It can be so easy to view institutions as unshakeable, fixed perspective, entities. They stand for something that is public and impersonal, something unchangeable. But what if we looked at organisations more as the sum of their individual parts than as an official whole? A few weeks ago I was listening to the wonderful Analysis… Continue reading The Psychology of Conflict
Category: Stories
Dear Henning (A Tribute To Henning Mankell)
Dear Henning, With the news of your death, today is a sad day for many of us. We devoured your novels, whether the Wallander series, or lesser known works. We revelled in your storytelling, which despite being fictional always felt deeply honest. We were inspired by your actions, how you consistently spoke up against injustice… Continue reading Dear Henning (A Tribute To Henning Mankell)
Stumbling Over My Words
Learning a new language opens a world of opportunities to experience vulnerability, especially if navigating your every day life depends on it. Just over a year ago, my wife and I relocated to Jordan in order to learn Arabic. In the future we want to work with Syrian refugees, and we know that speaking the… Continue reading Stumbling Over My Words
Parallel Bible: An Interview with Andrew Breitenberg
Parallel Bible is an exciting new experiment that takes an ancient text and anchors it in day to day experiences through crowd-sourced images. I spoke to co-founder Andrew Breitenberg about the app and their Kickstarter campaign to fund the first printed gospel of Mark in which all of its visual content is sourced by its readers.… Continue reading Parallel Bible: An Interview with Andrew Breitenberg
The Upside of ISIS
You know how sometimes something really horribly grotesque somehow ends up having a positive, unintended byproduct? Like when you see someone who has faced the worst kinds of abuse find their way out the other side. And they’re not just the same person they started out being. They’re stronger. They somehow turn the utter shit-that-should-never-have-happened situation into something that… Continue reading The Upside of ISIS
So Close
Click. I sat glued to my screen, hitting refresh, knowing that in 15 minutes time it would all be over. The last time this happened to me was when we came to the end of our crowd funding campaign last year. We knew that the outcome of the campaign would determine our future: would we… Continue reading So Close
The Perspective of Travel
If you’re feeling stuck in the same old rut of desiring change, but not knowing how to get started, perhaps you need a change of scenery. Movement gives us greater objectivity I remember as a boy, pedalling up the closest, highest mountain I could find and looking down at Cardiff, the city I once called… Continue reading The Perspective of Travel
It Takes A Community To Spread An Idea
Watching Amazing Grace, you’d be forgiven for thinking that slavery in the UK was abolished singlehandedly by William Wilberforce. Fortunately, the story isn’t quite so simple. Wilberforce wasn’t alone. He was part of a community that later became known as the ‘Clapham Sect’. They were a group of God-fearing activists who lived close to each… Continue reading It Takes A Community To Spread An Idea
Change Makers Avoid Insulation
If you want to stay alive to the world, it’s important to avoid becoming segregated from the needs around you. Wholeheartedly embracing a life of change means opening your eyes to the pain of the world and letting it shape you. Image by Zoriah That’s one of the reasons travelling can be so good. It… Continue reading Change Makers Avoid Insulation
Are You Living a Good Story?
If your familiar with Donald Miller, you’ll know about his passion for good storytelling. While he was researching story as a way of growing his writing, he developed the idea that if we consciously plan our lives using the elements of story, we will live better, more focussed lives. The kind of lives that our… Continue reading Are You Living a Good Story?