OTD 1892: JRR Tolkien Beyond even the marvellous writing and epic tales, Tolkien’s main fascination was to give his invented languages homes – which is why so many characters are known by multiple names. So hail his queen of heaven… [I love Tolkien’s work but it’s not going to stop this punchline]

Winter Garden French artist Géraldine Theurot

Today is J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday! Born in 1892, Tolkien paved the way for modern fantasy literature and his creativity continues to inspire the minds of many to this day. ✨ 📸 | Tolkien, Bournemouth, July 1965 Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Tolkien photogr. 7, fol. 75r (c) Tolkien Trust, 2015

Happy birthday JRR Tolkien! On this day, January 3 of 1892, the author of The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit was born! I am so thankful for his lifelong devotion to storytelling and world-building, and I am inspired everyday to pursue beauty, goodness, and truth because of him.

1/2 I'm very much enjoying this book. I'm sceptical about the more cultural/historical portions of the book. Hickel makes too many vast generalisations about Western anti-nature (blending diverse religions, epochs, & philosophies under the label of dualism). He tends to romanticise animist cultures.

A timeline cleanser for you 🧡

Very excited for my next Quaker read! Father Christmas did not disappoint! @stuartkmasters.bsky.social Also, yes, the time of the man bun has come.

When Star Trek does Peter Kropotkin. 💜🏴

For the life of me, I can't remember why I have two copies of Robert Graves' "The White Goddess". 🤔

And it's beautiful 😍

Dust off your copies of Margaret Murray’s ‘The Divine King in England’, I am at the RUFUS STONE 🏹👑🌳

Margaret Fell was affectionately known as the “mother of Quakerism.” One of the ways she nurtured Friends was through her writings—which, Shulamith Clearbridge suggests, continue to speak directly to our spiritual needs today.

'[The tender-hearted] are not like...barren desert, but rather like the tender herb, sensible of the dews from heaven, & the gentle rain that falls...They can feel the droppings down of divine love, & they sprout forth & sing for joy in the sense thereof' (William Shewen, Meditations & Experiences)

'Wisdom hath uttered forth her voice to you, but the eye & ear which is abroad, waiting upon the sound of words without you, is that which keeps you from your Teacher within you....Love is his name, Love is his nature, Love is his life' (Sarah Blackborow, Hidden in Plain Sight, p. 52). #QuakerWisdom

"Kindness is like sunshine, in which virtue grows." ~ Robert Green Ingersoll Good morning my friends, and best wishes for you in this New Year. May kindness and compassion guide you in every situation and circumstance. As much as you can, be the light, be the love. Have a terrific day ❤️

Stonehenge

The State pension established a radical principle in our politics---that wealth does not just belong to private individuals. Wealth is due to the organisation of shared ingenuity & effort. When persons fall into sickness or frailty, that wealth becomes theirs, existing for their welfare & wellbeing.

Sing and rejoice you children of the day and of the Light. For the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt. Truth does flourish as the rose, the lillies do grow among the thorns, the plants a-top of the hills, and upon them the lambs do skip and play. George Fox 1663

Happy New Year 🌱 We have so much to look forward to in 2026, including a rich programme of courses, sessions and residentials, the 2026 Swarthmore Lecture, a conference with the Quaker Committee for Interfaith Relations, and much more to come. Find out what’s coming up: www.woodbrooke.org.uk

We might say that the "God and Jesus language kicking about" constitute the cumulative shared content of previous Quaker searching. If we go too far in a purely individual direction, we become like someone who puts so much store by their sense of direction, they refuse all maps.

'....the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs' (George Eliot, "Middlemarch")

"The Empath" remains one of my favourite Season 3 #StarTrek #TOS stories: Half ghost story, half hymn to #mutual #aid, it is a meditation on how giving & caring makes us (and keeps us) human. We need that message more than ever. 💚

Mt. Fuji Above the Clouds, copy after Hokkei's print from the set of Three Lucky Dreams | Toyota Hokkei

Last night’s aurora tour with Maia. Join us! Visit my website to learn how to book and what times are best to visit Alaska to see the northern lights. theauroraguy.com/pages/maias-...

Happy New Year to all and may the North Star shine upon us all!! ⭐️💫

Some 2025 highlights: ♥️ Got a new job 🧡 Bought a house (eeek!) 💚 Taught some fabulous session/courses. 💜 Composed some Quaker Bible Study materials. 💛 Got way into Rudolf Steiner & the history of Buddhism. 🩶 Left the LibDems & joined the Greens 🩵 Reached 40 with a smaller than expected waistline.

Its nearly January so Bluesky's theology nerds are now going to be bombarded with diet plans fit for the Apostles! Remember, they're not calories. They're 'syns'. 😀😭

In 1943, the American OWI helped create a film that they showed to all those who were to be stationed in Britain. Oh for this sedate pub.

I'm still enduring a heavy cold & my husband is suffering from a stomach bug so we're at home for the new year. 😭

1/2 A few weeks before the world went into Lockdown, I bought a picture of the Hindu goddess Kali (not sure why). I was drawn to it somehow. Then, like the violence of the image itself, Covid burnt through ordinary certainties. Finally, five years later, life has taken on a stable shape for me.

Happy New Years Eve! A few more photos from this mornings misty start to the day in Glastonbury.

I wouldn't describe myself as a natural ally but I genuinely wanted the government to succeed. I'm alienated: 🚫 Too timid on Brexit. 🚫 Seemingly in the pockets of big developers. 🚫 Hard Right immigration policy. 🚫 Talks about growth & debt, not vision/values. 🚫 Authoritarian on civil liberties.

1/2 Even Socrates could be fitted into this radical conserving pattern as someone who was trying to find new reasons for old propositions. You see this preserved in Plato's Phedo, where Socrates offers a new justification for loyalty state decrees. In this light, Socrates' questioning attitude...

1/2 A cheeky part of me wonders whether the figures Jaspers cites as exemplars of the Axial Age weren't revolutionaries, but people who were attempting to reground the older solidarities & symbolic imaginaries which had come under threat via urbanisation, centralisation & widening hierarchies.

An answer to the question: "Why did God create the world?" 🕉

I finished reading the Finnish poem Kalevala for the first time this week. The poem was written by a linguist and scholar who compiled oral folktales. The oral and communal nature of traditional storytelling is invoked in this opening passage: 📚💙 #mythology #folklore

I'm pretty convinced that if most people made time to read this story, they would see the world and themselves in a new light and be filled with fresh wonder, courage, love, empathy and wisdom.

100% this. GDP is not the ultimate goal. A healthy, flourishing, equal, compassionate society in balance with its ecosystem is the goal. Our political class have forgotten this - cajoled by think tanks, donors and “the city”. A country can have an excellent GDP and be terrible to live in.

1/2 I've been reading Jaspers 'The Origin and Goal of History' as a way to detract myself from a heavy cold. It is a beautiful meditation of human universalism. But the problem with Jaspers notion of the 'Axial Age' is it falls for the propaganda of civilization: that sedentary human settlement...

Campaigner turned down MBE over ‘scapegoating’ of people with disabilities

How to feed a Roman Centurion. youtu.be/1fDKx1CgcXs?...

🗨 "Our economic model is trashing the planet and it isn't even doing much for the poorest people either." @carolinelucas.bsky.social speaking on The Rest Is Politics podcast. 🟩 It's time to do things differently - let's focus on wellbeing, instead of GDP growth at any cost.

'The life of Christ is not an exhibition of over-ruling power. Its glory is for those who can discern it, and not for the world. Its power lies in its absence of force. It has the decisiveness of a supreme ideal' (Alfred North Whitehead)

It's too late. They didn't properly prepare for government. Their political energy was directed towards faction fighting, & not vision. They have adopted the autopilot instrumentalist aims of a generic Centre-right government (low debt, more growth). But three are means, not ends. They lack ideals.

'In the beginning was the manifestness of Being in a present without consciousness...With the consummation of the end, we shall attain concord of souls, shall view one another in a loving present & in boundless understanding, members of a single realm of everlasting spirits' (Karl Jaspers, 1949).

'[Love] is the sweet, tender, melting nature of God, flowing up through his seed of life into the creature, & of all things making the creature most like unto himself, both in nature & operation. It fulfils the law, it fulfils the gospel; it...brings forth all in the oneness' (Isaac Penington) 💜

'The Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all. The Lord is the supreme Reality. Rejoice in him through renunciation. Covet nothing. All belongs to the Lord' (Isha Upanishad). 🕉🧡

'When God begets life in the heart, there is a savor of it in thy vessel, & a secret, living warmth & virtue, which the heart in some measure feels...Lie low in the fear of the Most High, that this leaven may grow & increase in thee. This is the leaven of the kingdom' (Isaac Penington).

'Under self-guidance individuals will diverge widely, and some of their eccentricities will be futile, others wasteful, others even painful and abhorrent to witness. But, upon the whole, it is good that they should differ. Individuality is an element of well-being' (LT Hobhouse, "Liberalism") 🧡

“Those who see all creatures in themselves And themselves in all creatures know no grief. How can the multiplicity of life Delude the one who sees its unity?”(Isha Upanishad) 🕉