Personal Blogs

On Writing: What Makes a Good Prologue? 

t’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m meant to be resting this cold and fired up throat, but my mind keeps circling the same question: what makes a good prologue? I want one for my book because this project isn’t just a collection of essays. It’s an attempt to gather the elements that make a person—biography, spirituality, wonder, culture, travel, and the quiet weight of moral responsibility. All the things that shape a human life before God.

A prologue feels like the small doorway one slips through before entering a larger house. It’s not there to explain. It’s there to set a feeling in the reader’s chest, the kind that leans them forward before the official beginning even arrives. When it’s done well, it colours everything that follows, like adding a particular light source to a room.

It isn’t meant to be a stray “chapter zero.” A real prologue stands slightly apart, offering what the first chapter cannot. Sometimes it anchors the reader in a memory that can’t be placed anywhere else. Sometimes it casts a mood that the main text will only deepen. Sometimes it simply offers a truth that needs to be felt before it can be understood.

Think of Rebecca. The opening isn’t about plot at all. It’s a memory, carried like a scent. You’re inside the narrator’s dream before you ever meet her properly. Or Tolkien, whose prologue feels like picking up a weathered manuscript from a long-vanished world. Once you begin chapter one, you’re already steeped in the history he wants you to breathe.

What these writers do is simple: the prologue gives something the story can’t easily give later. It opens a door from a different angle.

So when I began shaping mine, I tried to ask the same question. What can be said here that can only be said here? A prologue doesn’t need to be large. A single image can carry a whole book. A single moment can hold a feeling the reader remembers hundreds of pages later. Clarity matters, but mystery matters too. The goal isn’t to teach; it’s to invite.

Used well, a prologue plants a seed whose meaning might stay hidden until the right moment. Then suddenly the reader realizes it’s been growing quietly since the first page. It becomes part of the pleasure of the whole.

Toni Morrison knew this. The opening of Beloved isn’t backstory. It’s atmosphere, grief, and truth distilled into a few sentences. The first chapter could never do what that opening does. It needs the key first, and the prologue is the key.

With all that in mind, I found myself returning to one memory from childhood, something I’ve carried for years. It stayed with me because it held wonder, simplicity, and that ache of human connection that makes life feel fuller than we can put into words. So I made it my prologue, just as it is.

“It must have been late summer, 1962, Telstar by the Tornados played regularly on the radio. I had spent the whole summer to autumn season on the Isle of Bute on Scotland’s west coast. We had a simple wooden hut with no water or electricity.
Each day I walked to the communal well with an older person with containers to collect water. Cows watched with wary eyes; the calves edging forward, curious, and timid.
At dusk, we lit paraffin lamps. My father read to us — Heidi, Tales from 1001 Nights, Chinese Folk Tales — his voice a thread that carried us into other worlds. We ate freshly baked pancakes with homemade jam and washed down with sweet stout in small glasses.
The lamp hissed softly, its light flickering sleep into our eyes. When it finally dimmed, so did we.
Lying in bed, I watched stars pour through the window; all of them. And I wondered if the Chinese farmer boys or the Bedouin shepherd boys or the milkmaids in the Swiss mountains were seeing and feeling the way I felt as the universe stepped gently into the room?”

That memory holds everything I hope the book will explore wonder, the dignity of simple things, the connectedness of human experience, and the sense that the world—wide as it is—is also somehow intimate.

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Inside the Mind of the Toxic Soul

There is a certain kind of person who walks into a room and subtly dims the light. They may not shout, they may not threaten, but something in their presence unsettles the air; an undercurrent of bitterness that clings like smoke. These individuals often carry a misery so heavy that they try, deliberately or instinctively, to hand pieces of it to others. Their spirit corrodes rather than comforts. Their words drain rather than nourish. And behind their sharpness almost always lies a private suffering they refuse to face. After all, no one can be happy if they manufacture evil from their heart.

To understand such people requires acknowledging a truth we often forget: cruelty is seldom born from strength. It is far more often the offspring of insecurity. As the novelist Leo Tolstoy once observed, “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women,” a reminder that the company we keep, and the company we choose to be, shapes the world around us. Toxic individuals cannot bear uplifting environments because they are threatened by what they cannot emulate. Their inner misery makes kindness feel foreign, joy feel suspicious, and peace feel undeserved. 

