Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends (John 15.13) WFM: DAY 10. 8.30 am: A communion. 9.00 am: The remainder of yesterday’s Post-it list provided the agenda for today. I fired up the engines. First: (4) Jones’ texts for fractured reality accounts. Having completed (a term that I’ll use in a…

Splendid isolation is the term used at the time for the 19th-century British diplomatic practice of avoiding permanent alliances, particularly under the governments of Lord Salisbury between 1885 and 1902 (Wikipedia). WFH: DAY 9. 8.15 pm: A communion. 8.45 am: I surveyed my inbox and listed my tasks for the day. I’m determined to hold fast to the principle that each day of…

When the flood calls, You have no home, you have no walls.In the thunder crash,You’re a thousand minds, within a flash (Peter Gabriel, ‘Here Comes the Flood’ (1977)). WFH: DAY 8. 8.15 am: A communion. 8.45 am: A review of the inbox before testing my audio-video equipment in readiness for the beginning of third-year painting tutorials. While remote and digitally…

‘How can this be?’ (Luke 1.34) WFH: DAY 7 (Feast of the Annunciation). 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Student admin. I read over and updated my Post-its. This a time for not only forging forth with new ambitions but also catching up with those irksome tasks that have been on the back burner for too long. The minor things…

WFH: DAY 6. 8.15 am: A communion. Now firmly ensconced at home, a sense of the breath, length, and depth of my life and its operations in the weeks ahead was more clearly defined. 9.15 am: I set up my stall in preparation for periods during the day when I’d attempt to hold one-to-one tutorials with my MA contingent: This…

And a time to refrain from embracing (Ecclesiastes 3.5) Sunday, March 22 (Mothering Sunday). My mother, Blackpool, 1954: The broadcast from Lambeth Palace was a little self-conscious and starchy. The camera hadn’t enough to see; the participants needed lapel microphones. I found worship difficult. TV is a medium of spectacle rather than of participation, in my experience. The more the…

Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6.11) That’s to say, bread enough for today. (For I’ll pray again for the same tomorrow.) That’s to say, not someone else’s bread. (Hording at another’s expense is manifest selfishness, born of insufficient love for our neighbour and trust in God.) WFH: DAY 4. 8.20 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Yesterday evening…

“Covid-19 is Gods’ judgement upon the misuse of apostrophe’s“ WFH: DAY 3. I’m surprised that there aren’t more loveless nut-ball religionists, with an axe to grind against humanity, posting fake theologies. This virus isn’t a judgement. The ‘faithful’ will contract this disease just as surely as those of no faith. It doesn’t discriminate. And neither should we when it comes…

So important to keep diaries of these dark days not only to reduce our anxieties and settle our nerves but also for the benefit of future historians. Without diarists we wouldn’t know much about the personal side of our history (Pedr ap Llwyd, Twitter, March 18, 2020) WFH: DAY 2. (In the background: Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto Op.14 (1939).) 8.30…

Love thy neighbour as thyself (Matthew 22.39) WFH: DAY 1. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 pm: Working from Home (WFM) is what academic staff do for most of the Summer. It’s no big deal for us. But for others, the loss of one’s colleagues’ society – the conversations around coffee machine, and over lunch and a drink at the end…