How can we raise community resilience?

Research, reflections, riddles and more!   As the pressures on all of us keep rising, we can see mounting discord about best priorities and solutions.  One of the few topics on which almost everyone agrees is that increasing the resilience of local communities is getting ever more vital.  This has been a focus of my … Read more

Can we choose our destination?

Life’s speeding up, intensifying: then what? At heart, I’m an optimist and I try to believe that life has meaning and purpose. Those beliefs are half-drowned right now, and I’m writing this blog in the hope of reviving them… If we think of the past five years, life for many of us has been overshadowed … Read more

Living with the intolerable

Like me, you may be finding the Israel-Gaza crisis unbearable. There is so much anguish in the atmosphere, and most of us have a gnawing sense of helplessness. So how can we live with intolerably painful situations like this? There are no easy ways, but I’d like to share my experience.   Life these days … Read more

Elderhood: A Sacred, Earthy Calling?

Elderhood: A Sacred, Earthy Calling? A men’s peer group: December 1-3 Llanthony Valley, Black Mountains, Wales  We’re living in a world of rising crisis and turmoil. We’re growing older, we have some talents and resources, but limited time here. How do we use them? What’s the balance between nourishing our souls/the inner life, and doing … Read more

Is Britain heading for a food emergency?

Probably… and how can we prepare?   By food emergency, I mean a prolonged period of serious food shortages, and/or extreme food price inflation. My glimmering worries about this were crystallised by a recent seminar at Abergavenny Food Festival, including Professor Tim Lang, one of the UK’s wisest experts on food security. Many of us … Read more

Why I love Hay-on-Wye

A town of eccentrics, for eccentrics My wife and I spent eight months looking hard for a house in north-west Herefordshire, and researching the area. Having failed to find one, we took a snap decision to buy across the border in Wales. We knew little about Hay-on-Wye, but after a few weeks, we’re loving it. … Read more

Sacred Land Cultivation

Restoring our bond with Mother Earth I’m writing to share a vision with you which feels increasingly vital for our survival. This vision interweaves two ideas which I see discussed increasingly, but only rarely connected. One is the urgent need to increase local food production in the UK (especially vegetables, fruit, proteins), as climate change … Read more

Is food security better in Wales?

Maybe: at least the outlook is promising… Food security is one of the issues which makes me compare the 2020s to the 1930s: there are huge problems looming, most people are in denial, but a few are making preparations which could be crucial. Some of these are in Wales, and as a fresh immigrant, I’m … Read more

Is Earth a Karmic Enterprise Zone?

An extra-terrestrial view of our perplexities   When even slightly plausible explanations fail, it’s time to try some which look highly off the wall, so give this one a test flight. It came to me in a dream while on holiday in the wilds of the Pennines. In my experience, dreams are one way that … Read more