Personal Blogs

The Quiet Loss of Life

Picture yourself in a laboratory. Beneath the lens, a single cell pulses with energy. It is alive, vibrant, filled with possibility. Then, suddenly, it ceases. What has disappeared? Only one among trillions, and yet something essential has slipped away. We call it "life" but we cannot grasp its meaning.  No experiment, no human skill, can summon it back. Its life has ended, leaving us with mystery and silence.

I have been reflecting on this because, just over a week ago, my own body faltered in a way that nearly carried me into oblivion. I know the moment will return; it comes for all of us. When it does, I hope to stretch out my arms and whisper, as Stephen the martyr once did, “Heavenly Father, receive my spirit.”

It will happen to you too. Just like that cell under the microscope, one day you will slip quietly from this world.

That truth casts a sobering light on the way we live. The silly arguments, the grudges that harden into bitterness, the endless scramble for wealth or recognition—how hollow they seem in the face of our mortality. The hate and hostility that people indulge in, not pausing to consider that death will one day demand them, will surely leave them wanting in the eyes of their Creator.

And yet, the Scriptures remind us that even the smallest losses matter. Jesus spoke of sparrows sold for almost nothing, yet not one falls to the ground without God’s awareness. Life, however overlooked by others, is noticed. Life is valued.

Stephen, as stones rained down upon him, did not cling desperately to survival but entrusted himself to Christ with the words, “Receive my spirit.” His fragile life was slipping away, but he believed it was secure in God’s hands. Centuries earlier, Job had asked the haunting question: If a man dies, will he live again? His answer was not despair but hope—he would wait for renewal. Both Stephen and Job faced mortality with the conviction that life is not extinguished but kept, safeguarded in what Scripture calls the Book of Life.

We did not kindle the spark within us, nor do we sustain it. Life is gift, not possession. Which leads us to the deeper questions: What does it truly mean to be alive? And inseparably, what does it mean to be human?

The Scriptures sketch a picture that invites us to ponder. To be human is first to be beloved creation. The psalmist marvels that the Maker of stars and galaxies should care for us, crowning us with honour. Our smallness does not render us insignificant; it highlights the care of God. To be human is also to be moral beings, shaped by the breath of God breathed into us, endowed with conscience and choice. Sometimes we stumble, sometimes we shine, but always our freedom is part of our dignity.

At the same time, we are dependent yet eternal. The psalmist reminds us we are dust—frail, fleeting, easily broken. And yet Ecclesiastes tells us eternity has been set in our hearts. That paradox—mortal yet made for more—defines how God sees us. Fallen, yes, prone to wander, yet redeemable through Christ, who calls us not merely sinners but sons and daughters, capable of renewal and reconciliation. And finally, we are stewards and witnesses, entrusted with the earth and with each other, called to reflect His justice, His kindness, and His humility.

Life is quiet, often overlooked, yet immeasurably precious. To see it rightly is to recognize that the cell beneath the lens, the sparrow in the sky, the neighbour beside us, and even our own breath—all are gifts sustained by God. We live in the tension of fragility and eternity, dust and spirit, loss, and hope.

And so, I ask you to consider: in the brief time you are given, how will you live?

For what is the hope of the godless when he is cut off,
When God requires his life?

Will God hear his cry
When distress comes upon him?

Will he take delight in the Almighty?
Will he call on God at all times?

Job 27: 8-10

Image generated by Copilot

Two Words That Belong to the Same Party

Some words meet like strangers at a gathering—polite, reserved, exchanging glances across the room but never quite drawing near. Others, however, seem destined for each other. They gravitate toward the same table, not sharing a language but a spirit. Ephemeral and Qanuk are such words.

The first, from Greek, captures the brevity of a thing that lasts only a day, a spark flaring briefly on the vast canvas of time. The second, drawn from Inuit tongues, names a single snowflake—fragile, luminous, unrepeatable. Apart, they are striking. Together, they feel less like vocabulary and more like companions who, upon meeting, recognise themselves in each other.

