Very Large Telescope image of Arp 271, also known as NGC 5426 and NGC 5427. The galaxies are tugging on each other with gravity, which has begun to distort their features and may have also triggered bursts of star formation. Credit: ESO Source

This PM is really crap at being PM.

I love it when a native pollinator garden comes together! A visitor to our lantana this evening, the lined sphinx Hyles lineata.

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” ~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Good morning Bluesky! ❤️

Bees sleep between five and eight hours a day. They enjoy company and even hold each other's feet.

The Gathering. Taken from St Michael's tower on Glastonbury Tor a few days ago.

The contradictions & ambiguity of the British class system.

Please read this, understand what the govt is doing & take action. Labour's immigration proposals swap integration for segregation, introduce a Dubai-style Kafala system of coercive employer control & drive low-income families into poverty. They're an abomination. open.substack.com/pub/wewanted...

In Paradiso, Dante calls the earth "a little threshing floor". Compared to the serenity of the divine spheres, our tiny blue dot is full of petty wickedness & ultimately futile violence. Like the Stoics, Dante encourages us to see the conflicts & struggles of human life sub specie aeternitatis.

'[Christ] is our heaven. He must win a form in us if we are to be in heaven. Thus the inner soul-man is then with the holy love of Christ, as in the new birth in heaven & the external mortal [man] in the world. Of this Christ says: My sheep are in My hands...' (Jakob Böhme, "The Way of Christ").

Through their yearly meeting structures, male Friends maintained control of decision-making on matters of discipline, doctrine, and political engagement, and it wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that women began to enjoy equal participation in this work. The Quaker Faith, p.163.

'Our philosophy...[is] a synthesis of radical thought. From socialism we take our economic analysis, from anarchism our libertarian perspective, from syndicalism our commitment to workers control, & from pacifism our commitment to nonviolence' (Peter Hain, quoted The Scarborough Perspective, 1971) 🔶️

Imagine any other government bringing in a law for a signal ethnic group and how it would be received 😐 Where are the sanctions?? A reminder: these are actions of a a single government, not of Jewish people in general.

Something I was working on yesterday. ✍️🙏

"Arjuna, I am the taste of pure water & the radiance of the sun & moon. I am the sacred word & the sound heard in air, & the courage of human beings. I am the sweet fragrance in the earth & the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature & the striving of the aspirant" (Bhagavad Gita). 🙏🕉

1/2 It's great that we Greens are building strong relationships with Trade Unions. A healthy Trade Union movement is the mark of an open & Liberal society. But in attempting to replace Labour, we should be careful not to become just another hierarchical Fordist C20th Social Democratic Party.

On this day 50 years ago: Peter Hain, leader of the Young Liberals, was on trial at the Old Bailey for bank robbery. Hain, who went on to be a Labour MP and government minister under Blair and Brown, was acquitted and suggested the Police had been...a little too enthusiastic about charging him.

Lukas Sieper of 🇩🇪 Left-Liberal Partei des Fortschritts (PdF) talking about 'the freedom to be who you are' in the 🇪🇺 Parliament. It is a mark of moral progress when a society widens the circle of it's empty, when it's public institutions actively choose to extend the frontiers of human dignity. 🔶️🏳️‍🌈

Today at our regular Zoom meeting @paulhindley2210.bsky.social shared a slide summarising the political ideologies of those present. And yes, this is very me! 🔶️♻️😀

Now @williamjtlane.bsky.social, this post is highly Ben Wood coded. 🔶️👍

Christ's Resurrection (foreshadowed from the beginning of the world) signifies that there are no final partings in God's world. Orpheus knows sweet spring with his beloved Eurydice. Demeter is reunited with Persephone. Alexander rests again in the arms of Hephaestion. O Death, where is your sting?

'[The] Easter message appeared like a memory, like a sacred memory of primeval holy times...The people were able to say: ‘That power of the old Balder was too small to extend over all human evolution. A higher power had to appear...to give again to men what they [lost[ in Balder' (Rudolf Steiner).

Have you ever thought about getting involved in politics but you’re not sure what it entails? Come along to my next New Voices event on 9 April for a friendly chat and Q&A! www.eventbrite.com/e/spring-26-...

'You can take it from a man who has been poor: goodness is there, and with the world what it is, that's proof enough to my mind that the gods exist...But goodness is like money; a city only has so much: you have to start small and build up the capital' (Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo).

In the Divine Comedy, Dante describes a sparking river called Eunoe, meaning “good mind” or “noble memory” (Purgatorio, Canto XXXIII). Drinking from Eunoe restores the soul's recollection of past goodness, stirring it's resolve. In dark times such as these, we all need the sweet waters of Eunoe.

📣 New Video! Today I’m looking at what I think Quakerism’s major flaw is, and it’s all to do with tangibility. #quakers #quakerism #britishquakers youtu.be/b5TjL3x-g5s

'At dawn, I worship the true Self that is beyond the reach of mind and speech, By whose grace, speech is even made possible, This Self is described in the scriptures as “Not this, Not this”. It is called the God of the Gods, It is unborn, undying, one with the All' (Adi Shankaracarya). 🪷

“In theory, an Upanishad could even be composed in the present day: a spiritual Upanishad that would draw its life from the One source of religions and humanism and apply to the modern world,” (Juan Mascaró, Introduction to the Penguin Classics, The Upanishads, 8)

"Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour Pingu?"

The first four Doctor Who VHS tapes I owned. What a fabulous Christmas that was.♥️

"And forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." ~ Khahil Gibran Good morning my friends! Gaia has secrets to share, to whisper in your ear. Recharge, refresh, renew. It's only natural. A better you means a better world. ❤️

BREAKING NEWS Government introduce extreme measures to enforce the maximum 1 hour screentime for the under 5s. #DoctorWho

“An ideal is as necessary to the reformer as the established fact is to the conservative… A progressive movement … must have an ideal, and an ethical idea for the future must be in so far abstract as it is not yet realised and embodied in social institutions.” L. T. Hobhouse. 1898

'For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment' (James 2:13). ♥️ ⚖️

"So let me say here, loud and clear, that women's ministry absolutely is Biblical. Furthermore there is a very fine history of women leading Christian organisations, including ours." Tim Gee on the installation of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury

'I hope that the Government will explain whether competition is possible [in water], &, if so, how. If they cannot do so...I question whether this is a suitable industry for...privatisation, which so far has very much benefited the City—there is no doubt about that' (Jo Grimond, 9 November, 1988). 🔶️

A clear start to the day here in Glastonbury. Photo taken on my way back down Glastonbury Tor.

Brightwell Barrow: a Bronze Age bowl barrow in South Oxfordshire, which was mentioned in the Domesday Book.

'Spirits of your souls, guardian guides, On your wings let there be borne The prayer of love from our souls To those whom you guard here on earth. Thus, united with your might, A ray of help our prayer shall be For the souls it seeks out there in love' (Rudolf Steiner). 🪷

'He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, he never suffers; because when he sees all creatures within his true Self, then jealousy, grief and hatred vanish' (Paramananda, The Upanishads). 🕉🪷

'Let my idle chatter be the muttering of prayer, my every manual movement the execution of ritual gesture, my walking a ceremonial circumambulation, my eating & other acts the rite of sacrifice...let whatever activity is mine be some form of worship of You' (Adi Shankaracarya). 🕉

I've written and posted about the Quiet Revival, so feel I should share this correction, published yesterday. It is still true however that people, often young people, often marginalised by others, are still finding their way to Quakers. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Below Shashi Tharoor reflects on the radical teaching of Adi Shankara. 🕉🪷

Quite frankly, who cares? Unless the next Labour leader has a clear philosophy & a coherent analysis of the UK's problems, it doesn't really matter who's in Number 10. Without a clear policy platform, & without connected ideals, the government will just operate on Centre-right autopilot.

There must be value beyond ourselves. Otherwise everything experienced would be merely a barren detail in our own solipsist mode of existence. -Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 102

All I can say to Pete Hegseth is that the God revealed in Christ forgave his murderers from the Cross. At Golgotha, from the pits of desolation, was revealed the depths of Eternal Goodness--One who would rather die than kill, suffer rather than inflict suffering. ✝️

Every war leaves our world worse than it was before. War is a failure of politics and humanity. Pope Francis

Greens pile pressure on Ed Miliband to end 'rigged energy system' news.sky.com/story/greens...

To mark both her recent installation as Archbishop of Canterbury, and also to celebrate her birthday, Quakers gifted Sarah Mullally a copy of Margaret Fell's Women's Speaking Justified yesterday. The meeting was warm and friendly, and finished with a brief moment of silent prayer .

More time-lapse footage from the night of March 20, taken in the Goldstream Valley of Fairbanks, Alaska. Moon just hanging out in those high altitude reds on the left. #alaska #aurora #auroraborealis #northernlights