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Teipinophresene: The Quiet Strength Within Marriage

Someone once asked me—newly married, with that mixture of hope and uncertainty still fresh—if there was a single piece of advice that could help hold a marriage together.

I remember pausing, not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much. All the little lessons life presses into you over time rarely come as neat answers. But one word kept rising to the surface, quiet and steady.

Teipinophresene.

They had Greek roots, so I offered it gently, knowing it might feel familiar even before it was understood.

Teipinophresene—ταπεινοφροσύνη—is a rich and beautiful word. It means humility of mind, a kind of lowliness of heart, though not in any way that diminishes a person. It is not about shrinking oneself or thinking poorly of who you are. It is something far more balanced, far more honest.

It is seeing yourself truthfully—neither inflated nor diminished.
It is letting go of the restless need to be right, to be seen, to stand above.
It is becoming gentle, teachable, and quietly mindful of the other.

In marriage, this becomes something living.

Not an idea, but a daily posture.

It shows itself in the small things—the tone you choose when you are tired, the way you listen when you feel misunderstood, the willingness to step back when every instinct tells you to press forward and defend yourself.

There is a moment, in nearly every disagreement, where pride waits just beneath the surface. Teipinophresene is the quiet decision to leave it there.

The word appears in the New Testament, in places like Philippians 2:3 and Colossians 3:12, where it describes the spirit we are called to carry. And it is seen most clearly in Jesus Christ—not as weakness, but as a quiet strength that never needed to prove itself.

That is what surprised me most when I first came to understand it.

This humility is not fragile. It is not uncertain. It does not come from insecurity, but from a deeper knowing—a groundedness before God that frees a person from the need to elevate themselves above another.

A simple way to hold it in your mind is this:

Strength without arrogance.
Confidence without self-glory.
A heart willing to bow, not because it is lesser, but because it knows what truly matters.

And if there is one place where such a spirit matters most, it is in the closeness of marriage, where two lives meet without distance or disguise.

I told them, as simply as I could: if you can learn this—imperfectly, patiently, over time—you will have something that steadies everything else.

Goodness, if the whole world practiced Teipinophresene, it would indeed be a gentler place.

But the world is large and difficult. A marriage is smaller. Closer. And perhaps that is where such things are meant to begin.

Not all at once.
Not perfectly.
But in the quiet choosing, again and again.

Don’t let selfishness and prideful agendas take over.

 Embrace true humility, and lift your heads to extend love to others.

Phillipians 2:3

The Voice Bible

Scripture taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2012 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Quiet Reward of Reading

I must have been eight when the janitor at St Anthony's in Govan brought in a big box of brand new books. The teacher handed us all a copy and I sat and got lost in the pages of mine. Many of the pupils got bored with theirs and asked for a change. "Look at McCrory" the teacher said, "He is enjoying his." The truth is, it was boring, but I got on with it and persevered. And if the truth were told, it was the only compliment I ever got from a teacher.

In Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a profound yet straightforward insight is introduced: “The more things that come into your head, the more room there is for others.” This notion implies that the mind, unlike any physical space, expands with its contents. It grows ever vaster with each new thought, idea, or dream. Reflecting on this concept, I recognize its resonance in my experiences, especially in my interactions with others—both enriching encounters with individuals who read and think deeply.

My journey through life has often meandered along paths lined with books, through landscapes rich with paragraphs and ripe with rhetoric. Along these paths, I have met kindred spirits—people whose minds, like mine, seem to thrive on the endless nourishment of words and ideas. There is a palpable depth in conversations with these individuals, a shared understanding that reaches beyond the spoken word, facilitated by our mutual expeditions through literature.

This literary journey does more than just broaden our knowledge; it enhances our capacity for empathy. Like the trees I observe from my window in winter—prepared and eager for the abundance of spring—our minds, fertilized by myriad narratives and perspectives, grow branches and forge connections. Each book, each story, adds a layer of understanding, enabling us to relate more profoundly to others' feelings and experiences.

Moreover, empathy—a quality deeply tied to our ability to understand and share the feelings of another—seems enhanced by reading. Literature serves as a rehearsal space for empathy, inviting us into the minds and lives of others, promoting understanding across boundaries of time, culture, and circumstance. Without this engagement, my capacity to empathize would be stunted.

Reflecting on Lagerlof's wisdom, the more we fill our minds with thoughts, ideas, and emotions, the more expansive they become—not crowded, but enriched and deepened. Those who abstain from reading deny themselves not just the knowledge and entertainment books hold but also the chance to expand their cognitive and emotional capacities.