Children’s stories capture this dynamic with remarkable clarity. The villains of childhood are rarely complex—they reflect emotional truths in simple, symbolic form. Take the character of the ogre or troll who lurks under a bridge, snarling at any traveller who dares to pass. Such figures often live alone, driven into shadows by their own fear, resentment, or loneliness. Their aggression is simply the language their pain has learned to speak.

Or consider the character of Captain Hook from Peter Pan. Beneath his flamboyant cruelty lies a lingering terror of the ticking crocodile—time itself—always reminding him that life is slipping through his fingers. Insecure, aging, and anxious, he lashes out at youth and innocence because they remind him of everything he feels he has lost. In this sense, he mirrors many real adults who sabotage happiness in others because they believe joy has abandoned them.

Even the wolf in The Three Little Pigs can be read as a symbolic version of toxicity: he huffs and puffs, not merely to destroy, but because he cannot bear the sturdy peace of the brick house he cannot enter. He destroys what he envies. And so do many people.

In daily life, toxic behaviour often appears in smaller, more subtle forms. The co-workers who spreads whispers to undermine someone else’s success. The friend who never celebrates another’s good news. The family member whose criticism is constant, no matter how much good stands before them. Their negativity is not about the person they target—it is about the emptiness they feel within. When someone tries to poison your joy, it is often a sign they have lost the ability to taste joy themselves.

Scripture speaks honestly about such people—not with condemnation, but with clarity and compassion. Proverbs 26:24-26 warns that malice can hide behind flattering lips, reminding us to be discerning. The Bible acknowledges both realities: that some people damage the souls of those around them, and that Christians are called to respond with a blend of wisdom and grace.

Jesus Himself taught that bitterness comes from within: “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). A heart full of jealousy will speak envy. A heart full of fear will speak control. A heart full of pain will speak poison.

But Scripture also offers a gentler lens. The Apostle Paul writes, “Bear with one another and forgive one another” (Colossians 3:13). Forgiveness does not mean subjecting oneself to cruelty; it means recognizing that toxic behaviour often emerges from spiritual hunger—a hunger so deep that people attempt to fill it with control, manipulation, or emotional harm.

C.S. Lewis captured this paradox of brokenness and cruelty when he wrote, “Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst,” suggesting that those who feel powerless or unloved will sometimes weaponize even virtues. A toxic person often believes their actions are justified. They imagine themselves victims, warriors, or truth-tellers, when in reality they are spreading the very pain they refuse to confront.

Healthy boundaries are therefore essential. They are not walls of pride but walls of protection. They prevent us from being drawn into battles that are not ours, arguments we did not start, and emotions that were never meant to be ours to carry. Setting boundaries is not an act of rejection—it is an act of stewardship over one’s own heart. Proverbs 4:23 reminds us, “Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”

When we resist the pull of toxic behaviour, we quietly declare that another person’s storm does not have the right to drown our peace. We choose, instead, to cultivate compassion without allowing ourselves to be consumed. We choose to see the woundedness beneath the cruelty without letting it define us. And in doing so, we become something much more powerful: people of calm, people of truth, people of hope.

Ultimately, the antidote to those who create misery is not retaliation—it is resilience. It is the steady, unwavering choice to rise above the shadows others cast. It is the decision to let God’s love shape our reactions rather than someone else’s despair. And it is the commitment to be, in a world full of bitterness, a gentle and radiant presence that refuses to dim.

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The Warmth of Unknown Faces

We may have met. Perhaps on the West Highland Way, or was it that day in Dubrovnik, maybe Warsaw or Berlin or the Govan we grew up in. Or perhaps we may never have met. What’s the chances? I was pondering this as I wandered through Glasgow yesterday. All these people—some bright with a ready smile, some carrying their burdens like invisible luggage. The woman silently debating which Christmas jumper to buy for her husband or was it her dad. The man in the wheelchair asking gently for a few coins. The fellow in Waterstones buying six books, moving with the certainty of someone who knows exactly what he seeks. I caught myself wondering about him: gifts, or indulgence? A well-read soul, either way. And there it was again—that restless longing the Portuguese call saudade de conhecer o mundo, that aching desire to know the world and its people.

As the city opened around me, it felt like moving through a tapestry woven from unspoken stories. Each person I passed was a quiet universe, complete, complicated, immeasurably rich. Yet all I glimpsed were small fragments: a glance, a gesture, the turn of a shoulder as they slipped past. It’s astonishing, really, how many lives we brush against without ever stopping long enough to feel the contours of their humanity.

Still, something in me thrills at these brief proximities. I find myself imagining the paths that brought each stranger to that precise moment beside me on Buchanan Street. Were they running late? Were they thinking of someone they love? Were they wrestling with a decision or relishing a secret joy? There’s a gentle magic in the not-knowing, a kind of soft wonder that asks nothing more than attention.

I suppose that’s the heart of it: the warmth I feel doesn’t come from conversation but from possibility. The possibility that any one of these unknown faces could have been a friend, a confidant, a companion for a few miles or a few years. We pass through each other’s stories like shadows—yet the passing leaves an imprint, however faint. It reminds me that the world is wide, and full of people I have yet to meet, people who might change the colour of my days.

As I walked, this thought settled into me with surprising tenderness: even in a crowd, we are not alone. We share the pavement, the weather, the swirl of November lights, the faint smell of German bratwurst as I drift past the stall in St Enoch’s. We share the silent promise that life is happening around us, constantly, vibrantly, and that we are part of it whether we speak a word or not.

Maybe this is why I’m drawn to strangers in the first place. They represent the untold, the unfamiliar, the chapters unwritten. They remind me that the world is not exhausted, that there are still stories waiting beyond the curve of the road. And in that sense, every unknown face carries its own kind of warmth, a glow of potential, fragile but unmistakable.

By the time I reached the end of my walk, dusk had begun to gather over the rooftops. The city lights flickered alive, scattering gold into the evening air. People hurried past, bags swinging, scarves tucked tight against the cold. I watched them for a moment, feeling that gentle ache again, not loneliness, but a yearning toward connection, however fleeting.

Perhaps we have crossed paths somewhere. Or perhaps our worlds will never quite collide. But the thought of you—another unknown face, another story moving through its own landscape—brings a quiet comfort. In the grand weave of things, we’re all wanderers, drawn toward one another by the faint, persistent warmth of simply being human.

And then another thought rose, soft but steady: Wasn’t it that author, Gwendolyn Brooks in Maud Martha who once wrote about all this life and what shall we do with it? But, the warmth toward unknown faces is not only for this world. This echoes something deeper—a recognition that, in the long light of eternity, many of these unknown faces may one day be familiar. After all, life does not end with our brief crossings on a winter street. With eternity in view, there will be more than enough time to meet all those whose names are held in God’s Book of Life. Time without hurry, time without loss, time to finally see each other as we were meant to be.

Many Christians understand the great promise of Scripture as having both a present and a future glow—a hope we taste now, and a fullness still to come. Paul spoke of the hidden wisdom of God, the things no eye has seen, and no mind could yet imagine, made known in Christ. Throughout Scripture the same thread runs: God preparing something new, something whole—a restored world free from sorrow, death, and decay.

If that is so, then every stranger I pass may be someone I’ll one day greet with recognition instead of curiosity. The woman with the jumper. The man in the wheelchair. The fellow with six books tucked under his arm. And countless others whose paths brushed mine for a breath and then were gone.

We move through this world surrounded by lives known only to God. But the day is coming when loss will have no place, when separation will be no more, and when the warmth of unknown faces will become the joy of known ones—beloved, redeemed, gathered into the same forever.

Most likely we have never met. At least not yet. But in the hope set before us, there is always the promise that someday, in the renewed creation God is shaping even now, we will have all the life we need to meet, to know, and to rejoice together in the great story He has written.

“No eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no heart has imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

I Corinthians 2:9 (BSB).

“Christianity is not just a series of truths in the plural, but Truth spelled with a capital ‘T’—truth about total reality, not just about religious things.

  — Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

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The God Who is There

I was just entering my teens when the hippie movement swept into town. I began to hear strange new phrases — “Make love, not war,” “Back to the land,” “Free love.” I didn’t yet have the understanding to grasp what was really happening, but I sensed that the world was shifting, and beneath the colour and music, I felt a quiet despair. People were reaching for something, freedom, meaning, transcendence, yet finding only confusion in their search.

It was into this restless period, before and beyond that world that Francis Schaeffer spoke. When he first published The God Who Is There in 1968, the cultural ground was already trembling with revolt, doubt, and disillusionment — the aftermath of two world wars, the rise of existentialism, and the dawning of a post-Christian West. I was still in school when it appeared and I am just reading the book now, and though its language was aimed at the intellectuals of its time, its message has proven strikingly prophetic. Schaeffer’s book has not simply survived the passing decades; it has continued to interpret them. His analysis of truth, meaning, and the human condition speaks with a relevance that modern readers cannot easily ignore.

At the heart of Schaeffer’s argument lies a concern that Western civilization has crossed what he famously called the “line of despair.” By this he meant that modern thought had abandoned the idea of absolute truth; truth that exists independently of our opinions and emotions. Beginning with philosophers like Hegel and Kierkegaard, Schaeffer traces a slow but decisive shift: reason and revelation were separated, faith became detached from fact, and knowledge itself became fragmented. What was once a unified worldview rooted in the reality of a personal God had broken apart into pieces. For Schaeffer, this wasn’t a purely intellectual tragedy; it was a human one. The denial of truth leads inevitably to despair, because without a foundation, meaning and morality collapse. People may still talk about love, purpose, or beauty, but those words lose their coherence when detached from the reality of a Creator who defines them.

To make this change visible, Schaeffer introduced his memorable image of the two-story universe. In the lower story, modern people retain what can be evaluated by science — the realm of facts and reason. In the upper story, they place things like faith, morals, and meaning — matters that, they claim, cannot be known but only “believed.” This division, Schaeffer argued, results in an incoherent existence. Faith becomes a blind leap into the dark, not an encounter with reality. In such a divided world, people live paradoxical  lives: rational in one area, irrational in another. Schaeffer saw this not only in philosophy but in art, music, and literature. Picasso’s distorted figures, Beckett’s absurd plays, and Sartre’s existential novels all testify to the same loss — the abandonment of unity and purpose. Culture, for Schaeffer, is the mirror of philosophy. It reveals what a society genuinely believes about the world and about itself.

What makes The God Who Is There prophetic is not only its diagnosis but its accuracy. Schaeffer wrote before the full flowering of postmodernism, yet he foresaw its contours with remarkable precision. Today, when truth is often treated as personal preference and moral boundaries are considered oppressive, his warnings seem almost clairvoyant. He understood that the denial of truth would not produce freedom but fragmentation, not enlightenment, but loneliness. Schaeffer’s analysis anticipated a time when people would feel alienated not only from God but from themselves as they sojourned as restless wanderers in a world stripped of meaning. In this sense, The God Who Is There is not merely a book of apologetics but a work of cultural prophecy.

Despite his intellectual rigor, Schaeffer’s tone is never cold. His critique of modern thought is driven by compassion. He writes as one who has looked into the abyss of meaninglessness and found, not despair, but the steady presence of the living God. “He is there,” Schaeffer insists, “and He is not silent.” This simple affirmation grounds his entire worldview. God has spoken — in creation, in Scripture, and ultimately in Jesus Christ. Truth is not an abstract concept but a Person who entered history. Because God is both real and communicative, knowledge is possible. Meaning is possible. Love is possible. Christianity, for Schaeffer, is not a blind leap but a coherent and comprehensive explanation of reality — the only one that fits the world as it actually is.

Reading The God Who Is There today, feels like hearing an echo that has grown louder with the years. The cultural fragmentation Schaeffer described has deepened, but so too has the hunger for what he proclaimed: a truth that unites heart and mind, a faith that makes sense of both the cosmos and the soul. His invitation is as relevant now as it was then — to cross back over the line of despair and rediscover the God who is not silent. Schaeffer’s book stands, therefore, not only as a defence of Christianity but as a call to intellectual and spiritual integrity. It reminds us that reality has structure, that truth is not a relic of the past, and that hope is grounded in something more solid than shifting opinion. It is, in every sense, a prophetic voice still calling out in the wilderness of modern doubt.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

                                                               Isaiah 5:20 (ESV)

Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968).

Aura Farming and the Hollow Self

They mistook the applause of men for the whisper of God.

I see that an innovative word has entered the Colins dictionary. Or to be more precise, a compound phrase. We live in an age where the shimmer of image often outshines substance. “Aura farming”—the careful cultivation of a distinctive, enviable persona—has become a kind of social currency. The aura farmer curates every gesture, outfit, word, and post to project an illusion of depth or power, often detached from the truth of who they are. On the surface, such a person appears confident, admired, even magnetic. Yet beneath that polish lies a fragile tension, one that rarely leads to peace but instead to narcissism, low self-worth, and quiet isolation.

We recognize these figures across literature and life. Clarissa Dalloway arranging her day like a performance, Estella from Great Expectaions gleaming coldly behind the mask of beauty, Cleopatra turning her very existence into theatre. Even Hamlet “farms” aura when he feigns madness—controlling perception to conceal deeper wounds. We see their reflections in our own time: the man who fabricates hardship for sympathy, the person  who dresses in the language of status but not of soul. They are everywhere, and sometimes, they are us.

In the real life, the Bible offers its own piercing portrait in the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11). They sold a piece of land and laid part of the proceeds at the apostles’ feet, pretending it was the full sum. They sought the glow of holiness without bearing its cost. Their act was not a failure of generosity but of authenticity, they wanted the aura of sanctity, not the surrender that sanctity demands. Like actors before a divine audience, they mistook the applause of others for the approval of God. Their story stands as a solemn warning: the Spirit cannot be deceived by the glitter of the self-made halo.

At its core, aura farming is a performance; a dance before mirrors. One studies the traits that command admiration—confidence, mystery, originality—and imitates them until they appear natural. Yet in doing so, the person begins to draw their sense of worth from reflection rather than truth. They become like a candle trapped behind glass: glowing but starved of air. The illusion that once empowered them becomes their cage.

Over time, this hunger for validation deepens into a fragile form of narcissism. Every compliment becomes a sip of survival, every moment of indifference, a small death. Relationships grow brittle because the aura farmer cannot risk being truly known authenticity threatens the performance. They long for love yet fear the gaze that might pierce the mask. The more they polish their image, the more their soul fades into the background, unseen and unattended.

This condition mirrors the spiritual sickness of our age. In a world obsessed with image and branding, authenticity feels almost subversive. We live as if God Himself scrolls through our highlight reels. But while aura may dazzle, it cannot nourish. Like Ananias and Sapphira, those who live by appearance eventually find that the light they project does not save them—it exposes them.

True wholeness begins where the performance ends. It is found not in the curated glow of being admired, but in the steady light of being known. To be genuine in an age of spectacle is to lay down the mask and let the breath of truth in—to trade the mirror for the window of the soul.

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Scripture quotations [marked NIV] taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica UK trademark number 1448790.

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

 Helen Keller

Learning to Walk in Another’s Shoes

I was driving my wife to work this morning when I saw a child and her father waiting at the traffic lights. The girl stood quietly, her small hands clasped together as if in prayer. More likely, she was cold. Yet, in that simple posture, there was something sacred; a child’s instinctive response to life’s chill.

On my way home, I saw them again, walking along the pavement. The little girl’s legs worked hard against the distance, her father walking patiently beside her, adjusting his stride to hers. She could not have been more than five. The scene touched me deeply, stirring memories of a winter long ago.

I grew up in Govan, Glasgow, where the Atlantic wind from the west could cut through any coat. I remember The Big Freeze of 1962–63, when temperatures fell to -22°C in parts of Scotland and the ground stayed iron-hard for weeks whilst the Elder Park pond became a skater's paradise. My mother would rise before dawn to light the coal fire, the smell of smoke and porridge filling our small kitchen. She would pull a balaclava over my head, wrap a scarf tight around it, and send me off to school with a kiss and hug. 

Perhaps it was those winters that kindled empathy in me, for genuine empathy is not born in comfort but in shared struggle. It is, as the Bible says, the ability to “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). The Greek word used in the New Testament, sumpatheo, means to “suffer with.” It suggests more than pity; it is an entering into another’s experience with the heart.

In truth, empathy, or entering another's experience is also cultivated through stories. Reading has been one of the surest ways we learn walk in another’s shoes. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry showed me what it felt like to be a young Black girl navigating prejudice in the American South. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot revealed the quiet agony of being too tender-hearted in a harsh world and I feel the aching of the writer's soul.  Dickens taught me that justice is not a cold principle but a human pulse beating beneath the grime of industrial London. And Othello exposed the pain of being victimized by envy and deceit, the terrible loneliness of being misunderstood. Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov also taught me the challenges of being a believer and facing existential paradoxes.

Each story, like a window opened on a frosted morning, lets in warmth from another life. To read is to thaw the ice around one’s own heart. Empathy, then, is not merely an emotion but a light that burns through coldness—the kind a father carries as he slows his steps for his child on a winter’s morning.

