Clayton, Bringing it All Back Home
Colin Wilson, The Outsider
Kathryn Scanlan, Kick the Latch
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Jeremy Harte, Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape
Julian Cope, Cope's Notes #5: How I wrote The Modern Antiquarian, and why
Symon Hill, The Peace Protestors: A History of Modern-Day War Resistance
Izzeldin Abuelaish, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All The Brutes
Colum McCann, Apeirogon
James Meek, Private Island:Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else
Lynne Segal, Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy
Pip Wilson, Gutter Feelings
René Girard, Cynthia L. Haven (editor), All Desire is a Desire for Being
Anthony Bartlett, Signs of Change: The Bible's Evolution of Divine Nonviolence
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Ronald E. Purser, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
Micha Frazer-Carroll, Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health
Sinéad O'Connor, Rememberings
Wayne Clarke, A Ready Man: Hugh Stowell Brown, preacher, activist, friend of the poor
Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás, Capitalism and the Sea:The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World
Henry Dimbleby, Jemima Lewis, Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape
Pen Vogler, Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain
Paddy Shennan, The Talk Of Liverpool: 33 years of conversations with my heroes (and some villains!)
Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies
Ramzy Alwakeel, How We Used Saint Etienne to Live
Jude Rogers, The Sound of Being Human
Martin Poole, Church Beyond Walls: Christian Spirituality at Large
Nicola Barker, Burley Cross Postbox Theft
David Peace, Nineteen Seventy Four
Benjamin Myers, These Darkening Days
Graham Jones, Red Enlightenment: On Socialism, Science and Spirituality
Tribune #18: The Nakba at 75: Remembering, Forgetting, and Erasing
Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This
Matt Colquhoun, Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher
Paul Gorman, Totally Wired: the rise and fall of the music press
Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing
Scott Branson, Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life
Sven Lindqvist, Dig Where You Stand: How to Research a Job
"History does not disappear. It lives on in capital."
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Norman Nicholson, Provincial Pleasures
Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head
Norman Nicholson, A Local Habitation
Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
Kathleen Jones, Norman Nicholson: The Whispering Poet
Henry Mance, How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World
Peter Apps, Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen
Julian Cope, Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll
Sayaka Marata, Convenience Store Woman
Warren Ellis, Nina Simone's Gum
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
Martin Cloake, Taking Our Ball Back: English Football's Culture Wars
Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
Lorna Sage, Bad Blood: A memoir
Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. A memoir
Amanda Craig, The Lie of the Land
David Whyte, Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us
Stephen J. Pyne, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next
James. W. Perkinson, Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars: The Angel of the Jordan Meets the Trickster of Detroit
Ricky Ross, Walking Back Home.
Nick Cave, Seán O’Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage.
The Land: an occasional magazine about land rights. Issues 19 (Equality in the Countryside: a Rural Manifesto), 30, 31
Claire Keegan, Small things like these
Stu Hennigan, Ghost Signs: Poverty and the Pandemic
Martin Wroe, Julian of Norwich's Teabag: Poems and prayers from morning to night
Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament
David Peace, Tokyo Redux
Becky Alexis-Martin, Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons since Hiroshima
Kosuke Koyama, Mount Fuji and Mount Sinai: A Pilgrimage in Theology
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About It
Mike Davis, Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World
Jione Havea (ed), Doing Theology in the New Normal: Global Perspectives
John Gittings, The Glorious Art of Peace: paths to peace in a new age of war
Vron Ware, Return of a native: Learning from the land
Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain
Andrew Rumsey, English Grounds: A Pastoral Journey
Anita Sethi, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain
Peter Crouch, How to be a Footballer
Steve Hanson, A Shaken Bible
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Charles Kenny, The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease
Mark Lanegan, Devil in a Coma
Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: lasting happiness of a world of change
James Jones, Justice for Christ's sake: a personal journey around justice through the eyes of faith
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Josh Cohen, Losers: an essay about politics, humility, and loss
Elvis Costello, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography: ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics
Corrine Fowler, Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections
Harry Freeman: Leonard Cohen: the Mystical Roots of Genius
Rebecca Tamás, Strangers: essays on the human and nonhuman
Robert Macfarlane, The old ways: a journey on foot
Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music
Kate Simpson, ed, Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency
Bella Bathurst, Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land
James Rebanks, English Pastoral: An Inheritance
James Jones, Jesus and the Earth
Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky, Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis
Alastair McIntosh, Riders on the storm: the climate crisis and the survival of being
Richard Powers, The Overstory
Pat Nevin, The Accidental Footballer: a memoir
Rose George, Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Brings You 90% of Everything
Al Barrett, Ruth Harley, Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church's Mission from the Outside, In
Bob Dylan, Chronicles
Frank Skinner, A Comedian's Prayer Book
Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
M. John Harrison, The sunken land begins to rise again
Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism
Stephen Cottrell, Dear England: finding hope, taking heart and changing the world.
