A very Happy Christmas to all Q readers
A VERY Happy Christmas to all Q readers Some wonderfully apt lines from Eliot’s Gerontion Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”: The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 75 (December 2014)
Hurrah! Q Treasure Maps have reached a 3/4 Century! Sacred Treasure I know a number of the people involved in making this doc on Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God – made in Turkey for those from that part of the world. Looks great! The Pope draws in Tom Wright, Rick Warren, Michael Nazir-Ali […]
Deep (?but not stuck) in the frozen wastes of winter faith: Brueggemann on Beck on Freud & James
Q regulars will be aware that issues related to depression come up here from time to time. One or two have encouraged me to be a bit more open about such things and to pick up a few things that others might find helpful, or at least a resonance. So here are a couple of extended quotations from […]
Selfies and Silhouettes: at Düden Falls in Antalya
Part of the tour package on Wednesday was a visit to Düden Falls, which I’d heard were pretty spectacular – and as it was more or less on the way back from Termessos (see yesterday’s post), I was fine with that. Have to say that I was decidedly underwhelmed on arrival – as it’s situated […]
Abandoned and Unexcavated: the charms of Termessos
Amidst a fairly busy schedule in Turkey this week, managed to occupy a day off with a trip into the mountains above Antalya to the abandoned city of Termessos. It’s power and wealth derived from controlling the only local pass through the mountains – but its construction, so high and so elaborate (temples, theatre, agora, civic buildings, many […]
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 74 (November 2014)
Sacred Treasure Emma Scrivener on form yet again her: lovely piece on the Both/Ands of the Christian life. She’s also got a great A-Z of Christianity – check it out! Nell Goddard writes beautifully and poignantly on When Christians cause the suffering The importance of plural leadership – yet another interesting thought from Chris Green
Transports of delight: 5 great Books about reading other Books
It wasn’t a plan particularly, but then that’s part of the joy of books – I never have a plan for what I’m going to sink my teeth into next. It is usually just a matter of wanting something different from the one before. But a couple of books recently have done that self-referential thing: they’re […]
What’s to like? 5 things to detest about depression
Here’s one of those infernal lists. It hopefully speaks for itself.
Veiled irrelevance: a surprising point of connection?
As ever slow on the uptake, but I finally got round to reading Azar Nafisi’s beautifully written 2004 book, Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is a rich, highly thoughtful and thought-provoking memoir from an Iranian English literature professor about her life and students (in particular the small but diverse groupof women in her reading group). She meditates […]
U2’s Songs of Innocence (4): No longer alone with tectonic forces? VOLCANO
There’s a surprising amount of the natural world on Songs of Innocence, just as there was in fact in No Line on the Horizon (the title kind of gives that away, I suppose). Nature has always provided poetic inspiration, but perhaps it’s not the most common imagery for rock ‘n roll. (Though having said that, you can no […]
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 73 (October 2014)
Sacred Treasure C S Lewis on Friendship Are the Apocryphal Gospels true? Ian Paul picks up Simon Gathercole’s address at the recent British NT conference If you missed it, this is an extraordinary episode of BBC’s Panorama about the Christians working in North Korea for Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (30 minutes – definitely worth […]
Faith under fire in Bethlehem: Mitri Raheb’s FAITH IN THE FACE OF EMPIRE
At last year’s launch of veteran travel writer Dervla Murphy’s remarkable book, A Month by the Sea – Encounters in Gaza, she made a simple but telling point. “The Palestinians’ predicament is that they are the victims’ victims”. Of course, in Faith in the Face of Empire, an equally remarkable book by a Palestinian Christian pastor, victimhood […]