A snowflake is the perfect emblem of transience: falling, shimmering, and vanishing into memory. Yet in its brief descent, it is wholly itself—crafted with mathematical precision that will never occur again. So it is with human life: fleeting in duration, intricate in design. The Greeks captured the brevity, the Inuit, the singularity. What one word lacked, the other supplied. Together they tell a fuller truth—that each moment is both passing and unique, irreducible and worthy of attention.

This is why, to me, these words belong at the same party. They are not content with small talk. They remind us of the delicate miracle of existence. They sit side by side, raising a quiet toast to impermanence and beauty, whispering that what vanishes still carries weight, and that in every passing instant there lingers a trace of the eternal.

Perhaps that is why they draw me in—because they speak not only of snowflakes and seconds, but of souls. Each of us is a qanuk: brief in the measure of days, yet no less real for being ephemeral. And if such words belong together, perhaps so do we.

Scripture echoes this truth. Psalm 103 reminds us: “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.” And yet, within that transience the hand of eternity is within our grasp. Jesus proclaims,  “Truly, truly, I tell you, he who believes has eternal life” (John 6:47).

Image by Copilot

The Value of Biography: Learning from Ralph Glasser and the Gorbals

Some years ago, I asked a friend who was an avid reader what his favourite book was. It was Ralph Glasser’s Growing Up in the Gorbals. I grew up in Govan, close to the Gorbals in Glasgow, and when I read the book, I found myself drawn into a world that felt eerily familiar, though his memories belong to an earlier generation, the contours of struggle, resilience, and community he describes echo the environment that shaped my own early years. This is the unique power of biography: it allows us not only to step into another life, but also to hold up a mirror to our own.

To grow up in Glasgow’s Gorbals in the early twentieth century was to be shaped by forces both crushing and clarifying. Ralph Glasser’s memoir offers not just a story of personal survival, but a portrait of a world now vanished; a slum whose crumbling tenements were both a crucible of hardship and a school of resilience. His narrative, raw and unsentimental, forces us to look at poverty not as an abstract statistic but as a lived reality of draughts whistling through broken windows, burst pipes dripping onto damp floors, and the pervasive sense that life was lived one step ahead of collapse.

Born into a Jewish immigrant family in 1916, Glasser’s early life was marked by loss: his mother died when he was only six, and his father, undone by grief and gambling, struggled to hold the family together. Yet the book is not one of despair. What makes Glasser’s memoir compelling is his refusal to let deprivation dominate the story. Instead, he recalls his childhood with clarity, sometimes even with humour, showing that even in the bleakest of environments, the human spirit could spark with wit, ambition, and small joys.

The Gorbals themselves form a character in the narrative; a place infamous for overcrowding and poverty, yet rich in the rough music of community. Tenement closes echoed with quarrels, gossip, and the laughter of children playing amid the grime. For outsiders, the Gorbals was a byword for deprivation; for those who lived there, it was the world entire. Glasser paints this paradox vividly: the slum as both prison and proving ground, oppressive yet formative.

At its heart, Growing Up in the Gorbals is a meditation on possibility. That a boy from such conditions could, through education and unyielding determination, eventually walk the quads of Oxford is nothing short of remarkable. It is a story that challenges our assumptions about class, opportunity, and destiny. In Glasser’s life, we see how intelligence and grit can sometimes crack open doors that poverty has bolted shut.

Yet the book is not just about individual triumph. It is also social testimony, preserving the memory of a vanished Glasgow. The Gorbals, with its mix of Scots, Jews, Irish, and other immigrant communities, was a microcosm of survival against the odds. To read Glasser’s account is to be reminded that the modern city, with all its prosperity and glass-fronted buildings, rests upon layers of forgotten struggle.

For students of writing, this is where biography’s value lies. As Virginia Woolf observed in her essay The New Biography (1927), the task of life-writing is not merely to arrange facts but to capture the “semi-transparent envelope” of personality,  the elusive interplay of memory, feeling, and circumstance. Glasser achieves this by situating his private griefs and ambitions against the larger backdrop of a community in decline. He shows us how biography works at two levels simultaneously: it reveals the idiosyncrasies of one life, and it preserves the atmosphere of a whole world.