Anna Burns, Milkman
Patrick Magee, Where Grieving Begins: Building Bridges after the Brighton Bomb - a Memoir
Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir.
McKenzie Wark, Capital is dead: is this something worse?.
Mark Fisher, Matt Colquhoun (ed), Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures.
Martin Cloake and Alan Fisher, A people's history of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club: how Spurs fans shaped the identity of one of the world's most famous clubs
Arthur Hopcraft: The Football Man: People and Passions in Soccer
Julian Baggini: The Godless gospel: was Jesus a great moral teacher?
Barry Lenton: 125 Years Marine Football Club 1894-2019
Andreas Malm: Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency : War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
Rowan Williams: Candles in the dark : faith, hope and love in a time of pandemic
Zadie Smith: Intimations
Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood
Michael J. Sandel: The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?
Colm Tóibìn: The Testament of Mary.
John Cooper Clarke: I wanna be yours.
Rutger Bregman, Humankind.
David Raw, Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC.
Rose Macaulay: Non-combatants and others: writings against war
Michael S. Northcott: Place, ecology and the sacred: the moral geography of sustainable communities
Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us
Me: Elton John, by Elton John
John Davies finds out what sustains Elton John
ARGUABLY one of the most significant acts of public liturgy of the 20th century, Elton John’s rendition of “Candle in the Wind” at the funeral service of Diana, Princess of Wales, reached a worldwide television audience estimated at 2.5 billion people.
He recalls the applause that it generated: “It seemed to start outside Westminster Abbey and sweep into the church itself, which I guess meant that Diana’s family had achieved their aim in getting me to sing it: it connected with the people outside.”
The charity single of this song sold “preposterously” well, causing him discomfort at what felt like people’s “wallowing in Diana’s death”. In the media furore of that time, he longed for his life to “return to some semblance of normality”.
In Me, John expresses surprise and wonder that “The great thing about Rock and Roll is that someone like me can be a star.” He portrays himself as an unconfident Pinner boy who responded to his parents’ constant fighting by retreating into his room and a world of neatly ordered collecting: of singles, comics, books, and music magazines. His fear of confrontation “went on for decades”, he reflects. “I stayed in bad business relationships and bad personal relationships because I didn’t want to rock the boat.”
Accompanying John’s current “farewell” world tour and the recent release of the biopic Rocketman, this book will be enjoyed for the show-business stories colourfully conveyed on every page. But there is depth to this memoir, as John describes his journey as a series of life-changing encounters and epiphanies.
The most significant “chance event” of his career followed a failed song-writing audition. As “a consolation prize after rejecting me”, the record company executive handed the young Reg Dwight (John’s real name) an envelope of song lyrics lying on his desk, seemingly unread. The lyricist was a Lincolnshire chicken-farm employee, Bernie Taupin. Since 1967, they have collaborated on more than 30 albums, composing songs that have sold more than 300 million records.
