Personal Blogs

Where the Small Names Sleep

I walked through the Glasgow Necropolis as I often have. It was one of those bright Scottish mornings that softens even the hardest thoughts. The Necropolis, that city of the dead perched above Mother Glasgow; the city of the living, where space not only for memory but for quiet conversation with time itself exists. 

As I made my way among the gravestones, I found myself counting years, not just my own sixty plus but those etched into stone: the tiny, abbreviated lifespans of children lost long ago in a Dickensian age to epidemics like cholera, diphtheria, typhus. Names barely had time to settle and establish into the world before they were carved in stones suggesting they were here.

It’s a strange thing to be old in a place filled with the young who died. I felt not so much survivor’s guilt as survivor’s wonder. I’ve had decades of travel, of reading, of walking beaches at sundown, of writing, of grieving and healing, of faith evaluated and restored. What would any one of these children have become with even half of my years?

My cancer, in that moment, seemed less like an ending and more like a milestone. I don’t know how many more years are allotted to me, but I know now how many I’ve already been given, and I know what a privilege it is to reach an age where you look both forward and back.

The graves made me think of God’s purpose—not as a tidy doctrine, but as a question folded into every name worn smooth by wind, moss, and rain. What becomes of children who never had a chance to choose faith, to assess goodness, to wrestle with meaning? Where are they in the great scheme of things?

Jesus once said, “Let the little children come to me... for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” I must believe that children taken early are held in a mercy deeper than we can grasp. They are not forgotten; they are not lost to God . If anything, it is we who are still lost, walking among headstones trying to make sense of the living and the dead.

There’s a sobering democracy in cemeteries. All names are equal here, whether child or elder, rich, or poor, known, or unknown. We all close our eyes and rest with our forebears. And yet, those of us still walking have something the dead do not: time. Time to reflect, to forgive, to change. Time to be grateful. My cancer has made me aware of time—not just its scarcity, but its richness.

So, I keep walking, not just through the Necropolis, but through each day, carrying with me the invisible company of children who never saw their coming-of-age birthdays or perceived  the invisible grace of a God.

Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot

Image generated by Copilot

The Strange Allure of Darkness

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
— Romans 12:21 (NIV)

If you're new here, welcome to A Writer’s Notebook: What It Means to Be Human. This blog offers small extracts from longer essays I’m drafting for a book by the same name. A common thread runs through every post: the question of what it means to be human. And if you're among the daily visitors, I believe we share something important, a love for what is good, a value that quietly permeates this space.

There’s a moment in The Hunchback of Notre Dame when Judge Claude Frollo, Disney’s most complex villain, stands alone in the cathedral, tormented by lust disguised as piety. He gazes into the fire and sings of sin, damnation, and desire. The scene is unforgettable, artistically brilliant, yet deeply unsettling. Not because it lacked truth, but because it so completely surrendered to darkness.

As a writer, I try  to write  about what is good and has human value. Not because I’m naïve or blind to suffering. On the contrary, I see it too clearly. But goodness needs a louder voice. Evil already has a press team with wide circulation. 

Why do we glorify the grotesque? What strange thrill do we find in the demonic, the deranged, the depraved? I recall as a teenager going to see a movie that featured the occult. There was something unnerving, uncomfortable when I left the movie theatre that day. I still have grotesque images in my head half a century later There’s something disconcerting about how easily we engage with darkness even celebrate it. It’s in travel documentaries where a rural village is shown not through its music or harvests but its masks, macabre, skeletal, fearful. Why do such images dominate, as though the heart of a people could be summed up in the sinister? Who decided the grotesque was more “authentic” than the gentle, the spiritual, the existential and the good in the human family?

Perhaps it’s because evil shocks—and shock makes us feel alive, like a slap of cold water waking us from numbness. Or maybe we no longer believe in goodness as something real. We treat it like sentiment, like child's play, while evil is seen as complex, sophisticated, even artful.

In literature, the villain is often more deeply drawn than the hero. In film, darkness wins the awards. In conversation, we’re quicker to dissect corruption than to celebrate integrity.

But this fascination with darkness isn’t just aesthetic; it’s spiritual.

C.S. Lewis observed that evil is always a parasite. It has no life of its own. It feeds on the good, twisting and deforming it. That’s why evil is so theatrical, it must draw attention to itself because it has no substance apart from what it corrupts. The Devil is in the details.

What, then, is evil? At its core, it is the rejection of love. It’s the wilful distortion of what is true, good, and beautiful. It’s Cain raising his hand against his brother. Pharaoh hardening his heart. Judas betraying a friend with a kiss.

