One of my favourite traditions in recent years here on the blog has been for my main Fall series to look at Christian theology through an external lens to better understand ourselves through the face of an other. This is not to ‘appropriate’ any idea as our own, but to use another worldview as a … Continue reading The Wheel and the Way: Introduction
Today is the Feast of the Holy Cross in the Church calendar. This is one of those medieval feasts that’s hard for many of us to find our way into, since it is self-consciously a celebration of a symbol instead of what it symbolizes (c.f., the Feast of the Body of Christ). But it's wonderful … Continue reading Trampling Down Death by Death: A Reflection on Numbers 21.4-9 and John 3.13-17
A few years ago, in my series on tradition, I wrote about how tradition always involves not just passive reception of the past, but active and intentional changes: “Tradition is an active process: we receive from the past but inevitably apply it to the needs of the present for the sake of our desired future.” … Continue reading Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
For the trip from Hadrian’s Wall down to Manchester, where I would end my trip, we decided to go via the Lake District, a place whose beauty has inspired anything from the construction of ancient stone circles to the great literature of the likes of Austen, Wordsworth, and Coleridge (which in turn inspired Taylor Swift … Continue reading Take Me to the Lakes
Visiting so many historical places the past couple of years (Rome and Florence in 2023 and Paris in 2024, in addition to the recent trip to the North of England that has inspired this series), it’s been fascinating to see the different approaches communities take to the history around them. On the one extreme, many … Continue reading Legacy
Matthew Root 