Similar encounters led him from the depths of addiction into recovery at the nadir of his career, and into founding the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which stemmed from his friendship with the family of an American teenager, Ryan White, who had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and whose subsequent indignities included the refusal of his entire church congregation to shake hands with him at the Peace.
John in maturity is a settled, happily married man and father, having learned through recent life-threatening illness to “slow down and live a different life”. He is honest about the terrible “Dwight family temper”, which he inherited from his parents, and he is funny about his misjudgements — “Bohemian Rhapsody”, he told Freddie Mercury, would never sell.
As “an artist who doesn’t take himself too seriously”, he accepted a request from Tim Rice to “write a song about a warthog who farted a lot” — and was delighted when “Hakuna Matata”, from the film The Lion King, “kept the Rolling Stones off the number one spot in America all through the summer of 1994”.
This engaging memoir portrays a man who has managed to stay grounded, through all the excesses of his show-business life. One thing in particular has helped him in this: his lifelong support of Watford FC. “If I hadn’t had the football club then God knows what would have happened to me. I’m not exaggerating when I say I think Watford might have saved my life.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control.
There's a lot more biology in this book than (a) I'd expected there to be, thinking of Barbara Ehrenreich primarily as a investigative writer and social historian; and (b) I've ever read before in one place, science not really being my thing. But this was fascinating - in particular the recurring theme of how the body's immune system has a nasty habit of sometimes deciding to turn on itself, following a logic which leads to self-destruction - and that there's little we can do to control or stop it. I'm more of a theologian and so for me the above observation blows apart all the 'body theology' of St Paul, which aligns with much conventional medical science in accepting the premise that the body's parts will always work together for the good of the whole. Knowing what we know about the 'body of Christ' with all its in-fighting, Ehrenreich's thesis sadly rings very true in this connection.
The concept that we cannot control our mortality can feel frightening. It also completely undermines the 'authority' of the medical / pharmaceutical industry (and Barbara Ehrenreich is very good in detailing this) whose practices turn out to be more of a modern set of rituals no more sure of 'success' in healing than any other ritual practices. But there's a liberative sense that in giving up on certainty and control we actually attain some sort of peace. There's something quite joyful and powerful in Barbara Ehrenreich's decision to stop seeking medical help for any of her own body's ailments, to step off the treadmill of tests and check-ups and preventative treatments, and instead just to live life to the full until it naturally ends.
Yutaka Yazawa, How to Live Japanese.
Anything that is truly Japanese will look good, for beauty in attention to detail are hallmarks of the Japanese way. And publishers Quarto Editions are equally dedicated to visual quality. So it is no surprise that this insider's guide to Japanese people, places and culture looks very good indeed. And it reads well also, in a quirky, fairly irregular sort of way which is quite endearing. As a regular visitor to Japan (to see family there) I'm grateful to Yutaka Yazawa for his honest approach: "I freely admit that my expositions are not free from subjective prejudice, borne out of my upbringing and experiences."
This plays out in the Tokyo writer's gently disparaging comments about other Japanese cities and talking-up of his own ("Tokyo will always be Japan and it will always lead, wherever Japan is heading"), and speculations on Western culture ("Though they may have been the head of a Korean invading horde at some point beyond the mists of ancient history, the imperial household is not descended from some parvenu Normans of questionable parentage, or arriviste provincial German noblemen – that we know for sure!")
The book offers a fairly straightforward guidebook introduction to the different areas of Japan, then engages with the question 'What makes the Japanese?' before looking in details at most aspects of Japanese culture, art, style and daily life - indoors and outdoors, including honest and contemporary essays on family life, 'life's milestones', holidays and celebrations. There's plenty of interesting details to satisfy the reader curious to deepen their knowledge of Japan (I didn't know before that the Tokyo Tower was built from the scrap steel of US tanks left behind after the Korean War), and plenty of Yutaka Yazawa's personal opinions expressed to illuminate aspects of the contemporary life of the place (“Japan’s modern constructions are scrap-and-build affairs…. landlords tend to build for a quick cash return rather than creating something that will last.")
