A nun of my acquaintance (actually, I think she might be a sister) told I class I was taking that “your restlessness is what is right with you.” That really struck me because it is so counter-intuitive. The idea that this uncomfortable feeling of restlessness, of always wanting more was in any sense a good […]
This post is about the experience of doubt – what it can be like to question deeply held beliefs about what the world is really like, what makes life living, what the universe is ultimately about. What we might call existential doubt, when you find your whole faith-commitment challenged. A lot of different things can […]
Hi Everyone It has been a while since I last wrote here. I’m afraid I just haven’t had anything to say these last few weeks. I have gone to the river, cast my line, but no fishies. Perhaps they are all out at sea, spawning. I don’t know whether it’s the weather, or my problematic […]
I’ve been struggling with finding some sort of way to write interestingly about my experience of being involved in Caféchurch. The problem it is unlike \anything else I have ever done. It is entirely all consuming, and has been amazingly rewarding and deeply costly – the most fun, and the most pain, I have ever […]
Advent is about waiting. It is the time between the “now” and the “not yet”, the darkness before dawn, the grain of wheat in the dark, silent earth. The night voyage. It is a time of waiting on the promises of God. One of my favourite stories is Jonah and his giant fish and how […]
So, there I was. Grief, loss, suffering: a reasonable stab at Frankl’s Tragic Triad. But, as I’ve previously said, I don’t want to stop there. I don’t trust theology – or indeed people – who jump right to the happy ending without the journey. But what is the journey? Do I have to do it […]
A couple of weeks ago, before life intervened, I began a little series trying to lay out the building blocks of my own, personal pre-theological understanding/journey. If I’m going to criticise thinkers, I felt I should present my own position. So, this is the second one. The topic? The role of suffering, and how a […]
I originally entitled this article “Why Peter Rollins Gets On My Nerves” (actually, my original title was even less polite than that, but in deference to the delicate sensibilities of my gentle readers, I restrained myself.) It’s still a kind of unofficial subtitle, but I think what I want to write about goes deeper than […]
I had a really interesting conversation yesterday, with a friend who comes from a very conservative Christian background, from which she has escaped. I have a lot of friends like this, but she put the issue in a very striking way: What has Christianity got to do with the real world? Out there in the […]
No matter how bad the future might be, the exact second now is OK. This has been my watchword for a number of years, but especially this week. I will spare you the details, but it has been a pretty stressful week chez Pate, waiting to hear whether I got a temporary developer job with […]
Alister Pate