Contemporary theorists of life-writing, such as Hermione Lee, remind us that biography is also an act of interpretation: the biographer (or autobiographer) selects, frames, and shapes a life into narrative. Students of writing can learn from Glasser’s choices, his refusal to sentimentalise poverty, his ear for dialect, his willingness to balance humour with hardship. These are not only narrative techniques but also ethical decisions about how to tell the truth of a life.

There is also a quiet universality in Glasser’s story. While the details are specific — Jewish customs, Glasgow dialect, the hum of a factory,  the themes are timeless: the fragility of childhood, the ache of loss, the resilience that hardship can teach. His writing asks us to consider what truly shapes a person: circumstance, community, or character. Perhaps, as Glasser shows, it is all three, woven inseparably together.

Ultimately, Growing Up in the Gorbals is less about poverty than about dignity. It testifies that even in the most neglected corners of society, human beings remain luminous with potential. For those studying writing, it offers a model of biography’s double gift: it preserves the singularity of a life while illuminating the shared conditions of humanity. To read — and to write — biography is to engage in an act of preservation and recognition. When I read Glasser, I hear not only his voice but also the echoes of my own community. His book reminds me, and should remind all of us who write, that biography is never about one life. It is about how one life illuminates many.

Is Humanity Being Observed?

Have you ever felt someone is staring at you from a distance. It could be intimidating or it could be a compassionate gaze, depending on your actions in life.  NASA among other nations  have poured billions into the search for life beyond our planet. But what are we truly looking for? Is it curiosity alone that drives us, or a deep, unspoken desire to be acknowledged by voices from other worlds? And if intelligent beings were out there, watching us, how would they judge the way we live on this fragile blue planet?

Think of it: Earth is overflowing with resources, enough to nourish every man, woman, and child. Yet images of starving children, hollow-eyed with hunger, still reach our screens. Diseases that could be cured with a few pills continue to take lives, while others spend fortunes on luxuries. In our cities, men and women sleep in doorways, while vast stretches of land lie unused. Drugs erode communities, and leaders—charged with steering nations—argue endlessly, unable to find unity even on the simplest matters. It is chaos dressed as progress, like trying to net fish in a storm.

And still, we imagine ourselves prepared to welcome strangers from the stars.

What would they see in us? They might acknowledge our ingenuity—rockets leaving Earth’s pull, symphonies that stir the heart, and sciences that peel back the fabric of reality. But would their hearts not ache at our inhumanity and contradictions? At our greed, our divisions, our blindness to injustice? Would they wonder why a species so richly blessed refuses to live by the principles that could heal its wounds?

And perhaps the greater question is not what they would make of us, but what we would make of them. Suppose these visitors did not arrive with weapons or dazzling technologies, but with a message—simple, ancient, and moral. Imagine them urging us to love our neighbour indeed, not just in speech. To be faithful in our commitments, to tell the truth, to show kindness to the vulnerable—the poor, the elderly, the orphan, the widow. To treat animals with dignity, to resist envy, greed, and gossip, to pay fair wages without exploitation. To live humbly, compassionately, humanly.

Would we welcome such wisdom, or scoff at it, as we so often dismiss the moral compass already laid before us and look where we are? 

It is sobering to realize that the virtues we might hope for from enlightened extra-terrestrials are the very values humanity has long been taught—but so often neglects. Could it be that the wisdom we seek in distant galaxies has already been given to us, whispered through centuries?

Perhaps they are already watching, not with curiosity but with judgment. Not descending in spaceships, but observing from afar, weighing how we care for the gifts entrusted to us. In this sense, they might resemble the God described in 2 Chronicles 16:9: “For the eyes of the LORD roam throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

The apostle Paul spoke similarly to the Athenians: “That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Could it be that in our restless search among the stars, we overlook the presence of the eternal that is already nearby?