As I continue to navigate a world populated with both types of individuals—those open to the endless possibilities of thought and those closed off—I strive to advocate for the value of reading. Not just as a source of information, but as a vital exercise in building bridges between minds. My hope is that more people will discover the joy and value of reading, not only for their enrichment but for the greater empathy and understanding it fosters within our communities.

Thus, my journey, much like that of young Nils, remains an inward as much as an outward adventure—an endless exploration where the more I discover, the more I realize how crucial it is to encourage others to open the books, open their minds, and by doing so, open

Care For the Human Family

I popped into the supermarket this morning for a few bottles of Scottish spring water ahead of a long train journey. I’ve always begrudged the price of water in stations and cafés—it feels like such a small necessity made unnecessarily costly. So, I stood there, bottles in hand, quietly satisfied with my small act of thrift.

At the checkout, the man in front of me was searching his pockets, his wallet, his coat—his loyalty card nowhere to be found. There was a kind of gentle frustration about him, the sort we all recognise.

“I did that recently,” I said, almost without thinking. “Got all the way to the checkout and realised I’d left my credit card at home.” I smiled. “A woman behind me insisted on paying for my shopping.” I continued.

The cashier looked up and nodded. She spoke about how often she sees small kindnesses like that—quiet, unannounced, but real. For a moment, the three of us were strangers sharing something unseen but understood.

But then, as these things sometimes do, the conversation shifted. It deepened.

We spoke about the world as it is—fractured, hurried, often self-absorbed. And there was an unspoken question hanging between us: if kindness is not taught, not lived, not passed on, then where will it come from? Who will show the next generation what it looks like?

It felt less like a complaint and more like a calling.

There was something about the cashier—not dramatic, nothing outwardly remarkable—but a quiet sincerity. The kind you recognise not with your eyes, but somewhere deeper. I found myself mentioning a book my wife had listened to a few months ago.

“It’s about human kindness,” I said. “It’s called A Knock at the Door.”

I encouraged her to look it up, though I suspect what mattered more was not the title itself, but the idea behind it—that kindness is not abstract. It is lived. It arrives, often unexpectedly, in the ordinary spaces of life. A checkout queue. A passing conversation. A moment where someone chooses to care.

And so I extend that same invitation beyond that small exchange.

To you, the reader.
To my family.
To my friends and neighbours.

Pause, if only for a moment. Seek out something that reminds you of what it means to be human in the best sense. Let it reshape how you see the world—not as it is at its worst, but as it might yet become through small, faithful acts of kindness.

In thinking about that book, I came to learn more about its author, Rob Parsons. Years ago, he founded a charity called Care for the Family. It stands quietly in the background of people’s lives, offering strength where it is most needed.

Rooted here in the UK, yet reaching far beyond it, their work is centred on walking alongside families—particularly in moments when life feels fragile or uncertain. They support parents, couples, and those carrying the deep and often silent weight of loss.

Sometimes that support comes through gatherings or courses. Sometimes through a voice on a podcast. And sometimes, perhaps most powerfully, through the simple presence of someone willing to listen.

What they offer is thoughtful and accessible, shaped not just by theory but by lived experience—by an understanding of how complex and tender family life can be.

And just as importantly, they invest in others. They equip those who care for families—whether in formal roles or in quiet, unseen ways—to do so with greater confidence and compassion.

It is, at heart, a work of coming alongside.

Steady. Practical. Deeply human.

And that is what stayed with me most as I left the supermarket, water bottles in hand, stepping back into the ordinary rhythm of the day.

Kindness does not need a stage.
It only needs a willing heart.

And maybe, just maybe, that is how we begin to mend what feels broken.

On Shyness, Missed Chances, and Learning to Speak

The Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego—such a beautiful name to say—have a word I’ve always loved: Mamihlapinatapai. It describes that fleeting moment when two strangers catch each other’s eye, both longing to speak, yet neither finding the courage to begin. The Owl of Minerva flies at dusk, as the philosophers say, and the moment slips away. A small tragedy.

I know that feeling well. My early childhood was spent in a kind of solitary confinement—those were the days before nurseries—and most of my hours were passed alone in the back yard. By the time I reached high school, I had already attended four different primary schools. It’s no surprise, then, that I grew up painfully shy, missing opportunities simply because I didn’t know how to step forward.

At eighteen, I bought a book on shyness, and it changed everything. So often shyness is not a lack of desire to connect, but a lack of material—not knowing what to say, not having anything to draw from. I know people who never read, who spend their evenings drifting through television or the cyber-hive of video games and social feeds. Then, when they meet others, they have little to offer beyond the same recycled lines. Conversation becomes a loop, and boredom follows.