Sometimes it’s loud and brutal. Sometimes it’s just the slow erosion of compassion, the muting of conscience.

So why do I write what is good? Because I believe the world is aching for it. I believe beauty restores the soul. I believe kindness is radical. I believe that the light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. When I write about a gentle act, a word of forgiveness, a glimmer of grace, I’m not ignoring the shadows or my shadows ; I’m defying them. There is courage in joy. There is rebellion in hope. In an age that glorifies cynicism and darkness, to write the good is a kind of revolution.

And I want to be part of that.

My Life as a Dog by Reidar Jonsson

The Sensitive Boy

It was a nice evening today and I sat round the back reading a book that’s been in my library for some years but never got round to reading it. Somehow, I began to think I was missing something. I had saw the movie many years back, but books are always better. 

In My Life as a Dog, Ingemar, the young protagonist is growing up in 1950s Sweden. He retreats into comparisons with others who suffer more. He thinks of Laika, the Russian dog launched into orbit, circling the earth alone until her death. A boy should not have to console himself with the fate of a dog abandoned among the stars. Yet Ingemar does, because he feels too much, and the world gives him too little.

I think of the sensitive child, not unlike myself, who grew up in a home where life did not seem ideal. There were shadows in the corners of the room, arguments, silences, absences. A boy like that finds survival not in strength but in imagination. He tells himself stories. He compares his suffering to others’. He says, “It could be worse.”

But he feels everything. A harsh word doesn’t brush off him like dust from a jacket. It lingers. He reads the tension in a room, the disappointment in a parent’s face, the grief behind a closed door. He learns to be quiet, because sensitivity, in such a world, is mistaken for weakness. And yet, secretly, it is the only thing keeping him human.

What Ingemar teaches us is that sensitivity is not a flaw but a form of endurance. The sensitive child bears what others cannot because he feels what others refuse to notice. He grows into a man who understands sorrow, who can weep for Laika the dog, who can pity the neglected and defend the voiceless.

Juxtapose the two boys—the Swedish child in a rural town, and the child from any other city or home where love was never quite enough. Both had to make do with what was given, piecing together hope from scraps. Both learned to find perspective: one in the fate of a dog, the other perhaps in the quiet knowledge that the world, though cruel, is not without moments of unexpected kindness.

The moral, then, is not simply that we survive hardship, but that sensitivity, so often despised, is the very gift that allows us to survive with our souls intact. For what kind of life would it be if we could not weep for a dog sent into space, or for a child who grew up where life was less than ideal?

“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid”

Micah 4:4

There's Something About a Tree

Yesterday in Glasgow, I met a man from Gambia. We stood talking for a while, and as usual, I find writing inspiration in the people I meet. In most cases the language of their homeland can be culturally revealing in a wholesome way. Although English is the national tongue, Bantaba, in the Mandinka language also spoken in Gambia means a large tree, often a silk-cotton tree under whose shade the community gathers. There they talk, share news, resolve disputes, or simply rest together in the cool of the day. It is a place and an act, a shared ritual that says: we belong to one another.

The image stayed with me as I wandered into sleep last night. Many years ago, I had read a book about Danish housing planners who designed neighbourhoods to encourage social interaction—doorsteps that faced each other, small courtyards that drew neighbours into conversation, benches placed just so, where a passer-by might pause and become a friend. Their aim was to make spaces that nourished human connection.

I thought of how the Bantaba needs no architect, no government policy, no concrete poured in tidy lines. It is as old as the land itself, a tree in the village square, a gift of shade and shelter, patient through seasons of rain and harmattan dust. Its roots hold the earth together; its branches hold the community together.

There is something deeply becoming about the custom. In an age where connection often flickers through pixels on a screen, the Bantaba reminds us that fellowship is best experienced in the flesh; our voices mingling in the open air, our faces visible in the changing light.

It suggested the words of the prophet Micah, speaking of the future peace to come: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4). The imagery is rich, each person in the safety of their own shade, yet part of a larger, harmonious whole. No one left out. No one threatened. A life where conversation flows as naturally as water in a stream.

Perhaps the Bantaba is a glimpse of that promise, a fragment of the way things were always meant to be. A world where we gather under something living, and in its shelter, we find shelter in one another.

Image generated by Copilot

Some bad news came to my ears. I wish it hadn’t.
A lady, someone’s wife, someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother, was driving home from work, probably thinking of what she might make for dinner, or of the warm cup of tea. She didn’t make it. A boy racer, reckless and impatient, overtook another at the brow of a hill on our quiet country road. There was no chance. No time. No coming back. The lady never made it home. Not that evening, never.