Before we stretch our gaze outward, perhaps we must first look inward. For if we cannot learn to live in peace with each other on Earth, what chance do we have of understanding life beyond it? The real discovery may not be out there, among the constellations, but here—within our own humanity, waiting to be lived.

The Mystery of Music

Sometimes the most uneventful day can leave us with pleasent memories. Yesterday, I found myself in the Combined Assessment Unit of my local  hospital receiving treatment for an ongoing illness. Before the doctor released me, I observed what the power of music can do. As a woman rushed out of the hospital, she suddenly stopped, turned back, and entered the waiting room where we were all gathered. Kiri Te Kanawa was singing O mio babbino caro by Puccini. For a moment, everything froze. The patients, the staff, the sterile walls of the hospital—all paused as her voice filled the space. Yes, it was music to stop you in your tracks.

Today, on my morning walk, I listened to Gustavo Dudamel on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs. I was moved by his enthusiasm as he spoke of the mystery of music, how it moves us in ways we cannot fully explain. Personally, I see no mystery in its essence: it is a gift from the Creator. The mystery, for me, lies elsewhere—in how composers across any genre manage to produce works that endure, that live on far beyond them, carrying an emotional shelf life of centuries.

Dudamel also spoke about his home in Venezuela, where serenade performers still go from house to house, singing beneath windows. It carried me back to a childhood memory of music that was less polished, yet no less unforgettable.

1963: The Incongruity of Self-Awareness
I was seven years old. Every Sunday at 11 a.m., a man would appear round the back of our tenement building. He carried his own stage in the form of a soapbox, wore a bowtie with a donkey jacket, and looked like a music hall artist fallen on hard times. He would swig from a bottle of wine, then launch into Mario Lanza’s Be My Love. The sound rose through the grey closes, spilling into kitchens and living rooms. My mother would listen just long enough before opening her purse, tossing some coins out the window, and muttering, “Why doesn’t that b…. man sing something new?” as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

And yet, even now, I realise he too was part of the mystery. Whether sung in opera houses, broadcast on the radio, or crooned on a street corner by a man with a bottle and a soapbox, music finds a way to reach us, to demand our attention, to remind us we are human.

"You open Your hand

and satisfy the desire of every living thing."

Psalm 145:16 (BSB).

Will There Be a Judgement Day?

“What exists has already been, and what will be has already been,

for God will call to account what has passed.”

— Ecclesiastes 3:15

My wife and I read this last night and were perplexed by its meaning. A bit of research though, helped with the unpacking.

The writer of Ecclesiastes lifts our eyes from the immediacy of daily life to a larger horizon. His words are at once perplexing and comforting. They remind us that time is not linear as we perceive it, but cyclical, enfolded within God’s eternal gaze. To human reason, this is bewildering. We long for clarity, for neat beginnings and endings, but Scripture tells us that “what exists has already been” and “what will be has already been.” God dwells outside of time’s stream, seeing both ends at once.

This truth can unsettle us. If God’s purposes stretch across eternity, then much of life’s apparent disorder—the injustice, the sorrow, the vanity—seems beyond our comprehension. We search for meaning in what is fleeting and wonder why God allows certain things to pass. His workings, the Preacher insists, are not always open to human explanation. They are “perplexing” because His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9).

Yet Ecclesiastes does not leave us in bewilderment. The verse turns: “God will call to account what has passed.” Suddenly, the fog clears. If history is cyclical, if nothing is truly new under the sun, then God remains its fixed point. He is not absent from the pattern; He is the Judge who remembers.

Having watched a video on YouTube yesterday were young people asked who Hitler was? One said an actor, another said a guy with a moustache, another said someone who never existed. Hitler’s deeds have become forgotten by many. But with God, no deed is forgotten. The kindness done in secret, unnoticed by men, lives on before Him. Equally, the cruelty, the neglect, the betrayal of God and of our fellow man—these too are not buried with the passing of time. We may try to hide behind the rocks of distraction, of excuses, even of silence, but there is no rock thick enough to conceal us from His sight. The psalmist writes, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7). The answer is nowhere. No, we cannot hide under a rock.

For those who have lived unjustly, this realization is sobering. Earthly sojourns may appear to escape justice—crimes unpunished, lies unexposed, oppressors dying in peace—but before the gaze of the Eternal One, all accounts remain open until He closes them. For those who walk humbly, however, it is a source of strength. God does not forget. The love poured out, the burdens borne quietly, the prayers whispered in the night—all endure in His remembrance.

Thus, Ecclesiastes 3:15 leaves us in a place of reverence. God’s workings are perplexing, yes. But His justice is certain. Time bends and repeats, but it never erases. At the end, what matters is not whether we fully understood His purposes, but whether we lived in faithfulness, knowing that the Judge of all the earth will do right.

Image by Copilot

The Quiet Theft of the Busybody

I live in a neighbourhood where people show respect by giving one another space. No one pries into anyone else’s business, and I’m grateful for that. It’s a quiet recognition of dignity.

While reading my Bible this morning, I was struck again by how directly the Apostle Peter spoke about this. He warned that not all suffering is noble. Some of it, he said, comes from choices we bring on ourselves — murder, theft, wrongdoing. And then came the surprise: “or as a meddler” (1 Peter 4:15). The Greek word Peter uses is rare and vivid: it means “an overseer of another’s matters.” A meddler isn’t just a gossip or a curious neighbour; it is someone who assumes the right to probe into another person’s life.

This stirs something painful for me. I left my religion of thirty-three years because of the harm caused by meddlers and even after being away for 14 years, they still meddle.  Their interference was never kindness; it was controlling, humiliating, and cruel. The Apostle Paul’s advice feels like a breath of fresh air in comparison: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own affairs…” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). True godliness is shown in restraint, not interference.

Literature often paints the meddler in comic shades — Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, forever intruding on her daughters’ futures, or the troublemakers of Shakespeare and Dickens whose interference turns lives upside down. On the page, they may be amusing. But in real life, meddling is far from harmless.

Today it often hides in plain sight. Social media thrives on it — strangers commenting with authority on lives they do not live, choices they do not face, burdens they do not carry. Families know it too. Then there is a neighbour who cloaks intrusion as “concern,” a manager who crushes initiative with constant interference, a friend that reveals confidences, a pastor or elder who probs under the guise of “shepherding.”  Such meddling doesn’t nurture; it stifles. It can leave deep scars of shame, resentment, or loss of confidence. Were possible, withdraw from such ones.

Perhaps that is why Peter placed meddling alongside murderers and thieves. It is, in its own way, a form of theft — stealing dignity, privacy, and the right to carry one’s own burdens. It murders trust by saying, “You cannot handle your own life; I must handle it for you.” Proverbs reminds us: “Whoever belittles his neighbour lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent” (Proverbs 11:12). Silence here is wisdom, knowing when to step back, rather than meddle.

Meddling may look small compared to theft or violence, but its effects are far-reaching. It diminishes the victim and distorts love into control. To resist it is to live with humility, to acknowledge that only Christ is the true shepherd of souls.

Image by Copilot

What's on the Dog's Mind; What's on Mine

I was on the train today when a dog, sleek and silver as quicksilver, perhaps a Weimaraner, began to tremble with anticipation. His paws pattered a restless rhythm on the floor, and his thin, spiralling whine rose like a kettle just before it sings.

I leaned toward the owner and asked, “What’s he so excited about?”
     “The beach,” she smiled. “He knows whenever we take the train, it means sand and sea.”

In that moment, I caught his joy as if it were contagious, and I thought of the Hebrew word Firgun—the unselfish delight in another’s happiness. It struck me that this word, usually reserved for human circles, surely stretches to include the animal kingdom.

Konrad Lorenz once observed that “there is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog.” Here was that faith transfigured into pure anticipation: the animal’s body alive with memory and desire, the train itself no longer iron and motion but a herald of crashing waves and salt-soaked freedom.

I realised that perhaps our hearts, too, are wired like this: to leap at certain signs, to tremble when a promise is near fulfilment. And in sharing the dog’s ecstasy, I was reminded that joy is never diminished by being passed along—it multiplies.

Image by Copilot

Between Worlds: Who Was this Swedish Author

I’ve been reading Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process, where writers such as Amy Tan, Junot Díaz, Khaled Hosseini, and Karl Ove Knausgaard reflect on the sparks that set their imaginations alight. Their stories prompted me to ask myself the same question: what inspired me to write?

I could point to the books that shaped me from childhood, the late-night conversations with literature students I worked alongside during night shifts in Safeway, Paisley Road West in Glasgow when I was a boy, or even my years of public speaking, which share something of the rhythm and structure of writing. Yet one moment stands out more than all of these.

In the 1990s, while teaching myself Swedish—using either Rosetta Stone or perhaps a “Teach Yourself” course—I came across a short story tucked away at the back of the material. It told of a Swedish schoolteacher sitting in his classroom, imagining what his pupils might be thinking as they bent over their work. It was a simple premise, yet utterly gripping.

That story lodged in my memory and, in many ways, shaped my view of writing itself: the attempt to enter another’s thoughts, to listen across the silence. For some reason, it carried the same resonance for me as Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood; a chorus of inner voices, ordinary yet profound.

The problem is, I no longer remember either the author or the title. I have written to several Swedish literary institutions, but so far without success. ChatGPT has suggested it may have been written  by Hjalmar Söderberg, but I’ve found nothing to confirm this. What I do know is that, of all the stories I’ve read in my life, this one has never left me. It remains a quiet spark behind why I write today.

And so I make this appeal: if there are any Swedish literature students, professors, or writers who recognize the story I’ve described— a schoolteacher imagining his pupils’ inner lives—I would be deeply grateful to hear from you. To identify this author would be to reconnect with the very moment that first awakened me to the possibilities of writing.

Mellan världar: Vem var denna svenska författare

Jag har läst Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process, där författare som Amy Tan, Junot Díaz, Khaled Hosseini och Karl Ove Knausgård reflekterar över gnistorna som tänder deras fantasi. Deras berättelser fick mig att ställa mig själv samma fråga: vad inspirerade mig att skriva?

Jag skulle kunna peka på böckerna som formade mig från barndomen, på de sena nattliga samtalen med litteraturstudenter som jag arbetade tillsammans med under nattskift på Safeway, eller till och med på mina år av offentligt talande, som delar något av skrivandets rytm och struktur. Ändå finns det ett ögonblick som står ut mer än alla dessa.

På 1990-talet, när jag lärde mig svenska på egen hand—antingen med Rosetta Stone eller kanske en kurs i serien Teach Yourself—stötte jag på en novell som låg gömd längst bak i materialet. Den berättade om en svensk lärare som satt i sitt klassrum och föreställde sig vad hans elever kunde tänka på när de böjde sig över sina uppgifter. Det var en enkel premiss, men fullständigt fängslande.

Den berättelsen fastnade i mitt minne och formade på många sätt min syn på själva skrivandet: försöket att tränga in i en annans tankar, att lyssna genom tystnaden. Av någon anledning hade den samma resonans för mig som Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood; en kör av inre röster, vardagliga men ändå djupgående.

Problemet är att jag inte längre minns vare sig författaren eller titeln. Jag har skrivit till flera svenska litterära institutioner, men hittills utan framgång. ChatGPT har föreslagit att det kan ha varit Hjalmar Söderberg, men jag har inte funnit något som bekräftar det. Vad jag däremot vet är att av alla berättelser jag läst i mitt liv, så är det denna som aldrig lämnat mig. Den förblir en stilla gnista bakom varför jag skriver idag.

Därför vill jag vädja: om det finns några svenska litteraturstudenter, professorer eller författare som känner igen berättelsen jag beskrivit—en lärare som föreställer sig sina elevers inre liv—skulle jag vara djupt tacksam för att höra från er. Att identifiera denna författare vore att återknyta till det ögonblick som först väckte mig för skrivandets möjligheter. 