Reading changed that for me. Books give you worlds to bring into the world.

And conversation, like any craft, can be learned. A few simple openers can unlock remarkable encounters:

• “I see you’re reading a book—what’s it about?”

• “That’s a great camera. Do you have a website for your photos?”

• “Is this your full-time job, or are you studying as well?”

I’ve had some of my most memorable exchanges with complete strangers using questions like these. Think of the countless scenarios where a gentle prompt could open a door. Go on—bite the bullet. You never know what might happen when you do.

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."

Virginia Wolfe

On the train to Glasgow this week, I felt the physics of the journey working against me. A man sitting nearby had a heavy cold—the kind of deep, wet cough and persistent sneezing that occupies the air around it. Usually, you’d just find it annoying, but when you have cancer, a stranger’s germs feel like a tactical threat from someone who would best serve mankind by staying home. But here he was gifting man with his own suffering.  As the train hurtled forward, I could almost feel the gravitational pull of our travel vacuuming his infection directly toward my seat. I couldn't risk it; I had to move.

My wife and I found a spot in the next carriage albeit we were separated by the middle isle. I sat beside a young woman. This being Scotland, the silence didn't last long. We have a way of acknowledging each other's existence that doesn't feel like an intrusion. Although discernment must prevail.

"What are you up to today?" I asked.

"I’m going into Glasgow to drive some trains," she said.

Her answer hit me with a sudden, sharp memory of Norway. Decades ago, I was in a massive industrial structure in Stavanger. I remember standing there one early morning , completely struck, as I watched a young woman—the project manager—directing a crew of electricians through their tasks. At that time, Scotland felt miles behind. The idea of a woman in total command of a heavy engineering site was, back then, an anomaly to me.

Now, as I looked at the woman across from me, I realized how much the scenery has changed. I see women behind the wheels of buses, trains  and heavy trucks; I see them in the police, in the boardroom, and leading the country as Prime Ministers.

For centuries, women have been held back by a system designed to keep them small. Seeing them finally take the controls—quite literally, in this woman's case—is a relief. It’s a correction of history that's been a long time coming, and it made the rest of the trip feel a lot lighter.

The Garden After the Scuffle

I read this week that a missile had struck a vast gas complex in the Gulf; an installation so large it helps power whole regions, now burning, its output cut, its value counted in 36 billion dollars. 

It is hard to picture what that really means. The reports speak in figures, percentages of supply lost, years of disruption, markets shifting in response. But behind those measurements there is something more physical: metal twisted by heat, pipelines ruptured, the long preparation of engineers and workers undone in a few moments.

I tried, for a while, to imagine that same amount of wealth in another form, not as infrastructure, but as possibility. What could be built instead of broken. What might have been made steady. It didn’t settle easily. The mind keeps returning to the image of destruction, because it is simpler, more immediate.

Perhaps that is something about us.

The simile is apt man’s striving for power is like two groups of baboons in the garden fighting for a banana and ruining the garden in the process. Afterwards, there was very little left worth taking.

It is difficult not to think of that scene when reading about these events. Not because the comparison is exact, but because the pattern feels familiar. A resource is there—valuable, limited, desired. Groups gather around it. Each move is justified by the one before. And in the struggle, the thing itself is damaged, sometimes beyond repair.

The ground suffers as much as the prize.

What unsettles me is not only the scale of it, but the repetition. This is not new. Different places, different names, but the same underlying motion. Effort directed toward control rather than care. Energy spent in contest rather than in preservation. The outcome rarely surprises, yet it continues.

If I think back to the idea of that vast sum of money—what it could do if directed differently—it begins to feel almost like an alternative history that never quite happens. Instead of repairing what is fragile, we seem drawn to test its limits. Instead of maintaining what sustains us, we place it in the path of conflict.

There is a line, quiet but persistent, that comes to mind from the last book of the Bible. It speaks of a time when those who ruin the earth will themselves be brought to ruin. Not as a dramatic flourish, but as a kind of reckoning that mirrors the damage done.

I don’t know exactly how that unfolds. It isn’t described in practical terms. But the idea itself lingers. That there is a point at which the cost of what we are doing returns to us—not symbolically, but directly.

When I think again of the burned-out structures in the Gulf, the interrupted flow of energy, the careful work undone, it does not feel distant. It feels immediate, almost ordinary. Another entry in a long pattern.

And yet, the contrast remains. The same resources that are fought over could, in another direction, be used to steady lives, to maintain what is already fragile. The difference between those paths is not technical. It is something quieter, harder to define.

