By Rod Benson Good preaching positively unsettles us. It inspires wonder in God’s character and ways. It draws adoring worship from bruised, parched and self-absorbed souls. It encourages new thoughts. Good preaching is a light in the dark. It challenges the status quo, instills vision and prompts reform. It uncovers common ground and builds bridges. …
12 books on productivity and time management
Summarised by Rod Benson. There are hundreds of books available today on personal productivity and time management. A very small number of these are excellent, while the rest range from good to bad to just plain ugly and cringe-worthy. Have you discovered a book or other resource that has significantly lifted your game when it …
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The use of Scripture in Laudato Si
By Rod Benson (published in APBF Digest, June 2015) When he chose “Francis” for his papal name in 2014, in honour of St Francis of Assisi, we might have expected former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to make a significant contribution to the Catholic Church’s witness on environmental issues. With the Encyclical released on June 18, …
Some fairy tales may be 6,000 years old
A scene from a classic edition of Jack and the Beanstalk. “Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version …
Mindfulness as a symptom
Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively, teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress also has societal causes. By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal …