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“Now it happened that Mr. Cherry, the carpenter, found a piece of wood that laughed and cried like a child.”

Books That Teach Us Human Values

Before my father died, he left me something more enduring than possessions; an awareness that life itself rests on moral ground. He often said, “Every story has a moral heartbeat, even if it’s faint.” It was one of those sayings that lingered. Years later, I’ve come to see how right he was.

Every good story, he believed, reaches a moral reckoning: the wicked fall, the just prevail, or at least, we sense what should have happened if justice had its way. When stories fail to do that, we feel cheated, as though the universe has bent out of shape. But why? If, as Richard Dawkins insists, we are merely “dancing to our DNA” in a purposeless cosmos, why do we care about fairness at all? Yet we do — instinctively, universally.

Martin Luther King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” My father, though not a philosopher, lived as if that were true. He saw in every narrative, every act of conscience, the reflection of a moral order that runs deeper than human opinion.

I grew up in Govan, a shipyard town on the edge of Glasgow. A place of stories. The air was thick with shipyard noise, but also with imagination. You could hear stories being told in pubs, at bus stops, or around the kitchen table. My father loved that world of words. He’d bring home books — sometimes borrowed, sometimes rescued from the dust of second-hand shops and leave them lying about.

When I was ten, I wandered into The Modern Book Shop, a cramped little cave of used books that smelled of paper, dust, and rain. Among the shelves, I found a small volume whose cover showed a wooden puppet with wild eyes. I opened it and read the first line:

“Now it happened that Mr. Cherry, the carpenter, found a piece of wood that laughed and cried like a child.”

That was my first encounter with The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Pinocchio fascinated me. He was mischievous, stubborn, and foolish, yet achingly human. Beneath the fantasy lay a truth I somehow recognised: to become “real,” he had to learn honesty, courage, and love. These weren’t arbitrary virtues. They were the warp and weft of what it means to live meaningfully. Even as a child, I sensed that Collodi’s tale was more than a fable; it was a mirror.

As I grew older, I began to see how that story echoed our own. We are all, in one way or another, wooden creatures longing for life. We stumble through temptation, wrestle with conscience, and yearn for transformation. The journey toward becoming “real” — authentic, upright, whole — is the human story itself.

That’s why I’ve never believed morality to be a mere social invention. If it were, why would the same moral chords resonate across cultures and centuries? Why do we root for justice, even in fiction? It’s because something within us — perhaps the image of God — knows that goodness, beauty, and truth are not imagined; they are discovered.

My father never spoke of theology. He didn’t need to. He simply pointed to stories. Sydney Carton’s self-sacrifice in A Tale of Two Cities, Aslan’s resurrection in Narnia — to him, these weren’t just plots; they were echoes of a greater narrative, the one written before time began: light overcoming darkness, love outlasting death.

Now that he’s gone, I see how profoundly his quiet faith shaped mine. His books still line my shelves, their pages bearing traces of his thumbprints. When I open them, I hear his voice, steady and sure, reminding me that life has meaning, and that our choices matter.

Like Pinocchio, I am still learning to become “real” — still stumbling, still finding my way toward courage and integrity. But the moral compass he gave me keeps its bearing.

In the end, the stories we cherish are never just about heroes and villains. They’re about us — about the moral universe we inhabit and the justice we intuit. My father believed that light, no matter how faint, will always find a way to shine. And I believe him still.

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The Moral Architecture of Happiness

Many years ago, I picked up a dusty old book and beneath the subject of Justice, found a passage that stopped me in my tracks. It was written by the 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, whose words still gleam like gold in the dust of forgotten shelves:

“[God] has so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter.”

Blackstone is saying that divine justice and human happiness are not merely connected, they are woven together by the very hand of God, like warp and weft in the fabric of creation. Pull at one thread, and the whole garment trembles.

This reflects his conviction in what he called Natural Law — the belief that God’s moral laws are stitched into the structure of the universe and written on the human heart. The Apostle Paul said as much when he wrote, “The work of the law is written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans 2:15). To live justly, then, is to live in tune with the music of the Maker and to move in rhythm with the moral gravity that holds all things together.

True happiness, Blackstone argues, cannot exist apart from righteousness. The psalmist knew this: “Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked… but whose delight is in the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:1–2). Happiness here is not a fleeting pleasure or a passing thrill. It is a deep stillness of the soul.