Image generated by Copilot

"So You Think You’re a Gangster?"

In my mid to late teens, I lived in Pollok. I called it the Barracuda Triangle due to its dangers. Three gangs marked the corners, The Paka, the Crew, and the Bundy. One afternoon, as I was walking home, a boy a year or so older came up to me and said, “So you think you’re a gangster?” Then, without warning, he head-butted me.

An old woman passing by muttered in a mocking tone, “Did you see stars, son?”

That was the climate of the 1970s in Glasgow: senseless violence, carried along by the stories and books that seemed to glorify toughness and brutality.

I was doubly an outsider. Having moved there from Govan, I found myself no longer accepted by the very boys I had grown up with. To them, I had crossed a line; I was suddenly the enemy. Between a rock and a hard place, I kept my head down as best I could.

I’ve been thinking about those days recently. One morning a few months after I was attacked, I was on the bus to school, someone slid into the seat beside me. It was the same boy who had head-butted me, but he didn’t recognize me. He told me he was heading to the Govan Juvenile Court to face a charges for some missdemeanor. He was alone. No parent, no friend, just a youth carrying the weight of what he had done alone to the court for sentencing. 

Strangely, I felt no hatred toward him. What I felt instead was sorrow. Perhaps he had been more victim than villain—neglected at home, unloved, and so forced to wear the mask of hardness. Maybe the swagger of a “hard man” was the only way he knew to be seen, to be acknowledged. I will never know the truth of his story.

What I do know is that he was sentenced into a young offender’s institution. His life branched off in a direction I never followed. I don’t know where he ended up, or whether he found peace, but I think of him still—not with resentment, but with compassion.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." — attributed to Plato

Image by Copilot

Image generated with Copilot

When I was a boy, I once stood before an eagle in the zoo. Its piercing eyes fixed on me, and for a moment, I felt as though it could see straight into my soul, exposing my thoughts and past life. The intensity unsettled me.

Years later, with age and reflection, I realised it was simply a bird, a magnificent creature, yes, but limited in its abilities, despite its keen eyesight.

Not long after, I came across these words from Jeremiah, which stirred deep thought within me:

“I, the LORD, probe into people's minds. I examine people's hearts. I deal with each person according to how he has behaved. I give them what they deserve based on what they have done.”
—Jeremiah 17:10 (NET)

In earlier years, such a verse would have filled me with unease. The idea of God knowing every hidden corner of my heart was daunting. But now, I take comfort in it. God knows me fully: a sinner, yes, but one trying his best.

When Jesus walked the earth, He made clear what His standard of judgment would be:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’ … ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’”
—Matthew 25:34–40 (BSB)

This teaching is echoed in a remarkable story from Capernaum. A Roman centurion, moved by love for his servant, sent Jewish elders to ask Jesus for help. Their plea was based not on rank or wealth, but on kindness:

“He is worthy for you to do this for him, because he loves our nation and even built our synagogue.”

Yet the centurion himself, sensing his own unworthiness, sent word to Jesus:

“Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have You come under my roof … but say the word, and my servant will be healed.”
—Luke 7:6–7 (BSB)

Here was a man of the occupying army; an unlikely candidate for mercy. And yet, Jesus marvelled at his faith and granted his request.

It leaves us with much to ponder. Judgment, mercy, faith, love—how different they are from the layers of rules and programs that religious systems often burden us with. Jesus’ words ring clear across time:

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
—Matthew 9:1

In retrospect, I am grateful for the fact that God has left the judging to Jesus. If it was left to humans...well...

A Letter To… The Voice on My Train

You were on my train.

Even before the wheels turned, you arrived, not in person, but in sound. Ten minutes before departure, your voice claimed the carriage, loud and relentless, spilling into every corner like Watt’s steam engine. You were on the phone, words tumbling out in long, circling strands that never seemed to settle. I wondered if there was someone at the other end of your call or perhaps it was all dramaturgical in the Erwin Goffman sense. The cadence of your accent struck the air with a bluntness such as that of  a Jeepney barker.

