Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead
Why we need to do something: community hubs? This is a really useful, thought-provoking book, whose core idea is that every local community should have a Lifehouse: a form of community hub to provide mutual care and practical resources, as normal services increasingly fail us. His inspiration for this idea comes from a range of … Read more
Why we all need collective power YouYou may wonder why I see community as important in the field of spiritual purpose. It’s a belief that has only emerged for me in the past few years of mounting turbulence. It’s now very hard for lone individuals to sustain their spiritual beliefs, as well as a healthy, … Read more
A reflective day With Alan Heeks and Simon Lockett How can we find our steady centre in these uncertain times? Where do we place our faith and our hope? What would spiritual resilience look like, for us and our communities? This day of exploration and support will include times of prayer, meditation and sharing, with … Read more
Reinventing spiritual community We live in a time of impending crisis, when I hear many people urging the need for sanctuary, hospicing, and a deeper sense of community. Implicit in such words, but rarely discussed, is the huge spiritual vacuum in our relentlessly materialistic society. Role models for what we need aren’t obvious, but I’d … Read more
Improving food security and affordable housing supply There’s a widespread view that strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to adapt to increasing levels of disruption, including food supplies, utilities, weather patterns, and more. One way to speed up this process is to create garden hamlets, which would … Read more
Climate change is already impacting food supplies, and is forecast to create much greater disruption in the years ahead. Seeding our Future commissioned research to understand both the threats and the scope for positive adaptation: two versions are available, one for Wales and the Borders, one of the focus areas for Seeding our Future’s work, … Read more
The Facing the 2020s report 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
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
I invite you to imagine that the bewildering, alarming events of recent years have positive aspects which we need to discern: why not try? Like me, you may have attempted to make sense of all this by rational means, and failed. Whilst specific crises may resolve, the ongoing level of disruption will probably keep growing. … Read more
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