Perhaps it comes down to what we are willing to leave intact.

The baboons, after their struggle, moved on. The ground remained marked where they had been. No one returned to repair it.

We, at least, are capable of noticing the damage. Whether that leads to anything different is less certain. And I pray, “Let your Kingdom come and may Your will be done here on earth.

For You have wielded Your great power
        and have begun Your reign.
     The nations have raged against You,
        but Your wrath has finally come.
        It is now time to judge all of the dead,
    To give a just reward to Your servants, the prophets,
        and to the saints and all who honor Your name,
        both the small and the great,
    And to destroy those who cause destruction to the earth.

Revelation 11:17,18.

The Voice Bible

Reference: The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

Where the Brief Lives Rest

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

Where the Storm Pauses: Cancer and Technology

It’s March 17, 2026, and I’ve just had my consultation with my doctor at the Beatson cancer hospital in Glasgow.

I was adopted and raised by a man old enough to be my grandfather and who belonged, in some quiet way, to another century. He had lived in a time when milk arrived at the door in glass bottles, set down gently from a horse and cart, as if even delivery, like the proud horse carried a sense of dignity. He loved Dickens, and I think he trusted stories more than inventions. I now find myself in a fast‑moving world that would seem, to him, almost like fiction.

If I could sit with him again—perhaps on an ordinary afternoon—and tell him what I am about to write, I think he would listen with that same patient curiosity. Not disbelief exactly, but caution.

I watch a scientist called James Tour, who has built—I’m not sure this is the correct word—a “nanocar”: a micro‑structure in the form of a vehicle small enough to enter the bloodstream and carry out essential repair work in the body. It is a strange thought, that something so small could be made to move at all. But there it is, pulled out of the realm of science fiction and made real as the sun rises.

Now, what has this to do with my conversation with the doctor?

In the first chapter I explained that I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. For a time, the treatments held things in place, like bags of sand placed carefully against a rising storm. But yesterday, I was told that one tumour has begun to grow again. Back in my father’s day, if the first diagnosis was the end of the line, what would he have made of this latest news?

The doctor spoke of something called PRRT—Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. The name itself feels weighty. But in essence, it is something surprisingly simple.

PRRT works by using a kind of targeted medicine. Cancer cells like mine carry specific receptors—think of them as micro parcel lockers. PRRT carries a substance designed to find those lockers, open them, and drop in a tiny amount of radiation. And unlike parcel delivery, which can be indiscriminate at times, these tiny parcels of radiation find the specific locker. It sounds similar to the nanocar to my mind: the idea that something so small, so carefully designed, can move through the body, find its target, and act. Not with drama, but with quiet purpose.

I think my father would have struggled with this—not because he lacked understanding, but because it asks us to trust in things we cannot see at all. A story of human hands learning, slowly, how to speak to the smallest parts of creation. I am not sure why, but I think of that verse where David writes, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book.”

Cancer remains what it is. It does not become less serious because the tools have become more refined. The storm still exists. There are still days when one wakes in that land of Oz.

PRRT does not promise a complete solution. It offers time in a life where we refuse to die.

And in a life where time is no longer measured in years but in distances between worlds, that matters.

Perhaps that is what I would say, if I could sit beside my father again. That the world has changed, yes—but not entirely. That even now, beneath all the complexity, there remains something familiar: a quiet reaching toward life, even in its most fragile places.

But there is something else, too—something that does not belong to laboratories or consultations, something that does not depend on what can be measured or delivered.

A hope that stands a little further out, beyond the reach of medicine.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… God Himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:3–4 (BSB)

I find myself thinking, more often now, that the distance between worlds is not only something we endure, but something that will one day be closed. When the quiet absence that follows loss will give way to presence again.

I think of my father then—not as someone left behind in another time, but as someone simply sharing an eternal horizon where time merges and to be truthful, time will only be the gaps in eternal events.

Reference: Scientists say tiny ‘DNA nanobots’ could deliver medicine by travelling through the body - College of Medicine and Integrated Health

Image my Marcus Woodbridge https://unsplash.com/@marcuswoodbridge

 We too were made for a greater voyage,
where nothing that was truly loved is ever lost,
and the joys of the past are lived again—without end.

Everlasting Cadence 

The Ship of Theseus and the Island of Memory

Raised in a maritime city like Glasgow, one inevitably learns to look outward. Ships depart, tides shift, horizons beckon. Yet the places we travel to often shape the landscapes within us even more profoundly than the geography we leave behind.

I'm in the middle of an MA Creative Writing and in desperate need for a break. One morning I cross to the Isle of Bute aboard the MV Bute. In my hands is a book describing an ancient philosophical puzzle first recorded by Plutarch: The Ship of Theseus. According to the story, the Greek hero Theseus sailed to Crete to slay the Minotaur. After returning triumphantly to Athens, the vessel was preserved as a monument. As the years passed and the ship slowly decayed, carpenters replaced its timbers one by one until eventually every plank had been renewed.

The question arises: which vessel is truly the Ship of Theseus—the restored ship standing proudly in the harbour, or the original timbers rotting somewhere on the shore?

Our own bodies are not so different from this paradox. Red blood cells form, set off on arduous voyages through our circulatory seas, navigating what for them must seem like violent rapids and treacherous currents. They travel through nearly half a million miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries before quietly disappearing after a journey of roughly two months.

Skin cells also live brief lives. They loosen, shift, and fall away like tiny avalanches from continental plates, drifting downward in invisible currents until they vanish entirely within a day or two.

Scientists estimate that much of the human body renews itself every seven to ten years. Like Theseus’s vessel, we are continually rebuilt plank by plank. Standing on the ferry deck, contemplating the quiet industry of renewal taking place within my own body, it is difficult not to wonder what exactly remains constant within us.

I step off the ferry into sepia-coloured showers on this Sunday morning. A grey-haired man remarks to a young student beside him, “Back in the day this place was like Benidorm in July.”

But that day has long since passed. A subdued stillness hangs over the town this autumn morning. The island seems to rest in a kind of mournful silence, like a village abandoned after the Vikings have come and gone as they did in the past.

In the 1960s my father bought a small cabin in the island’s interior. Each summer he would pack our blue Comer van to the roof and transport my mother and me—along with every conceivable necessity—to what became our seasonal home: a three-by-twelve-metre wooden hut with no running water, no electricity, and no sewage.

At the time these inconveniences never occurred to me. All that mattered was escape—from playground bullies, razor gangs, and the shadowy characters who loitered in dark corners of the Govan streets among half-starved dogs and crumbling tenements.

Bute was paradise.

Half a century has passed since those bright summers. Now I walk through the town once more, paying quiet homage to the landscapes of my childhood.

There is a Portuguese word, saudade, sometimes described as a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy. The past has become something like that for me in recent years—an indulgence in gentle melancholy.

Crossing the town square, I am conscious of walking upon layers of history. Hangings were carried out here. Witch trials once echoed across these stones, and human bodies burned in medieval nights that flickered with firelight and fear. The past truly is, as someone once wrote, a foreign country—wistfully recalled, imperfectly remembered, and often misrepresented through the slow march of time.

One record in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database captured my attention:

McNicol, Janet – 15 October 1673
Prison: Tolbooth, Rothesay
Confession: 1673
Sentence: Execution – to be strangled and burned at the gallows.

One cannot help wondering why Janet McNicol, having once escaped the island, returned a year later to face such a fate. Perhaps, like many of us, she felt some invisible tether binding her to this place.

The Victorian age has left a stubborn footprint here. Even with the trams long gone from the promenade, a nineteenth-century flaneur transported into the present might feel little disorientation. The streets remain narrow, built for horse-drawn carriages. Beach shelters still face the water. Public conveniences retain their tiled mosaic floors and gravity-fed cisterns.

I find myself thinking about the countless generations who have passed through this town.

I am only passing through myself.

Yet above it all the pale October moon continues its silent watch over each wandering generation.

Turning left at Rothesay Castle—built in the thirteenth century as defence against Viking raiders—I climb the Serpentine, a steep road twisting through thirteen tight bends. One year my father attempted this ascent in the overloaded van. The engine roared uphill only to slip backwards again and again in a Sisyphean ritual before he finally admitted defeat.

Halfway up the hill I notice a Victorian letterbox embedded in the wall. The initials VR remain proudly stamped into the iron. It comforts me strangely, this small symbol of continuity linking present and past.

Later, walking across Canada Hill golf course, the honking of migrating geese interrupts my thoughts. Instinctively I recall a song I once sang accompanied on my guitar—words written by the Victorian poet Violet Jacob.

O wind, hae mercy, haud yer whisht,
For I daurna listen mair…

Like the homesick exile in Jacob’s poem—the “hameless loon”—perhaps we are all exiled from somewhere, especially from our own past.

The Japanese speak of wabi-sabi, a quiet acceptance of life’s impermanence: the bonsai tree struggling to root itself in shallow soil, shedding its leaves, withering, and eventually dying. Such transience, we are told, should be observed with a sense of gentle appreciation.

But human hearts do not surrender easily to such wisdom.

The poet Kobayashi Issa wrote after the death of his child:

The world of dew
Is the world of dew
And yet… and yet—

That hesitation—the refusal hidden in those final words—reveals the difficulty of accepting a world where everything passes away.

We are born with the capacity to live a thousand lives. Our bodies age, yet inside we remain strangely youthful. Deep within the hippocampus lie countless neurons preserving the memories of everything we have loved and lost.

These memories form a kind of inner archive—the quiet record of who we are.

Why would nature equip us with such elaborate machinery for remembrance? Memories of childhood summers, of friendships, of first loves and small moments that once seemed insignificant but now shine with unexpected clarity.

Perhaps these memories are not accidental at all.

Eventually I find the clearing I have been searching for. Only those who once belonged here would know how to reach it.

The cabins are gone.

Where once stood sixty small huts filled with families, laughter, bonfires, music, and children’s voices, there is now only open land dotted with a few Guernsey cows staring curiously in my direction.

Yet the memories remain vivid.

Here I first heard Creedence Clearwater Revival singing Up Around the Bend. Here, I carved my eternal love beside a girl whose name I can no longer remember—and who surely has forgotten mine. How fickle the prepubescent boy.

The landscape itself remains unchanged. Loch Ascog glimmers to my right; the Firth of Clyde stretches to my left. But the cabins, the families, the laughter—gone forever.

Still, they shine brightly in memory like sunlight dancing on water.

There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which describes a deep longing for something lost, something altered beyond recovery. Standing here, looking over this quiet field, it is the only word that seems adequate.

Centuries ago, the ancient prophet Job asked a question that has echoed through human history:

“If a man dies, will he live again?”

Will all our memories be sealed permanently within our coffins?

Job answered his own question with quiet hope:

“I will wait for my renewal to come.”

Like the Ship of Theseus, we are vessels continually renewed. Perhaps we too were designed for a greater voyage—one in which nothing truly loved is ever lost, and the joys of the past are lived again without end.

Postscript

“For there is hope for a tree: if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its shoots will not fail. Though its roots grow old in the ground and its stump dies in the soil, at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.”
— Job 14:7–9 (BSB)

“His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s; he shall return to the days of his youth.”
— Job 33:25 (BSB)

Ghorbat: A Word for the Weary Soul

My thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian people at this time. As I reflect on their situation, I find myself thinking of the Persian word Ghorbat (غربت).

It is a word that speaks of a deep and quiet loneliness. It describes the feeling of being a stranger in the world, even when surrounded by familiar faces. Sometimes it refers to homesickness, yet often it reaches further than that. It is the sense that, in some way, you do not fully belong where you are.

Many people encounter this feeling during their spiritual journey, especially when life becomes difficult and the heart begins to ask deeper questions.

Who is God?
Why is there so much suffering?
Does God know me?
How can I be sure?

There are moments when faith sets a person slightly apart. The questions carried within the heart, and the longing that grows there, are not always easily shared. At times it can feel like walking along a quiet road while the rest of the world rushes somewhere else.

Yet Scripture offers a gentle assurance that another journey is unfolding, one that is guided by the Holy Spirit.

Scripture says in 2 Chronicles 16:9,

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.”

Farsi (Persian)
«زیرا چشمان خداوند در تمام زمین گردش می‌کند تا خود را به نفع کسانی که دلشان نسبت به او کامل است، نیرومند نشان دهد.»

Over the years I have often read accounts emerging from Iran. Many of these stories are shared quietly, sometimes almost in whispers. They speak about dreams. Not ordinary dreams, but dreams in which Jesus appears to people, speaking to them, calling them, comforting them.

Even a simple search reveals many such testimonies.

When the Bible becomes difficult to obtain, something remarkable often seems to happen. Faith finds another way. Similar stories are heard from places such as North Korea, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East. When the written word is hidden, the message still finds its way into the quiet places of the human heart. No regime can limit what God has approved.

Within that spirit of hope there is reassurance.

The Gospel contains a promise that speaks directly to this longing. In the Farsi Bible, Jesus says:

English (Luke 23:43)
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Farsi (Persian)
«به‌راستی به تو می‌گویم، امروز با من در فردوس خواهی بود.»

These words carry a gentle truth. Sometimes the homesickness we feel is not really for a place on this earth.

Perhaps Ghorbat is more than loneliness or homesickness in the ordinary sense. Perhaps it is a longing for another home, a place where love, righteousness, kindness, and peace reign. The paradise that Jesus spoke of.

For now, though, peace can still be found in the midst of a restless world. Hope can still appear in the middle of uncertainty.

For those who search quietly, whether in Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, or anywhere else, such words can feel like a light in a darkened room.

The feeling of being a stranger may remain for a time. Yet the promise remains also.

And perhaps that quiet longing in the soul, the sense that we do not quite belong here, is not something to fear.

It may simply mean that our hearts are already turning toward another home.

Who Are the Travellers Who Pass This Way?

With the first shy signs of spring appearing along Scotland’s west coast, my wife and I took a drive over to Loch Lomond at the weekend. The air still carried the coolness of winter, yet the light had begun to soften in that subtle way which hints that the season is turning.

As I stood looking across the water, I noticed two swans resting quietly on the loch, perhaps a metre apart. For a while they drifted there in silence. Then, quite suddenly, they rose together, their wings beating loudly against the still air, lifting themselves upward as though setting out on some long and purposeful journey.

I watched them with a sense of quiet wonder. Which of the two had first suggested it was time to leave? There had been no visible signal, no call, no movement that I could detect. It seemed almost like telepathy — a silent understanding shared between them.

Later, as we walked along the promenade at Duck Bay, with the quiet majesty of Ben Lomond standing watch across the water, my wife asked a question that gently drew my thoughts in another direction.

“How many visitors were on the website last night?”

“Seven and a half thousand,” I replied.

She paused for a moment, then said, “Who might these people be? What countries are they from?”

“That,” I said, “is a good question — one I wish I knew.”

In this rather one-sided act of blogging, I often find myself reflecting on that very mystery. Words are written in solitude, yet they travel far beyond the quiet room in which they were first formed. Somewhere, across towns and cities, across countries and oceans, someone pauses long enough to read them.

In a curious way, it reminds me of something from my childhood.

When I was a boy on the cusp of youth, I owned a Grundig Satellite multiband radio. Growing up around Clydeside, the outside world often arrived through the voices of sailors passing through the docks. But that radio opened the world in another way. In the evenings I would tune across the bands, discovering distant stations that seemed to arrive from beyond the horizon.

One evening I found a German station playing music. Among the pieces they broadcast was Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. I remember sitting there, listening in the dim glow of the dial, feeling unexpectedly lifted by the sound travelling invisibly through the air.

Perhaps that early experience planted a quiet fascination in me — the idea that voices and thoughts can travel across great distances to reach people we may never meet.

And so I find myself wondering about those who arrive here.

Why do you come, dear friends?

Perhaps the answer lies in something deeply human — our shared search for meaning, for the spiritual, for those quiet questions that sit beneath the surface of everyday life. Questions about existence, about the moral nature of humanity, and about the enduring place of Christian belief in a restless world.

Whatever your reasons, I am sincerely grateful for your visits. Yet I cannot help feeling curious about the people behind the numbers — who you are, where you live, and what led you here.

If you ever feel inclined, I would be delighted to hear from you. You can write, in complete confidence, to:

blogger2026ou@gmail.com

It would be a pleasure to know a little more about the fellow travellers who pass by this small corner of the world.

Perhaps in the great purpose of God, we may one day meet,

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne…”

Revelation 7:9

What It Means to Be Human: Who Decides?

I woke today and prayed for something encouraging and specific to how I was feeling about this broken world. In the randomness, up came Psalm 1.

There are hundreds of opinions about what being human means. What are the Creator’s thoughts on this? The opening words of Book of Psalms begin with a picture. It is a simple one, yet it quietly sets the tone for everything that follows.

The psalm begins:

“Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers.”

There is a gentle progression in those words.

First we walk.
Then we stand.
Finally we sit.

Take something like pornography. It rarely begins with an intention to fall into addiction. An image appears on a screen; perhaps something suggestive, something easy to dismiss. We glance, then look again. Then peer.  Curiosity becomes habit. Habit deepens into something stronger. Before long the appetite grows, demanding something more explicit, more consuming.

And what began as a moment of curiosity slowly reaches further into life itself. Marriages strain and sometimes break. Children sense the change in the atmosphere of a home that no longer feels the same. What began as a passing glance quietly reshapes a family.

It reflects something true about human nature. We rarely move away from what is good in a single moment. More often, we drift. A step beside the wrong path becomes a pause. The pause becomes a place where we settle. The psalmist understands how easily the human heart grows comfortable in places it once would have passed by.

Yet the psalm quickly offers another image.

“That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.”

In a dry land, streams often referred to carefully dug irrigation channels guiding water to the fields. The tree is planted where life can reach it. Its roots draw quietly from a steady source.

The result is not frantic growth but steady fruitfulness. The tree stands, season after season, nourished and alive.

