Everyday I see how little I know. Everyday I see how little I've read, or seen, or heard. (Thought I had, but hadn't.) A prime example of this is Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Have you ever heard of Agnes Sligh Turnbull? (You probably have.) She wrote very successful novels in the 1940s and '50s, and later, too. But she was an optimist, she was a Christian…

There is a roughly four-minute sequence in the middle of the first Superman movie (1978) that hits the stratosphere of movie emotion -- and of real-life emotion, too. It is the scene in which Superman takes Lois Lane's hand and flies her leisuredly over Manhattan Island. As the pair glide over the city, Lois Lane (played by Margot Kidder) confides …

I so want to connect with my hearers when I preach or speak. Yes, one has a Message -- the One-Way Love of God embodied in the Compassionate Christ. But if it doesn't really connect with the listener -- with the sufferer! -- it is not able to do its job. J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), who had basically lost whatever faith he had been exposed to as a chi…

I'm thinking about ecclesiology today. Rarely do. But a combination of J.B. Priestley's "low anthropology", a couple of recent lightning bolts from outside space and (present) time, and a fresh glimpse of the touching statue of "The Compassionate Christ" outside Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham: Well, they got me thinking of what the Ch…

Can't believe I got to see Irma Thomas in person a few years back. (Saw The Stones performing the same song in 1965 on their first American tour. Have to pinch myself that that really happened. But it did.) But time is on my mind just now. This is for two reasons: 1) Two old friends died under conditions that felt like almost the polar opposite of …

Every day these days I seem to find out something important that I didn't know before. For example, that Burton Cummings has just released a new album. Or that one of Joe Dante's favorite movies is a Spanish religious satire released in 1995. Or... that The Fantasticks is really good! Or that the creators of the latter wrote an uncommonly powerful …

Eliot's line from 'East Coker', "Old men ought to be explorers", never gets... old. It is inspiring, counter-intuitive, awesome, and, yes, within our reach. And everyone's -- not just that of "old men". But I never understood it -- really -- until I met Los Straitjackets: their music, I mean. How did Los Straitjackets "shine a light" (CCR) on Thoma…

Mockingbirder Joey Goodall recently composed a public note of praise for 'PZ's Podcast', and his very act motivated this caster to record a new one. Joey's approbation instantly created within me the desire to put some fresh thoughts out there. Instantly! That's the way love works -- which is to say, "We love" (i.e., embody the fruit of outreach to…

I often think about persisting impasses and persistent patterns in life. How can you "live with" -- handle -- habitual defeats, whether from outward circumstance or inward personality, without wanting to throw yourself overboard; or, as Herr Moltmann used to say, without wanting to turn in your train ticket and get your money back. Seems there is a…

John Zahl recently said that God seems to be interested not so much in preventing our suffering as in redeeming us from it. (I might add, through it, even.) My long friendship with the theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died June 3rd at the age of 98, began with a somewhat dramatic "happening" that lines up with JAZ's statement. This new cast describe…

Now "here's a howdy-do" (The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan). How does Joe Meek shed light on that ascendant movement -- and it still is ascendant -- within New Testament scholarship and interpretation? Let me say how. Admirers of Joe Meek's amazing productions like to say that he was way ahead of his time in terms of technology and recording innovatio…

Consideration of these (thousands of) new "Tea Chest" tapes from Joe Meek is such a blow to old assumptions. For example, I thought I knew his music pretty well. Even dedicated a book to him once, despite his having been dead since 1967. So now come out a Ton, a TON of new recordings by the Man Who Heard a New World. And almost all of them are fine…

The new release of hundreds of Joe-Meek tapes and tape-excerpts from the "Tea Chests" of yore is a fresh flashlight into the nature of reality within this broken/fallen world. Did any of us have any idea of how much good material is contained within these acetate tapes that were packed up in the aftermath of Joe's horrible death? Probably not. We e…

It was quite arresting, decades ago, when a young artist in New York City told me that, despite appearances -- she came across as confident and hopeful -- she felt inside herself as if she were an egg that had been hurled against the wall, broken in a hundred pieces and dripping down the white paint. In other words, she was "Shattered" (Rolling Sto…

