word | spirit | world | church
We struggle to understand the concept of rest. You might think it’s pretty obvious, but we live in cultures that are so formed away from the ideal for human life that we often get rest backwards. I’ve argued here at nuakh that rest is about the enjoyment of order, about stopping to be with the… Continue reading The story of rest
I love to read. That’s probably not a big surprise, it’s an unusual writer who doesn’t. I read more than most—honestly the stats on how much the average person reads make me sad. This YouGov survey has around three quarters of respondents saying they read a book last year, but the median number of books… Continue reading On reading
Last week I wrote a rambling exposition of some of the features of Genesis chapter one, but to keep to a reasonable length I didn’t attempt any application. I thought I’d take some time to tease out these ideas in a little more depth what that means for our lives. I’ve written previously that rest… Continue reading Living in Time
The Bible starts with seven words. Then the second sentence has fourteen words. Then there are seven paragraphs each describing a day in this week of seven days. The seventh of these includes three parallel seven word phrases. None of this is an accident. In our modern day with our modern eyes it can look… Continue reading Carving Time
Have you ever noticed that in Genesis chapter one, the days are the wrong way around? When I say the wrong way around, I mean backwards to what we expect, and before you rush off to compare the order of creation and question whether it means anything meaningful that the sun and moon come so… Continue reading Learning from the hours
The church calendar is anathema to our tradition. We wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Except for Christmas obviously. And Easter. And Mothering Sunday (though it’s no longer about Mother Church). But otherwise, yuck. Advent is about chocolate and Lent is the rankest popery. Ok, I’ve got that out of my system. That’s my… Continue reading Learning the Calendar’s Wisdom
This is one of those questions that no one other than me was asking. But here's my apophatic answer. Rest is not relaxation. Repeat: Rest is not relaxation. It has become trendy in the evangelical circles I move in to speak of the Sabbath frequently and to use it as a verb, “we Sabbathed yesterday”… Continue reading What is rest?
At the time of writing, HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh has just died. There has, briefly, been an outpouring of everything that I love about this nation. On the Friday that the Duke died, we needed to pop out in the car—I think to purchase cement, the lives we lead—and the radio was… Continue reading We don’t know how to mourn
We have been told that Covid-19 is the “great leveller” as plague puts us all in the same position, reduces our power and places us at the mercy of tiny particles. As many commentators have pointed out, this has been demonstrably false. Covid disproportionately affects ethnic minorities, the poor, the elderly and those with a… Continue reading The Exposer
The bright spring day of April’s heatwave lasted for about five months, a single timeless moment. We were locked down due to Covid-19 from March through to June, and then with schools closed until September those who could continued to work from home. I lived without rhythm. My work was at home on my laptop,… Continue reading The Rhythm of Rest
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