Then the image changes.

“Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.”

The scene shifts to a threshing floor. Farmers toss crushed wheat into the air so the grain falls back to the ground while the chaff—the empty husk—is carried away by the wind.

The contrast is striking.

The righteous are like a tree: rooted and nourished.
The wicked are like chaff: light and drifting.

The psalm is not only speaking about behaviour. It is speaking about substance. A tree has roots that reach down into life-giving water. Chaff has no roots at all. It moves wherever the wind carries it.

In this way the psalm quietly teaches something about what it means to be human. Our lives are shaped by the sources from which we draw our life. When we are rooted in what is good and true, fruit slowly appears. But when life is detached from its source, it becomes restless and weightless.

Before the rest of the psalms speak of joy, sorrow, fear, and hope, this first image remains before me: a tree beside flowing water, and chaff scattered on the wind.

And each life, in time, becomes one or the other.

He has shown you O mortal, what is good

And what does God require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

And to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

*****

Verses from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011.  All rights reserved worldwide.

Image by ChatGPT

Written in the Genes

In the back end of the 70s, I was standing on the thin edge between boyhood and whatever came next, I sensed a quiet unravelling. The friendships of my youth fell away, not with drama but with a kind of inevitability. I was restless. Unqualified, unformed and lost. Cardonald College in Glasgow became my refuge, a place to gather the pieces required for university after wasted school years, though I suspected I was searching for something less tangible than certificates.

One Sunday afternoon a door-to-door evangelist knocked my door; he noticed me watching a Scottish Gaelic language programme called Can Seo. Nothing remarkable in that, yet a week later he placed a cassette in my hands. A folk group called Na h-Òganaich. I remember the feel of the music unfamiliar yet familiar. I played it until the music felt less like sound and more like memory. Soon after, I found my way to Runrig’s Play Gaelic. The songs did not simply entertain me. They unsettled me. It was as though a door had opened somewhere inside and light poured through.

Youth have a way of disguising turning points as accidents. Someone gives you a cassette. You press play. A seed is planted in the dark.

Last year, decades later, that seed stirred again. At the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Beat the Drum performed a Runrig tribute set before an audience drawn from across the UK, Ireland, and mainland Europe; a primarily over 50s audience. I looked around at faces lit by stage light and memory. We were not merely spectators. We were witnesses to something we had carried for years.

For much of my life I felt a quiet grievance with the curve balls that life handed me. Why Govan? Why tenements and shipyards, angry hammers and the neurotic sizzle of welding torches. Why not sea lochs and machair and the tongue to read the poets? Why Glasgow and not the Hebrides? Age softens certain questions. I have made peace with this pilgrim rather than a native. Still, there remains a pull I cannot fully name.

I felt it again watching Donnie Munro Walk the ridgelines of Skye in Wilderness Walks. The Cuillins rose behind him, ancient and unspeaking. He spoke of music as though it were a current running through the human spirit, invisible yet undeniable. He recalled a concert in Ireland during the years of unrest. The morning after, a Catholic woman approached the band to thank them. Her family had attended and for a few hours, she said, the bitterness that haunted their home had loosened its grip.

A song cannot rewrite history. Yet it can still a storm, if only briefly.

That story settled into me. I grew up far from the islands where Gaelic endured, yet the language had claimed me early. Over the years I travelled north and west. Skye. Islay. Jura. Each arrival felt less like discovery and more like recognition. I would stand looking out over water and feel an easing in my chest, as if my internal compass had stopped trembling.

Curiosity eventually led me to test my ancestry. Numbers returned, clinical and precise. Ninety percent Celtic heritage, reaching even to Brittany.

I was adopted as a baby so I never knew the details of family history, so after a DNA test and some digging. My paternal line traced back to Islay. The island that had long stirred something wordless within me was not only a symbol. It was blood.

What are we to do with such knowledge?

It is easy to dismiss these moments as coincidence, to speak of probability and genetic drift. Yet when a melody learned in adolescence continues to echo across a lifetime, when a landscape you have barely known feels like an inheritance, coincidence begins to feel too small a word.

Perhaps there are currents moving beneath the visible world. Currents of language, of song, of memory carried not only in stories but in cells. Perhaps what we call longing is simply recognition delayed.

I think now of that young man in 1974, sitting with a borrowed cassette, unaware that he was being quietly called home. Not to a place he had lived, but to a place that had lived in him.

And I am left with the sense that our lives are threaded with meanings we only perceive in retrospect. A melody. A mountain. A strand of DNA. Each one a whisper.

As if something within us has always known.