Kester Brewin

Tag: Church

  • Is Your Faith Endo- or Exoskeletal?

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    Manuel de Landa, in his brilliant book A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History writes of the two skeletons that humankind have developed. Our endo(internal)skeleton “made new forms of movement control possible, freeing [us] to conquer every available niche.” Later, around 8000 years ago, we then developed the urban exo(external)skeleton, whereby “bricks of sun-dried clay became…

  • The-No-Longer-Interested-Spouse-of-Christ

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    As I have mentioned here before, I have recently written an article about Facebook (and other social networks) for Third Way. I sent a copy of it to a simian friend of mine based in the US – who I naturally keep up with mostly via the internet – and her response to a passage…

  • Signs of Life in the Churches

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    As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been really enjoying Roger Deakin’s meditation on trees ‘Wildwood‘. In one passage on ‘The Sacred Groves of Devon’, Deakin goes in search of the ‘Green Man‘ – the woodland spirit of rebirth often seen carved into beams in old churches – in various villages. He notes the…

  • Rites of Passage | Atheists Marking Life’s Big Events

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    Interesting piece in this week’s Time Out: atheist Tim Arthur talks about the privilege of being asked to be ‘celebrant’ of friends’ marriages. He has done so four times, and wonders if he’s asked because he is a theatre director and has a degree in religious studies: people think he’s like a vicar, and he…

  • Web 2.0 | It’s All About the Sacred | Festival and Carnival

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    I guess sometimes you can’t see the woods for the trees. I recently posted a piece about René Girard’s thoughts on the essentiality of the sacred to human experience – something Dawkins et al ignore in their anti-religion positions – and I also posted something on Facebook and friendship. But it took a beer with…

  • The Dead Console the Living?

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    I am reading through a manuscript for a friend which is partly a memoir of his growing up during ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland. As I’ve been doing so, I was reminded of a quote by the Irish journalist Jack Holland, who wrote that “the tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a…