I found myself thinking, almost immediately, of Gwendolyn Brooks’ haunting poem We Real Cool. I’ve read it many times, marvelling at its brevity, its jazz rhythm, its chilling final line:

We
Die soon.

We Real Cool | The Poetry Foundation

That line feels different when it finds a home in real life. When it leaves the page and appears in front of you in the broken glass, the stillness of flashing lights, the sobs of neighbours gathered at the hedgerow. It is one thing to read about death: it’s another to smell it on your own road.

Brooks wrote about the bravado of young men, posturing in pool halls, skipping school, staying out late, swaggering in their temporary cool. We know them. We’ve seen them. Not always in pool halls now, but behind tinted windows, in engines tuned to snarl, on roads never meant for speed.

There’s something timeless and tragic about the syndrome: young men daring death, not believing it will ever collect. As if speed were immortality. As if adrenaline were purpose.

And yet—we die soon Brooks wrote.
So soon, that a good woman on her way home from work didn’t see it coming. Her life was exchanged for a moment of male bravado. For a second of “I’ll pass him now.” For the ancient, tragic game of I dare you.

It angers me. It grieves me. And it scares me. Because somewhere along the way, we have raised generations of boys who confuse recklessness with strength, who mistake risk for manhood. We have confused loudness for identity. We have let the music of warning be drowned out by the rev of an engine.

But Brooks knew better. With prophetic simplicity, she showed us that behind the swagger is a terrible fragility. These boys who drive late, ne'er straight, tempt fate,  know—deep down—that the game doesn’t end well. 

When I walked the road that night, I saw the broken fence, the skid marks, the flowers already laid. I prayed for the family. 

So many of our problems today come from a denial of death. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We mock it in memes and movies. But death is real, and often, far too soon. The woman who died had likely lived a life of quiet duty. She had gone to work, perhaps tired, perhaps hopeful, but no doubt expecting to be home by tea. She didn’t sign up to be a headline. But she has become one.

Let us not romanticize the rebels who burn out fast and leave ruins behind. Let us not glamorize foolishness just because it’s loud. Let us instead honour the quiet lives, the faithful, the responsible, the ones who go home instead of go fast. Let us remember that dignity neither struts, but walks softly.

Brooks’ poem is only eight lines long. So was the life of this moment. A few seconds. A few choices. An end.

And for all of us, a reminder.

The Quiet Certainty That God is in Control

One thing that strikes me regarding Biblical Hebrew is the clarity and conciseness of the language. Take the word בִּטָּחוֹן (bitachon). It carries with it an entire world of thought fay beyond the concept of the translator’s pen. It’s “trust,” “confidence,” or “assurance.” It finds its roots in the verb batach: to lean upon, to feel safe in, to rely on. It’s more about posture than emotion. Like resting on an unshakable object. This something is not luck, human ability, or philosophical mainstream though, but the living God.

Is there something deeply troubling you as you read this? The psalmist speaks from experience in coping with life’s curve balls, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You… In God I trust; I shall not be afraid” (Psalm 56:3–4).

Here that word bitachon is not denial of fear in some kind of magical thinking exercise but the decision to place it all in God’s hands. Isaiah 26:3 frames it as a state of peace: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” It is a settled spirit, anchored in the character of God.

For me, this trust has become more than an abstract truth. During my life, I have learned that God’s reassurance often comes in ways so personal, so specifically timed, that they cannot be dismissed as coincidence. There are moments when a verse of Scripture arrives unbidden. It may be a passage I was not looking for, and yet, yet it speaks directly into the difficulty before me. At times, the guidance is not merely comforting; it is practical, offering a clear course of action.

It is in these small, precise miracles that confidence grows. Each time I see His word meeting my need so specifically, my confidence in His care deepens. Like an ancient mason laying stones into the wall of a fortress, each answered need, each unexpected provision, strengthens the structure of trust. Over time, trust becomes less of a conscious effort and more of a reflex; an instinct to look to God first, knowing He has never failed me.

In the ancient Jewish mind, bitachon was not a vague optimism. It was the tranquillity of one who has entrusted his life to God’s wisdom, believing He will do what is right. My own experience affirms this. There are days when His reassurances are subtle — a single phrase from the Psalms that lifts the heart. Other days, they are bold and unmistakable, like an open door that had seemed sealed shut. The more I lean on Him, the more I recognize His fingerprints.

