AlphaGo, a computer programme designed by the British Artificial Intelligence company DeepMind, beat Lee Sedol, the world’s top-rated Go player. Go is an ancient chess-type Chinese board game. Why was this event so widely reported in social media? Because, as The Times leader reported, ‘The computer was not programmed how to play the game; it taught itself . . . AlphaGo can act, but it can also react. It can use intuition and anticipate the […]
In his Jubilee letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul ll, calling for ‘a new springtime of Christianity,’ had intimations of the cosmic nuances of preparing for the third millennium. He was well aware of the significance of creation theology in this regard. ‘The fact that in the fullness of time the eternal Word took on the condition of a creature, gives a unique cosmic value to the event which took place in Bethlehem two […]
There are places on earth that take our breath away. There are millions of wondrous species that we never even imagined. There are landscapes that are wrapped around our world like multi-coloured tapestries. Natural history programmes proliferate on our social media, and more people than ever are enchanted by them. Over 14 million of us in the UK, for instance, 80 million in China, with numbers rapidly expanding across the world, watched Blue Planet II, […]
Our understanding of the Holy Spirit is mostly too limited and too undeveloped. It is time now to acknowledge and release her surging power throughout all life. We need to begin delighting in, and celebrating the dynamic Spirit pulsing through the Church, through humanity, through the evolving universe and through every corner of our own hearts We were on our way back home after Benediction one bright night, many decades ago, my mother and myself, […]
On a dark, chilly evening in early March I was walking home through a small park in Crosby with my shopping. Impossible to miss, I stared at the sudden appearance of the crocuses – violet, white and blue – translucent in the shadows, staked out like a rosary between tree trunks. Overnight, from drab patches of lifeless leaves and muck, something beautifully fragile and life-giving had soundlessly emerged. Pope Francis was sensitive to this phenomenon […]
Our understanding of the Holy Spirit is mostly too limited and too undeveloped. It is time now to acknowledge and release her surging power throughout all life. We need to begin delighting in, and celebrating the dynamic Spirit pulsing through the Church, through humanity, through the evolving universe and through every corner of our own hearts We were on our way back home after Benediction one bright night, many decades ago, my mother and myself, […]
After nearly 60 years of pastoral and academic work, of studying, writing preaching and teaching, I offer the following few pages as my most honest, clearest and truest understanding of the meaning of Incarnation, the central teaching of our Christian faith. You could say it has taken me all this time to find my authentic heart, the cantus firmus (my enduring melody), and to risk singing it’s truth. This is my effort to find and […]
God created us, and became one of us for no other reason than to draw us towards transcendent shores of joy and peace and justice. These shores do not belong to heavenly landscapes. They are the shores on which we live – where terrorists strike, where recession hurts, where churches fail, where families collapse, where fear lives. In the face of the terrible evidence of a fallen humanity, beginnings are still epiphanies of God’s faithfulness […]