It's lovely to look at and a lively read. It's by no means the final word on modern Japan (and doesn't pretend to be) but it's a pleasing contribution to the genre.
Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking the Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction.
Peter Rollins is a counter-intuituve theological thinker. In other words, when you open one of his books or click one of his talks you expect to be taken places you've never have thought you'd ever go. I can imagine he gets some people quite upset in this way. Me, I'm at a place in my life where I want that, I need that, kind of challenge. I've grown up with the concept of there being a 'God-shaped hole' in my soul and of Jesus filling it. Rollins says that's idolatry. That the 'hole' we're all seeking (for some it's God-shaped, for others it's career-shaped or relationship-shaped, and so on) is a hole - there's nothing there. It's empty. There's nothing there to satisfy us. The one thing we can be sure of, with this idol, is that we can be sure of nothing. If you want that in theological terms, when the curtain of the Temple tore open when Jesus died, there was nothing there. If you want it in everyday terms, we spend our days chasing things which will make our lives meaningful: but that chase will never satisfy us. So the good news as proposed by Rollins is that 'you can't be satisfied, life is difficult, and you don't know the secret'. The faithful response is to stop chasing certainty and 'to embrace suffering, face up to our unknowing and fully accept the difficulties of existence'.
Notable quote:
"As Christ dies on the cross, we read of the tombs breaking open and the dead coming to life. Why? Because it is here that the death-dealing structure of idolatry and unbelief is broken apart and a new mode of life erupts - a life in which the source of all is no longer approached as some being 'out there' whom we ought to love, but as a mystery we participate in through the very act of love itself."
Ryan Kuja, From the Inside Out: Reimagining Mission, Recreating the World.
There are countless books critiquing Christian mission's historic complicity in the impositions of colonial empire; and other more recent writings bringing that critique into the present day, redefining empire as neoliberalism's global reach. Ryan Kuja follows this pattern, using the terms McMission and 'empire lite' in discussing North American Christianity's embrace of the prevailing culture and the sometimes subtle ways this works its way into missionary and aid projects.
But Ryan Kuja goes beyond the usual parameters of these familiar arguments in seeking a way to reimagine mission, to create a world where the distance between missionary and those on the receiving end of mission, is diminished. Daring to suggest that the missionary themselves may be the one in most need of healing, of receiving good news, Kuja meditates in the area of the missionary's motivation for doing mission: raising uncomfortable questions for the sake of liberating wholeness.
This makes his book challenging, but important reading for anyone following a call in Christian mission. Quoting Kathleen O'Connor, Kuja writes,
The poverty of the Majority World is palpable. It largely resides out in the open where all can see it. But this poverty, and the people who dwell in its midst, does not pretend that it isn’t there. This pain cannot be abjured. Unlike the suffering of the West, no one denies it. In North America, our sense of despair “masquerades under a guise of well-being so persuasive as to deceive the wearers of the masks themselves.”
What secures the reader's attention and provokes an empathic response is that Kuja shares deeply his own sufferings and denials, and how they played a central part in both shaping his missionary activities and ultimately causing them to burn out in mental breakdown. Kuja is generous in sharing his story for the space it opens up for the reader to interrogate our own stories. Better still, and a constant throughout this engaging book, he celebrates how a God who is always making things new, finds a way for re-creation in all our stories.
"I glimpse a promise that despite the presence of brokenness, disease, and death, all things are being reconciled, restored, and reborn." Mission unites us with others with whom we are called to learn this together.
George Monbiot, Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life.