In the end, bitachon is not the absence of uncertainty but the presence of Someone greater amid it. It is knowing that the God who sends the right word at the right time is the same God who governs the unseen workings of the universe. I rest secure because I am in His care — and I have learned that when He whispers reassurance, it is not merely to comfort me in the moment, but to train me for a deeper trust tomorrow.

Image by Copilot

Tables of Togetherness

This morning I woke feeling I was in Oz; yesterday never went so well. So I take to writing, it's a therapy. I am thinking of the Spanish have a word—Querencia. It is the place where one feels safest, most at home. For some, it might be a childhood street, a grandmother’s kitchen, or a room filled with familiar laughter. But I’ve lived long enough to know that “home” isn’t always stitched into walls or pinned to a postcode. No doorway has ever fully kept the world out, and no street sign has etched itself on my heart with permanence.

Except, perhaps, for the islands of Scotland.

Even then, they exist more in dream than in dwelling—verses of light and longing sung by Runrig, wind-blown memories I never truly lived but somehow know by heart. So maybe Querencia, for me, is not a place I’ve stood in, but a place I’ve longed for. And if longing writes the rules, then let me dream without restraint.

I imagine a long wooden table set outside a weathered cabin by the shore. The sky is thick with colour—apricot and lavender—while the sun dips slowly into the hush of waves. The faint clink of glasses, the scent of salt and heather, the low murmur of kind conversation—all of it sacred, unhurried, and full of grace.

And because dreams are generous, the guests arrive just as I would wish them.

First comes Fred Rogers, but without the cardigan; the place is tropical. I was not familiar with him until a year ago.  He carries the atmosphere of gentleness with him and speaks with the clarity of a tuning fork. An old man once said to me when I was young, “Speak slowly son, then people will think you have important things to say.” Fred is the epitome of this quality. And unlike the trend in the modern world, He doesn’t compete for attention. I imagine being in his presence being deeply seen and deeply loved.

Joining us is Li Bai, slightly intoxicated on stars as he drifts in with a jug of rice wine and drunk on metaphors. Even when silent, he is eloquent. In his company, solitude feels less like loneliness and more like freedom. Perhaps he joins us not because he belongs to the past, but because his soul still lingers in the present as he reminds us of the beauty of noticing. Noticing the moon, the stars and beauty all around.

Marilynne Robinson joins us, with her calm intellect and gentle strength. She speaks wisely not to impress, but to illuminate. Her voice carries ideas the way a Scottish loch reflects light; slowly, thoughtfully, with pauses that invite reflection. She talks of God’s grace, of the lives of ordinary, of people who have been kind. She sees what’s sacred within mundane what many consider. Her words remind us what’s important in life.

And then, unexpectedly but rightly, two men from my youth appear: Mr. Abbott and the music teacher whose name I’ve forgotten. They come not with books or accolades but with a quiet kind of heroism. They were there when I needed redirecting, when the rough-and-tumble of St Gerard’s and Govan might have swallowed me. They believed in us boys, showed us a better way through music, fishing and the pleasure of nature and outdoors. Their presence is a thank-you long overdue. Mr Abbott was my science teacher, and the other, an unknown music teacher taught us that classical music was not for elegant ladies and men with bowties and dark suits. Edvard Greig and Peer Gynt put some kind of existential order into my life. Theses teachers have to be my guests to show them that seeds planted flourishes as they planned.

Sitting alongside him is Mary Oliver, another noticer, but her interests wander to migrating geese and their instinctive energy preserving orderliness. When the sun sets and the candles burn low, she reads, just a few lines about a grasshopper or a heron, how absorbing. and suddenly the night shifts. Her words turn attention into prayer. We are all more awake for her presence. She suggests ending with a prayer of praise to the creator. 

I stop there—not because the dream ends, but because the table is full. I’ve never cared for crowds. There is something holy in a small gathering, where silence is allowed to settle and laughter doesn’t need to shout to be heard. And besides, the evening isn’t over. Another night, another table, new guests.

What would we speak of, beneath that slow-blinking sky?

Of everything and nothing. Of stars and sorrow. Of poetry and childhood. Of kindness and the ache of being human. The kind of conversation that drifts beyond small talk, stretches its limbs, and runs freely—talk that sounds like music, the kind that bypasses the mind and goes straight to the soul.

That would be enough. That would be home, if only for a while. There will be many more tables of togetherness. 

"No eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard
    and it has never occurred to the human heart
All the things God prepared for those who love Him."