As the train carried us forward, you carried on. Fifteen minutes in, you were still there, not just in your seat, but in the atmosphere itself. Ironically, I tried to read My Life as a Dog by Reidar Jonsson; a story about a Swedish boy who was an empath. But the letters swam and blurred, eclipsed by the current of your speech. Around you, people shifted, sighed, and stole glances. You noticed, but it seemed you deliberately avoided eye contact as all eyes were on you. You remained unyielding, as though declaring that your voice had the right to dominate the air we shared.

And yet—I wonder.

Beneath the defiance, was there something else? A loneliness, maybe. A hunger to be heard. You reminded me of a child who learns to provoke, not out of mischief but out of need: notice me, see me, don’t let me vanish into the quiet.

Talking loudly in public can be a kind of declaration: I exist. It isn’t always arrogance, it can just as easily be longing in disguise. When silence feels like abandonment, some people learn to defend themselves with noise. In the small world of a train carriage, that insistence becomes a kind of power: my voice will set the tone here. Perhaps it is armour. Perhaps it is a way to keep the deeper silences at bay; he silences that ask questions, the silences that remind us of what hurts.

I don’t know your story. I only know your voice. But I hope, wherever your journey has taken you since, you have found a quieter space, one where someone listens, really listens, without you needing to raise your volume.

And I hope, should we ever share a carriage again, you will leave us a little of that quiet too.

—A fellow passenger

Sweden to Govan: The Circus That Found Us

In his book Quicksand: What It Means To Be A Human Being, Henning Mankell wrote of a childhood moment in Sveg, Härjedalen, when the circus arrived. It did not arrive grandly, not in a blaze of light and splendour, but in a battered, rickety truck that looked as if it might give up before it reached the town square. Its timbers groaned, its tarpaulins flapped, its wheels wobbled under impossible weight. And yet to the children who lined the roadside, wide-eyed in the chill northern air, it was nothing short of miraculous.

That weary truck carried with it a promise. A secret world was rattling into town—clowns daubing their faces, jugglers testing their balance as the vehicle lurched forward, the smell of greasepaint and sawdust waiting to spill out. Mankell confessed that often the anticipation was greater than the performance itself. What mattered was not the ring, nor the tricks, but the mystery of what lay hidden behind the planks, that portal into a world where the everyday was briefly suspended.

I knew that same hunger in Govan.

Our backdrop was different; an industrial heartland where ungroomed dogs prowled the closes, where tenement walls hemmed in the sky, and where winter pressed down like a heavy hand, making the mornings as dim as the evenings. But just as in Mankell’s Sweden, the promise would arrive. Not on a truck, but on the walls. Posters appeared overnight, splashes of colour against the soot-stained stone. Painted clowns with impossible grins, lion tamers frozen in their daring, trapeze artists suspended mid-flight. To a boy in Glasgow, those images were more than ink and glue. They were invitations.

And then came the Kelvin Hall.

To step through its doors was to cross a threshold. Even before I entered, I could smell the sawdust, hear the brass warming up, feel the charge of something other breaking into the ordinary. The lights, the animals, the spectacle—yes, they dazzled. But like Mankell, I discovered the real enchantment lay in the longing that preceded it. The ache of expectation, the way imagination filled in the gaps before the first drum roll struck.

For a few hours, life lifted above its greyness. We were transported, lifted beyond tenement smoke and shipyard clang to a place where marvels reigned. But the marvels never lasted. When the show was over, when the crowd spilled out into the cold night air, a sadness fell, the kind of hush that follows laughter too soon ended. The posters would curl in the rain, the animals would be packed away, the truck would head down another road. And the streets of Govan, like the streets of Sveg, would return to themselves.

Yet the echo remained.

It was not the circus itself that endured, but what it awakened; a reminder of how deeply children hunger for something extraordinary to pierce their days. Mankell and I, strangers in different lands, carried the same memory: that the circus was not a show, but a promise. A fleeting glimpse that life could, for a moment, lift its veil of greyness and dazzle us with wonder.

Image generated by Copilot