When one violates justice, through deceit, cruelty, or selfishness, one violates one’s own design. The conscience, like a compass knocked off its axis, spins without direction. We lose our bearings in the moral fog. But when one walks uprightly — with integrity, compassion, and justice — happiness follows not as a reward, but as a result, as naturally as morning follows night.

In that sense, God’s universe is morally self-regulating. Justice brings joy; injustice brings misery. The sinner’s misery is not arbitrary punishment; it is dissonance. The righteous man’s peace is not indulgence; it is harmony.

Blackstone’s insight could be paraphrased like this:
God has made the moral order and human happiness one and the same thing. You cannot break one without breaking the other.

This is a profoundly theological view of law. If civil justice loses its anchor in divine law, society begins to fray. C. S.. I truely believe Europe has experienced this loss. C.S. Lewis warned of this unravelling when he wrote in The Abolition of Man that modern society “has discarded in practice what he retains in theory.” In denying objective morality, we saw away the very branch upon which we sit.

Does it surprise us, then, that the key to happiness is bound to God’s law? Would you rather live in a community shaped by the Ten Commandments, or in a world where everyone “does what is right in his own eyes”? (Judges 21:25). To choose the former is to accept that we are bound, not by chains, but by chords of love. As Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Many have chosen the latter and as a result, have stood back and watched society broken to the core and have sought refuge and happiness in the teachings of Christ and sparking a religious revival.

That is why Christians preach: to call home the wanderers, those who, like the prodigal, have squandered their inheritance of peace for the illusion of freedom. Repentance is the return to harmony, the realignment of one’s life with the moral order of God’s kingdom.

Happiness is not a by-product of obedience; it is interwoven with it. As Blackstone saw, and as Scripture affirms, “Great peace has those who love Your law, and nothing can make them stumble” (Psalm 119:165).

To obey God is not to bow under a burden, but to stand upright in joy. The law of eternal justice and the happiness of the soul — they are threads of the same divine tapestry, shimmering in the light of the One who wove them.

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“I have made this letter longer than usual because
I have not had time to make it shorter.”
— Blaise Pascal

 Why Are You a Christian?

Someone asked me last night if I could explain why I am a Christian in 100 words.
For you students on Creative Writing modules, you’ll know how challenging concise writing can be — but here goes:

As a boy on the island of Bute, far from Glasgow’s dark slums, I would sit in my secret place — my smultronställe, as the Swedes would say — and gaze at the night sky, wondering who made the moon and stars. In time, I learned it was the Lord: The Maker of galaxies and of man, crafted in His own image.

Then came Jesus, walking among us, showing what it truly means to be human — to mirror the Father’s light, to forgive, to serve, to love one’s neighbour even unto death.
In Him, I found grace, purpose, and peace. I found my way

When I behold Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place —
what is man that You are mindful of him,
or the son of man that You care for him?

Psalm 8:3–4 (BSB)

Note

The Swedish phrase “smultronställe” literally means “wild strawberry place,” but it carries a much deeper, emotional meaning in Swedish culture. A smultronställe is a personal, often hidden spot that holds special significance, peace, or nostalgia. It might be a place from childhood, a quiet lakeside, or simply somewhere that makes you feel wholly yourself.

God and the Two Cosmic Dancers

I first learned about quantum entanglement while speaking with a physicist on the island of Kerrera, on Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. It was one of those quiet afternoons when the sea and sky seemed to merge into one, and our conversation turned to the unseen forces that bind the universe together.

Imagine two dancers—one from Glasgow, the other from Beijing. They bump into each other one busy afternoon on Buchanan Street. That’s all. They’ve never met before and will never meet again. Yet somehow, when one lifts her arm, the other does too—at the same instant. No delay. No signal sent through the air. Just an invisible knowing.

That, in an illustrative way, is what what happens when two particles—say, protons—become entangled.

It begins when they’re born together in the same quantum “dance,” perhaps in a high-energy collision in a laboratory, or deep within a star, far from any human eye. In that moment, their properties—spin, charge, magnetic orientation—become linked in a mysterious partnership. Once entangled, their fates are no longer independent; they share a single story.

Even if one proton ends up in a lab in Glasgow and the other in Beijing—or separated by light-years—the bond remains it is theorised. Measure one, and the other responds instantly. Einstein disliked this idea. He called it “spooky action at a distance.” Yet experiment after experiment has confirmed it.