I Corinthians 2:9 (TB).

Comments to jas36859jas@gmail.com

Scripture quotations marked (TV) are taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Image by Copilot

I was singing a song one morning as my wife was getting ready for work. She is from the Philippines. She asked, 'where did you get that song?' 

'It's an old Glasgow street song,' I replied. 

Perhaps you sung it as a child? I would  be interested to know if some of our students from abroad sung it. When I did a bit of research on it, it seems it originated from Tonga in the 13th century. I guess Glasgow being a maritime city, it travelled with sailors from the area. We will never find out who the mystery wordsmith was who taught us how to hide from humans, and brought joy to countless millions of kids. Here is the melody at the end, if you wish to karaoke with it.

Nobody loves me, everybody hates me

I think I’ll go eat worms.

Big fat juicy ones

Emsie weensy squeensy ones

See how they wiggle and squirm

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one

Oh, how they wiggle and squirm!

Up comes the first one, up comes the second one

Oh, how they wiggle and squirm!

I bite off the heads, and suck out the juice

And throw the skins away

Nobody knows how fat I grow

On worms three times a day.

One Life Is Not Enough

My wife and I were browsing pianos in a music shop yesterday. I’ve always loved music. But as the years go by, I find myself increasingly drawn to stripped-down versions of familiar songs, bare, honest arrangements where every note matters. I do play the guitar, though not very well anymore. The stiffness in my fingers has allowed time to quietly steal away my ability.

As I listened to the warm, resonant tones of a new piano, a thought emerged uninvited: one life is not enough; not enough to explore the vastness of music, not enough to fully express what stirs inside us. There are whole worlds hidden behind the keys of a piano, the strings of a cello, the breath of a flute. And no matter how we try, time is always shorter than we think.

I thought of missed opportunities. Of my younger self and the dreams, I shelved. The idea of playing “Brian Boru’s March” on a quality flute still lingers from my folk music days some thirty years ago. I’ve imagined reaching that soaring high G on the cello in Benedictus or playing that haunting saxophone solo from Hazel O’Connor’s Will You. But with age comes realism. Not self-pity, just honesty. Those days, for now, are gone; gone for this life, at least.

And yet, I’m not without hope.

The biblical figure Job—part poet, part philosopher—once asked a question that still echoes: “If a man dies, will he live again?” It’s the question at the root of every human longing, every song, every prayer, every ache of beauty we encounter. In his own answer, Job declares, “All the days of my hard service I will wait until my renewal comes.” He saw that life, in all its complexity, must mean more than dust and disappearance.

That longing makes sense to me. We love, we create, we grow into our humanity, we fill our minds with memory and learning and art—and what, only to vanish? That doesn’t add up. Not when the heart keeps reaching.

So yes, I have hope. In the Renewal Jesus promised, I believe I will play “Brian Boru’s March” on a perfect flute. I will pick up the cello and finally reach that high G—not just in music, but in spirit. Because Christ said, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

And that, to me, sounds like the most beautiful note of all.

Image generated by Copilot

“There is enough light for those who desire only to see,

 and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”

The philosopher Blaise Pascal

image by Copilot

Cosmic Epiphany

I stepped out my front door and was immediately transported into a hydrogen balloon. Elizabeth—or Lithy, as we called her—was navigating. Beryl had brought our packed lunches, but we found them too salty. The salt gave me acid reflux, so we had to stop for a bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Since we were on level ground We went for lunch. I had a jacket potato; the rich potassium content soothed my tummy.

No, it’s not a work of fiction.

I had just returned from a memory class in Glasgow and decided to evaluate the “memory palace” technique. I chose something ambitious: the Periodic Table of Elements. I gave myself two evenings—an hour each—and began turning unfamiliar names and atomic numbers into mental pictures. Hydrogen, Lithium, Beryllium and Sodium. Hence the strange story at the start.

But something unexpected happened later, during a quiet evening walk. I noticed the structure—not just the rows and columns, but the astonishing logic behind them. Elements grouped by their properties. Reactions that follow predictable patterns. A steady increase in atomic number that moves with a kind of rhythm. It wasn’t just a list—it was a system. Ordered. Balanced. Purposeful.

Why on earth…?

It made me pause.

I began to think theologically. What I experienced was more than fascination—it was the birth of a question: Why is matter so well-behaved? Why do the fundamental components of the universe follow rules? Why is there order at all?

