Ken Smith’s talk at Oxford’s Think Week argues that religious atheism need not debate God’s existence, and finds worship in the material cosmos, art, poetry and kindness.
Ken Smith introduces the Hindu Great Goddess as Kali, Durga, Sati and Parvati, drawing on visits to Indian temples and funeral rites, and suggests Sofists try thinking outside their own cultural and religious frame.
Ken Smith reflects on his path from fundamentalism through ministry, cancer and bereavement work, arguing that shared humanity and non-duality bind past and present, and that a ‘why’ to live copes with any ‘how’.
Ken Smith’s comic poem about the physical indignities of illness and age, from struggling to reach the cornflakes to a hoped-for resurrection of the body.
Ken Smith reviews the Royal Academy exhibition of Chola bronzes from southern India, contrasting Hindu acceptance of eroticism and earthiness with sexual repression in monotheistic religions.
Review of Frank Walker’s The Evil Inclination, a collection of sermons by a Unitarian minister, praised for its humane, down-to-earth wisdom and suggested for local group study.
The new Letters Editor introduces the letters section and quotes a Da Vinci Code line that faith describes God through metaphor and goes wrong when metaphors are taken literally.
A Mayday Notes column on how music and poetry depend on bodily rhythm and our earthly kinship, arguing poetry must keep room for ideas. Also reviews the booklet Where We Are Now by the SoF...
