It was going to be a busy week anyway without having to spend the start of it with my head down the loo. Apparently the nice meal out on Friday wasn’t so nice after all. By the fourth bout, I was clutching the familiar toilet seat and praying there was a way of making the horrible stuff…
This post was originally published with the title ‘Are we just here for a better life?’ on the Threads blog here. Click through to Threads to join the ensuing discussion there… 311 African migrants recently drowned seeking peace and safety in Europe. For once, there was public outcry, and the calls for justice and compassion…
‘His life was trees’ was one of our favourite bench inscriptions back in those park-roaming university days. How would we choose to be remembered, we wondered, if the totality of our lives had to be whittled down to a one-liner (which, depending on the park’s location, stood a high likelihood of being defaced anyway)? On…
“That must be so rewarding,” she said in response to my description of what I do for a living, her face reflecting both a glimmer of genuine interest and an absence of common ground within which to ask follow-up questions. Although I’ve heard that line a billion times, it always prompts an involuntary defensive shudder,…
*Ok, so I don’t actually mention conservatives in this blog post, although they’re lurking implicitly in the background. Nevertheless, I include them in the title for the satisfaction of a soundly evangelical three-points-beginning-with-the-same-letter approach for those of you who’ll appreciate that… My research proposal is getting me down. It’s technical, number-centred, and requires precision and…
For as long as I can remember, I always dreamed of having a magnolia tree in my garden. Of course, that dream naturally evaporated along with those other child assumptions of a house and garden and sedentary life in the UK. Nevertheless, magnolia trees have retained their je ne sais quoi and have been cheering…
Crying on public transport is always a bit embarrassing and it had been a while since I’d done it. Nonetheless, as I curled up on the Oxford Tube earlier this evening and watched the snowy surrounds of the M40 whizzing past, I found the tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. It was dark, the coach…
Last week I enjoyed one of the perks of studying at SOAS and went along to a random talk about the socio-political involvement and religious behaviour of Western Muslims. It sought to address questions like whether or not Islam’s transcendence of the civic sphere affects the political participation of Muslim people. That all sounds pretty…
Baroness Cox described herself as a nurse and social scientist by intention, and a baroness by astonishment. Beyond the fact that she’s a peer who speaks out for oppressed, persecuted and voiceless people around the world, I didn’t know all that much about her when I went to hear her speak this morning at ChristChurch…
It’s a book I avoided reading last year on the grounds that everyone else was reading it. Ten years ago I’d have lapped it up and loved its short chapters’ claims to neatly tie up complex issues of suffering, hell, and the exclusivity of Christianity. Now I’m not so sure. But it’s a book that…
emilyintheworld 