Materialists often say, “That’s just the way nature turned out.” Evolution and chemistry followed the path of least resistance, and this is the result. But that answer, while descriptive, falls short of being explanatory. It tells me how things are, but not why they are so. What gives rise to the coherence, the consistency, the elegant logic embedded in matter itself?

The more I thought, the less I could shrug it off. The periodic table began to feel less like a human construct and more like a discovery of something already written—a grammar of creation. The philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.” But in those spaces, he also discerned echoes of something divine: “There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”

What I experienced was more than curiosity—it was the birth of a longing, a kind of metaphysical homesickness. That longing has always been there, hasn’t it? The sense that behind the veil of the visible world, there is a hidden syntax—a mind behind the molecules, a poet behind the particles.

As a Christian, I see this longing answered not in accident but in authorship. The Bible speaks of a Creator who brings cosmos out of chaos: “By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place” (Proverbs 3:19). The periodic table, with its mathematical symmetry and chemical poetry, feels like part of that wisdom—an embedded signature in the structure of things.

Einstein once said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” Pascal would agree and go further: he would say the human capacity for reason, as well as our ache for meaning, points toward something outside ourselves. “Man is but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”

In recent decades, cosmologists have spoken of the “fine-tuning” of the universe—the idea that the constants of physics are so precisely calibrated that the odds of life occurring by chance are vanishingly small. The periodic table belongs within that same awe. Why do atoms exist at all? Why do electrons orbit nuclei with such steadfast choreography? Why is there, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel put it, “something rather than nothing”?

These are not merely scientific questions. They are existential ones.

Looking back on that memory exercise, I see it now as more than a cognitive technique. It was a kind of doorway—an invitation into wonder. And that wonder didn’t lead me away from faith; it led me to ask richer questions. Questions that science can describe, but only philosophy and theology can begin to answer.

The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

That evening, I wasn’t just looking at a chart of elements. I was glimpsing coherence. Order. Design. I was hearing, faintly, a cosmic resonance that whispered: This is not random. This is not meaningless. This points home.

Some patterns are not illusions.

Some are real.

Image generated by Copilot

I Had a Vision in the Night

I had a vision in the night; to approach God.

But, when it comes to communicating with God, I often feel like Gideon. We can be easily swayed by magical thinking, grasping at signs that may be nothing more than coincidence. Gideon, too, was cautious. When he asked God for a miracle, he asked again—just to be sure. And God, in his patience, satisfied his request.

God approaches us in various ways. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes in a whisper. Sometimes through the pages of scripture—verses so precise, so timely, they cut straight to the heart.

Some time ago, I went through a period of deep stress. So deep, it rivalled the grief I felt in the days leading up to my wife's death. It was a distress that felt beyond bearing.

In desperation, I prayed. And then, to silence any self-doubt, I typed a simple phrase into a search engine: Please tell me a Bible verse—any verse, just one.

I proceed this way to have complete isolation from other verses that may occur when opening the Bible itself

Up came Isaiah 41:10:

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

It was as if God had spoken directly to me.

The line that stopped me was: “Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.”

Two promises in one breath: that I need not be afraid, and that He is mine. Dismayed was exactly how I felt unsettled, agitated, thrown off balance. It’s not a soft word. And oddly, the version quoted was the NIV, a translation I hadn’t recently used.

This isn’t the first time I’ve received a verse that felt tailor-made. But I remain careful. I don’t treat God like an oracle. He is not to be tested. When his mercy arrives in this carefully contrived line of scripture, I take it as a gift that I read every day. A reassurance that I am not alone

Blog Image generated by Copilot

 I’m a Swedophile;  I love about Sweden. Recently, I went down a nostalgic rabbit hole. It’s been thirty years since my first visit and about eighteen since I last set foot there, though my wife has been encouraging me to take her on a trip to Stockholm. I’m planning to speak to my consultant at the Beatson (cancer hospital) next week, so we’ll see.

As usual, once you search for anything Swedish online, the algorithms flood down the cyber-hive like the raging bulls of Paloma with all things Sweden and Swedish. Among the torrent, one thing stood out and sank deep into my heart. It was Benny Andersson talking about his favourite ABBA song.

What struck me most, as a writer, was something he said about the act of composing. Sometimes, you can sit at the piano for days or even weeks, and nothing comes. But then, he described The Winner Takes It All—a song he called “a good one.” It's a beautiful piece stripped  raw and played on the piano.

And that’s how it goes with writing too. We persevere until our story, essay or poem or song becomes a good one.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQNx5O6pxEM

Full piano version by

The Winner Takes It All ABBA (Piano Cover) Ulrika A. Rosén, piano.