Learning to write in the tropics

It's been a while since the world woke up to the news that Pope Benedict had passed away. As it was during his life the media had very opposing views, some old news stories aimed at painting a bad light of Ratzinger resurfaced, to the point I was asked about it over dinner one night during the Christmas vacation.  None of this was important or necessary at the time and in my ways, it still isn't. The media will always twist things depending on their particular bias. While I instinctively want to defend him at times I also feel it's best to just let things pass, it can't really touch him anymore nor will it in the grand scheme of things change much, ultimately it all rests on God and people's trust and hope in Him.  In the days that followed his passing many articles started to appear of personal experiences and encounters with Pope Benedict, many of which resonated with my own experience, he was after all the first Pope I was really conscious of, and his intellectua...

Christmas draws near and I have started with a bit of travel. Most of the time I go straight to a family home, where depends on how many days off I have. But on occasion, especially if I am staying on the European side of the Atlantic, I take advantage of being back in Spain to visit friends from Uni, most of whom live in northern Spain. Recovery from all the viruses I managed to pick up in November can continue here, though I felt recovered enough to travel.  This particular time I have been on a bit of a mission that has led to an unexpected nostalgic tour of my old undergrad uni.  While I have studied at several universities since, the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain continues to have a special place in my heart. It is in so many ways home, truly alma mater, because it was the first place I was on my own, it was a very safe space in which to experience those first years of adult independence and freedom. While there I saw old friends from undergrad days and I...

  Happy Advent everyone! This advent, as has happened to me so many times in recent years, is panning out to be quite different than expected. Mostly I feel I stumble into each season without expectations but I suspect what really happens is I expect peaceful, smooth, and healthy sailing. Ah....if only. It is, whatever my condition when the season does arrive, one of my favourite times of the year.  Now, in the life of someone attached to Oxford or Cambridge, the formal becomes a part of life and you don't quite come to appreciate what it is until you leave or until you come back after graduation and recognise the mind-opening event it can be.  One interesting formal happens during the start of Advent, which frames the curiosity that is Oxmas or Bridgemas (if you're at the other place), the anticipated Christmas celebrations at each university because the term ends at the end of November. This past week (and before the 'rona caught up with me for the first time ever) I ha...

Over the past few years, I have heard from many sides that the root of the problem is clericalism and the hierarchy. I have also heard that the solution is to allow women and married men to be ordained. This has given me food for thought. I have begun to wonder if another underlying issue is being ignored and in doing so we are avoiding seeing or acknowledging the real root of the problem: our collective forgetting about the nature of the vocation we are all called to and what that could mean for all the members of the mystical body of Christ. To illustrate an all too common narrative is useful: a young man or woman is seen to pray regularly, maybe even go to daily mass.  She or he seems to be very interested in working for the church in some capacity,  possibly as a volunteer or maybe even in a paid position. Everyone around that sees this asks them or assumes that this man or woman who prays intensely and helps out with  'x' prayer or formation group must be intending t...

 After 12 years I found myself doing something I had somehow thought I had found a way to avoid: I was headed to the JR in Oxford to get a medicine hard to find at 7pm on a regular weekday. Work took me to Spain last week and somehow, somewhere, from someone I caught a virus, which may or may not be a respiratory virus that is going around. I was thoroughly tested for covid and possible bacterial infection, x-rayed, etc, and the drs concluded: a virus that had exacerbated a long-dormant asthma. In western society, getting help from someone has come to be seen as being a burden or bothering others. We have lost the capacity to realise that in being limited there will always be moments when we need help; some more pressing than others. As I rode in my friend's car with my housemate next to her I was struck by how God had brought me to this place and placed these two women in my life. Since moving to Oxford different circumstances have meant that I have found myself in the position of...

For some months now I have known that I am probably one of the youngest great-aunts in history. Jokingly I decided to check the Guinness book of world records but the position of youngest aunt doesn't seem to appear; I didn't spend too much time on it so maybe it does exist. And given that the nature of my family, with its overlapping generations, is found in many parts of the Catholic Church I am unlikely to be the only youngest aunt. It is even possible that being an aunt for the first time at the age of 11 is not that young an age. Today hopefully my family and I will meet (or at least e-meet since I am in another country) my new niece. As we all wait expectantly next to our phones both here and in Central America it is interesting for me to in a way to watch myself watching this beautiful part of life unfold.  As Catholics, we know that pregnancy and childbirth are a miracle and amazing, but I sometimes feel this remains an abstraction for most people until you realise what...

 In the time since my last post, back at some point in the summer when the days felt so wonderfully long and I was possibly still on the other side of the canal, a lot has happened.  I've known since May that I would be starting a new job alongside my ongoing research work. This was meant to be fairly remote with only occasional travel to Oxford.  During the summer,  however, things changed and I found I was moving yet again. Soooo now my commute involves a rather steep hike and cycle up Hinksey Hill on the outskirts of Oxford. This is considerably steeper and longer than the rather modest Castle Hill in the more flat Cambridge. Once up there the views are amazing,  wonderful for a weekend hike. Up the hill, quite properly, is the Carmelite Centre for Applied Spirituality where I have started working. This is starting out as an interesting year as I try to balance a new job with my ongoing research projects, and somewhere in between trying to maintain a balanced...