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build…

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent. Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your ch…

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" In an earlier day, it might have…

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bri…

I'm trying to put into words the core principles of accessible Christian theology. Not mentally or intellectually accessible, but feeling-accessible -- heart-accessible -- and therefore actually and experientially accessible! Karl Barth promulgated what was called a "theology from the top down". He saw himself as opposing theologies "from the botto…

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life. Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig). But the heart always lov…

An old acquaintance, an Australian bishop, has been quoting recently from a popular cartoonist and kind of pop philosopher "Down Under" named Mike Leunig. The bishop quoted an aphorism from Leunig in relation to his long-term hopes for the Anglican Church in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed". When I heard my old colleague quoting Mike Leun…

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself. You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instant…

I've been thinking some about "borderland" states, meaning extremely strong states of mind and feeling that are not necessarily explicit, but are nonetheless real. Borderland states of mind are when you are in despair concerning your life, or your primary relationships, or simply the way you feel inside. Sometimes the borderland state is positive -…

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of. They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs. Like you and me could do! And especially if we could take…

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power. And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Bud…

On December 29th, 2023 Mary and I have been married exactly 50 years. What a marker for us! (I truly feel it and celebrate it.) This marker-episode concerns the primacy of individual belovedness over any and everything else, including career and professional achievement. This primacy becomes instantly apparent whenever you get sick, or find yoursel…

Bishop Colin Buchanan died November 29th in Leeds Infirmary, and there’s been almost no coverage of it — not even in the Church press. Astonishing! Colin was one of the most influential ministers and scholars in the Church of England during the 20th Century. Yet it seems today as if he almost never existed. This podcast is a reflection on the anony…

This Christmas podcast is in honor of Mary's and my 50th Anniversary, which comes on December 29th. She and I are both in thankful awe of having made it thus far. And happily! To me this is worth celebrating. The cast sets out two requirements, or better, signs, as I see it, for an enduring marriage. The first is the romantic connection. Our marria…

That's a fun movie, from 1976, in which a group of Victorian English people are mistakenly rocketed into inner space, right down to the core of the earth. (What they find, well, you can probably imagine.) But the title and the premise are good: There's newness to be found at the center of the earth -- our earth, our core. This is the heart of the C…

When I survey... not the Wondrous Cross, but the world as it's currently going, it's hard not to despair. So many things seem and feel wrong -- are wrong. Providentially (as I see it), I've been directed back to Rod Serling. He was so focussed on justice, and especially social justice; and also on fate and impassable destiny. But he also believed i…

God spoke to me recently. Not through a mediated form -- albeit it was through another human being. Not through concept nor reading nor paradox nor metaphor nor memory. But right Here and Now! I was truly blown away. It was neither expected (at all) nor on a subject about which I'd been thinking. This podcast gives the outline of what happened. The…

I've been much affected by the pictures of murdered and bombed children from Israel and Gaza in the last week, and found myself comparing these unutterably tragic losses with some of the other issues on which our world is fixed. It almost seems like there's no comparison between the bloody burial sheet of a five-year old child and the concerns that…

If you want to get to the core, the very heart, of a person's -- say, your own -- experience of Grace, ask them (i.e., ask yourself) to tell you about an experience of acceptance or belovedness that came to them at a low point in their youth or childhood. Get them to tell you about that one experience of being loved personally, subjectively, for yo…

Written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Glen Campbell, "Our Movie" is a very touching song. It describes a fulfilled marriage from its beginning and right through. It really describes one's whole life in affectionate and thankful perspective. For me the song is pure Phosphorus! In the cast I talk about soul and body, true self and false self, physic…

So I was in Henley-on-Thames last week and there was this almost hidden bookshop next to a place called "The Ferret". (I kid you not.) High on a shelf there was an old leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' lesser known Christmas stories. Not the long ones like "A Christmas Carol" or "The Chimes" or "The Haunted Man"; but short ones like "The Child…

Serving in full time ministry is as stress-full as any occupation can be. You get hit from all sides -- unendingly -- and just when you think things are beginning to stabilize, you get hit again. Plus, there is the in-built transference that is projected on you as a 'father'-figure (if you are male) which keeps surfacing, at least to some extent, i…

The quintessence of one's continuing love of popular culture that embodies heart-to-heart communication is the subject of this cast. What makes a work of popular art "Christian"? Does it have to be explicit to qualify? Or implicit -- and therefore under the radar -- to really qualify? One thing I know is that you have to love the work-in-question, …

It's interesting how far music drives this podcast. Fer sher, I've been "out of pocket" for a month or so, but what drove me to record this new cast was one thing: music. I'd recently heard a section of The Carpenters' single "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977) and was made speechless by Karen C's vocal. One simply had to find a plac…

Verticality is a make-or-break attribute of the Christian Church. When we put horizontality before verticality, we run out of gas. Always. People cannot "keep up" horizontal good works and outreach if they are not being, as the English say, resourced. I saw this vividly last week. A men's prayer breakfast and Bible study was powerfully taught by a …

I think we probably all need to get "outta gear", at least to some extent. 'Gears' are the attitudes, narratives, and exterior values that shape and define most of what we spend our time doing. We are trying to be successful, trying to win love, trying to be some image of ourselves that someone else has made us covet, trying, basically, to get nowh…

I think about it a lot: why isn't God intervening to make the world a less harsh and broiling place? 'Where are you, God? Come on, already.' Another way of putting it: What's taking You so long? And that's not just a question about "the world". It's a question concerning your individual world. As in, when are You going to help me out with this part…

It just came down to me. Like the letter at the beginning of Forrest Gump. Like the chap who rescued Mary and me six years ago when we blew a tire in the most remote "track" to be found in all of England. It just came down to me: I realized that the rockabilly-surfing band Los Straitjackets had something to teach me that had been camouflaged for ye…

We're always looking out for resources, mostly in the popular-art side of life, that embody the Belovedness that precedes all loving. Whether it's a Motown single or a novel no one's ever heard of or a TV show from last year, we're on the lookout for felt expressions, resonating with us inwardly, of the Love that precedes all 'Works of Love' (SK). …

Gerry Rafferty's 1978 single entitled "Right Down the Line" is a pure classic on the experience of imputation. Imputation, for the record, is when someone lovingly regards you as different from the way you perceive yourself; and somehow in being thus regarded, you actually become the person someone sees you as. That's a lot of prepositions, but tha…

That title song is a quiet masterpiece. Sure, it's a little corny in the arrangement, but the message is universal. It never fails, at least in my case, to elicit tears -- of recognition. This cast is a hymn to life-long marriage. (That's just what it is.) It is also my attempt to say better what I almost always tried to convey to engaged couples i…

These podcasts are almost all dialogues with music. The music, such as "Beep Alonia" from 1964, touches a soft or sensitive spot in my heart -- and also one's brain, maybe -- and suddenly "the waters flow". Here I am thinking about contact with the supernatural, with God, really: the curtain coming down between "God and man" ('Modern Love', David B…

Good things, true things, lasting things have built-in repetition. They repeat in life because they are always valid. So they come back. Like "The Monster Swim"! That major contribution was the follow-up, by the same artist/s, to "The Monster Mash". We all know about the latter. It was the Best Song of 1964, hands down. Recently, an appearance to m…

Warning from Space, a Japanese sci-fi "thriller" from 1956, is an extremely ridiculous movie. But I had confused it with Message from Space, also Japanese but from 1978, which is in fact not as good. (What is he talking about?!) I had wanted to entitle this cast "Message from Space". That is because the messages we need so urgently to receive from …

There is so little one knows. Here one thought one had a "deep bench" when it comes to foreign films, and yet I knew nothing of Julien Duvivier! Yes, there is his 'classic' Poil de Carotte, and Criterion put out Pepe le Moko a while back. And they are both outstanding. But it took an almost accidental viewing recently of Duvivier's Flesh and Fantas…

Sometimes I hear a 'Grace' sermon that is just terrific... until the last five minutes. During the last five minutes, the preacher seems pressed to tell me how I should respond, at least mentally, to the message of God's One-Way Love. The preacher -- in good faith and sincerity, to be sure -- tells me to "relax into the Message", "accept the Gift",…