Here's the Guardian columnist as wild man of the woods and adventurer of the seas. Monbiot walks his talk - about rewilding ourselves, and our world - and it's quite a ride. Equal to the all the vivid descriptions of his outdoors adventures (and of course, connecting with them in an engagingly-crafted way) are his polemical passages, in which, more than anything else, sheep are targeted as being at the core of the problem he wants to solve.
Notable quote:
"The drive towards monoculture causes a dewilding, of both places and people. It strips the Earth of the diversity of life and natural structure to which human beings are drawn. It creates a dull world, a flat world, a world lacking in colour and variety, which enhances ecological boredom, narrows the scope of our lives, limits the range of our engagement with nature, pushes us towards a monoculture of the spirit.
I doubt that anyone wants this to happen to the land that surrounds them, except those - a small number - who make their money this way. But these few have been empowered both by their ownership of the land and by a kind of cultural cringe, which prevents other people from challenging them. The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci used the term ‘cultural hegemony’ to describe the way in which ideas and concepts which benefit a dominant class are universalized. They become norms, adopted whole and unexamined, which shape our thinking. Perhaps we suffer from agricultural hegemony: what is deemed to be good for farmers or landowners is deemed, without question or challenge, to be good for everyone.
In some cases we pay to support this hegemony and the monocultures it creates. Scores of billions of pounds of public money are spent each year to sustain the degradation of the natural world. In the United States, farm subsidies encourage the unvaried planting, across vast acreages, of corn. In Canada, subsidies for pulp and paper mills help to replace ancient forests with uniform plantations. Worse, perhaps, from the point of view of rewilding, is public spending which sustains monocultures in places which would otherwise be reclaimed by nature. This is what happens in the nation I am using as a case study of the monomania which blights many parts of the world. Here another monoculture has developed: a luxuriance, an infestation, a plague . . . of sheep.
Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, holy men no doubt ... leave no ground for tillage, they inclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing, but only the church to be made a sheep-house … the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else either by cunning and fraud, or by violent oppression they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all: by one means therefore or by other, either by hook or crook they must needs depart away!
Typically for this master-of-making-connections, this is no dry scientific survey or political treatise on the subject of climate change. This is an investigation of what lies behind, beneath, the present situation - as the publisher's blurb well-describes it, this is 'a breath-taking journey through myth, philosophy and literature [wherein] McIntosh reveals the psychohistory of modernity [showing] how our inner lives have fallen prey to a numbing culture of violence and the motivational manipulation of marketing.' This is a journey towards discovering 'the spiritual meaning of ... our troubled times; only then can a sense of magic and all that gives life start to mend a broken world.'
Notable quote: 'I was giving a lecture about violence in New York State in 2003. ... It was just after the start of the second Gulf War and I was acutely aware how uncomfortable many in the audience felt at that time about being American. They felt trapped as members of an oppressor’s camp that they couldn’t own their membership of. It’s the same for most of us in many walks of life today. We, too, are children of the consumerist world that drives climate change. And yet, if we can’t get to terms with and own our complicity, it will blind us from being able to see and tackle the issues.
At the end of my talk a man in the audience came forward. He told me the following story that kind of put things into a wider perspective. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I used to be a hippie back in the days when hippies were real hippies who set out to change the world. And a couple of my good hippie friends travelled to Cuba because they wanted to shake hands with Che Guevara. ‘Well, they managed to get an audience with the great Che, and of course, being real hippies, they started off by apologising for being Americans.' 'And do you know what?’ he continued. ‘The great Che, living out there on Cuba ... so far away from where it all happens. . . he just smiled back. And he told them: Don t you apologise for being Americans. You’re the lucky ones. You see, you get to live in the belly of the beast.”’ (p.158-159)
Alastair McIntosh and Matt Carmichael, Spiritual Activism. Leadership as Service.
McIntosh defines spiritual activism as 'the applied spiritual underpinning for social and environmental change in the world'. He met Matt Carmichael at a gathering of activists in Leeds in 2009 and these two - a generation apart in age - have collaborated together in teaching spiritual activism together. 'What makes "spiritual" activism so exciting is that it approaches demanding issues in ways that invite an ever-deepening perception of reality and of our positioning - individually and collectively - within it'. A great resource, notable for a short case study at the end of each chapter, featuring a biography from activists across time, place and spiritual tradition.
Notable quote: 'In Medina Muhammad (pbuh) guaranteed freedom of religion for Pagans, Jews, Christians and Muslims. He raised the status of women, freed slaves and encouraged public debate. He appointed Bilal, and African slave freed after brutal treatment in Mecca, as the first mu'ezzin and founded the first mosque as a place for community renewal and reconciliation, open to all... No pacifist ... (however) in his context he raised the ethical bar where conflict was concerned by setting ... rules ... including a requirement to accept any terms the enemy offered to bring a halt to violence, however disadvantageous.'
Alastair McIntosh, Poacher's Pilgrimage: An Island Journey.
Alastair McIntosh's ten-day odyssey across Harris and Lewis, a rip-roaring adventure in homecoming, a meditation on life in all its deep and joined-up wonder. With gripping debates on spirituality from Rumi to Calvin and beyond, encounters with ancient gaelic faerie culture and meditations on the lost great play of J.M.Barrie, plus accounts of the pacifist's raw, honest, ongoing dialogue with active military figures. I was left with a sense of the strength and the struggle of the Hebridean community through Alastair's engagement with the folks that he meets along the way. And a far keener understanding of what is meant by human ecology - the interconnectedness of all things - which is Alastair's lifetime's work and inspiration. So many memorable sections; I'll long flinch at the image of him ripping off his fingernails whilst struggling to tear away the sphagnum moss which had sealed the ancient well of Tobar a' Ghobha.
Notable quotes: 'And God knows - I can't help but feel an admiration, indeed, affection for these (military) men. Their sense of community. Their ethic of looking out for one another. The research that shows that most don't want to kill, they want to protect, and that's a form of love.' ... 'There's something happens when a man comes face to face with Hell. It burns away the bullshit. It betrays the plastic world that passes for normality in all its crass vacuity.' ... 'We all take up positions on a long front. None of us can quite see how it looks from the next person's post. That's how I reconcile my differences with the military. Rarely does a human being get to glimpse full compass of the battlefield of life.' (p.249-250)
Ian Bradley, Argyll: The Making of a Spiritual Landscape. Great reading for a fortnight on the Isle of Mull (where I was locum minister for the island's one Episcopal church, St Columba, Gruline, in May 2017). It's comprehensive in its sweep across time and place; it's full of wondrous stories, myths and legends (each helping develop a picture of a culture deep in spirituality). It taught me a lot - especially through the author's insights into Argyll's distinctive style of Presbyterianism, which Bradley insists (and often demonstrates), in contrast to the harsh Calvinistic culture of other parts of Scotland, is 'liberal and mystical'.
Notable quote:'Tasha Gefreh, an art historian at Edimburgh University, has suggested that (the) images on St Martin's Cross (Iona) were deliberately designed to be viewed sequentially through the day as the sun struck different features. Noting that the first part to be highlighted in the morning is the bottom of the east face and the last in the late afternoon the top of the west face, she has proposed that the Cross tells the story of salvation beginning with the serpent's curse and ending with the birth of Christ.' (p.91)
Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Another book which is, quite simply, all about Jesus and what it means to live with his life and teachings at the centre. That is: really, radically, live. Essentially it means getting alongside the poor. Full of Shane's great stories about this continuing adventure, this is an inspirational book and a great challenge.
Notable quote: 'It’s like Gandhi said last century, whenever people asked him if he was a Christian. “Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are.” ... Or Mother Teresa: “It is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately it is not fashionable to talk with them.”' (p.151) ... 'It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a mission project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream and struggle.' (p.109)
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