What fascinates me most is what this says about reality itself. Entanglement suggests that the universe isn’t made of isolated pieces, but of relationships. Particles that once touched never entirely let go. Space isn’t an empty void, but a living fabric of invisible connections—threads of meaning woven through creation.

Some physicists even suggest that these invisible ties are what hold the universe together—that space, time, and reality itself might arise from this web of entanglement. But I see something deeper. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” — Hebrews 11:3 (NIV).

So, when I hear about entangled protons, I hear more than a scientific marvel. I hear a whisper from the deep structure of existence—a reminder that everything which has ever met is still somehow connected. And as we look into that mystery, we find ourselves echoing David’s ancient question beneath the same starlit sky: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” — Psalm 8:4 (NIV).

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“I was seven Last Night”

I was seven years old last night. I wanted to be a vet. I didn’t want to be a soldier or a president — just someone who could touch the quiet and visit the animals in the forests near my home. 
Mama said I should sleep, but the stars were still awake, scattered like precious gems on the dark sky above my town. I pressed my face to the cold windowpane, trying to count them, but they kept trembling, as if frightened too be counted.

Papa had promised me we’d go to the park again when the weather turned warm and this is all over. I’d ride my old chopper that belonged to dad when he was seven; the one with the bent handles like a Harley. Dad would chase me till we both fell laughing into the grass before all this happened. I liked the way the world smelled after rain. It always felt like God had washed it clean, ready for another try.

When the sirens started, I thought they were part of a dream.
Mama’s arms wrapped around me, I could hear her heart beating fast; dum-dum! dum-dum!
The world outside howled; a wind, a growl, a noise from the deep.
I wanted to ask, why do they hate us? But the words got lost in the thunder.

There was light then. A light too bright for night. The kind that doesn’t belong to our world.
And then, quiet again. Not the kind that means safety, but the kind that holds everything, every prayer, every tear, every unspoken why.

I’m not cold now. I’m not afraid.
The stars are closer than ever, and I wonder if they know my name.
Mama is sleeping somewhere below, her heart aching in that endless human way. Tell her I’m sleeping now, to keep my chopper until I wake. Tell her when we meet again; we will laugh with a gentle heartbeat.

The town is erased from my memory now with the guns, bombs, planes, drones and tanks.

But stories don’t die that easily. They echo, even in ruins.
I was going to grow tall, learn English, study biology. I had a notebook with drawings of foxes, mushrooms, birds, moons, comets trailing their long silver hair. Maybe someone will find it in the rubble. Perhaps they’ll know I was there.

And I ask the same question every soul asks when the world forgets itself: What is the meaning of all this?
Men build guns and drones and tanks and planes, but none of it follows them here. No one has power here. Only the things we gave without return. The love the affection the kindness.
People are clutching photographs. They are still looking for purpose in the ruins. Mama and Papa hold my photo, my first day at school, they are kneeling beside the broken room where I will always be seven.

I was seven years old last night.
Now I am part of something older than time —
the silence between stars,
the heartbeat of the world when no one is listening,
the small, unending hope that someone will finally learn
what it means to be human.

“If someone dies, will they live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal to come.”
— Job 14:14 (NIV)

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“Dances with Wolves – Dancing in My Head”

When I listen to John Barry’s theme from Dances with Wolves, something stirs deep inside me; it's what the Swedes call längtan or a  “longing,” but that translation feels too shallow. The word means a profound yearning for something distant, lost, or not yet known. It is not quite sorrow, not quite hope, but a tender ache that points beyond itself.

The music carries me into wide, open spaces, endless sky, wind over grass, a horizon without end. Then, suddenly, I reach a wall, an invisible edge beyond which I cannot go. The music continues, but I stop, left with that ache suspended between presence and absence. Am I sharing a piece of Barry’s mind as he composed the piece? Who knows.

I have known this feeling since boyhood when I see endless stars, a sundown or extracts from the classics and even in Runrig, Na h-Oganaich , Pink Floyd and Horslips music.

Perhaps längtan is the soul’s memory of wholeness, its reaching for the eternity God has placed in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

I no longer see this longing as a wound but as a gift. It keeps me searching beyond the visible and reminds me that I am meant for something more. Even the ache itself is beautiful, because it whispers of a love, a home, and a life still waiting beyond the horizon.

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