On the night that Spain won the World Cup, I was there to hear the National Orchestra of Spain perform, among other things, Ravel’s Bolero. The tune is an instantly recognisable one, with its repetitive rhythm, and you might think of ballroom dancing or figure-skating, but if you know it, you’ll know it is a dance tune with a twist.

Watch Bolero on BBC Iplayer

I don’t think I’d ever heard it live before and as I was spotting which new instrument was added as the music built up, I was also trying to work out when the change in mood begins. As a viola player I think I’d have to say it’s when the violins come in but what do you think? (leave a comment below!) They seem to be saying “listen to us, we’ve perfected this now” but they don’t know when to stop, to take the foot off the gas.

When you know what is to come, you can almost see the collapse into madness as inevitable from the beginning, as each new entry is more frantic than the last. But Ravel could have composed it differently, kept it a jolly little dance piece, reached a climax and then calmed everything down again to relieve the tension. We expect this of music, that it comes back round again and leaves us feeling better. Ravel leaves me feeling disturbed.

Each repetition of the tune in Bolero seems to get more boastful, and celebratory, but in the end there’s nowhere left to go but a hideous key change and crowing trombones before a sudden collapse. Could he have carried on? Perhaps 100 years ago he didn’t have the musical language, or perhaps he’d said all he wanted to say. He’d already, after all, created a dystopian image 8 years earlier in La Valse, the chilling reimagining of the Viennese waltz in the years after the Great War.

In Bolero, it’s hard to tell when the triumph turns into hubris. It feels both inevitable, but also impossible to know when the point of no return has been passed.

The excessive heat this summer, culminating in wildfires in France and Spain seem to indicate that as far as the climate is concerned, this tipping point has been reached. We will never again have the seasons as we remember them from our childhood.

Sometimes I don’t know how to be hopeful anymore. At least, not if hope means “there’s still a chance we can stop this bad thing happening”

But actually, true hope isn’t about looking at the future and saying “it might still be alright”. It’s about turning towards what we will never lose - the goodness, beauty, love, community that we see now, and knowing that such things will last despite everything.

I don’t know why I’m drawn to Ravel at the moment, but perhaps it’s also the reason why I read apocalyptic fiction. I couldn’t read it all the time, that would be a bit much. But it seems to have a place, not just as a warning for what might happen, but as a way to visualise possible futures. It gives us something to imagine even as we know (and hope) things won’t happen exactly like that. For me it’s the uncertainty that’s the hardest.

I recently read Children of Men by PD James in which she imagines a future (in 2021!) where no child has been born for 25 years. (The film is very different and I think it is better). Spoiler alert – it ends with the birth of a baby, which, to my mind, is a beginning not an ending.

Like Ravel’s Bolero, I think most apocalyptic fiction ends too suddenly. Yes, the protagonists have reached safety, or conquered the immediate threat, but how do they survive in the changed world? Will it be better or worse than the old world? How do they rebuild? And in so doing, what do they discover about what it means, fundamentally, to be human.

The only book I’ve read that takes this theme is The Earth Abides by George R Stewart which was written in 1949. Almost all humans have died in a sudden pandemic and those that remain each have their own ideas of how to rebuild, but successfully work together to ensure their children and grandchildren survive. It takes the main character a while to realise that his university education is of no value for the immediate future of humanity!

In the end, all he can give his grandchildren are some very basic practical skills, a lot of love, and the strong foundations of a new community.

And so, I come back to a common theme of mine: grandparents and grandchildren. Last Sunday was the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly and I wrote this piece which was published in Independent Catholic News.

Last week I became a great auntie. Congratulations to Emily and Paul on the birth of their beautiful baby daughter – and to my eldest sister who is now a grandmother!

This is just a few months after my last auntie died – and so life goes on.

One generation passes away, and another generation comes, but the earth abides for ever. (Ecclesiastes 1:4)

We seem to have a perennial debate about whether kids are having to focus too much on tests and whether school kills creativity.

I found myself thinking, a child can learn about the movement of the planets, without having ever actually seen a planet. The start of science is curiosity about the real world.

This poem is dedicated to all those 16 and 18 year olds who are now free to stop and stare.

Physics

He sat neath the tree and he wondered
Or so the story goes
The apple fell down and he pondered
All day until the moon rose
As the fairies and planets danced round him
He reached for his pen and ink
And with maths and the moon and the apple
He extended the way we think

8464/P/2

Stark, and sterile, 
silent
Desk by desk 
row by row
Uniform, numbered, ranked.
Two hundred stationary bodies  
Brains and hands in motion
Enumerate Newton’s laws.

No time to stare or wonder
But when I get back to reality
I’ll find somewhere green 
And think of the moon and the apple tree.

“Think Global Act Local”

It’s rather clichéd I suppose and perhaps more fitting for a past age when we weren’t so interconnected across the world. But it came back into my mind recently when I was thinking about the groups and communities I belong to, and wondering into which ones I should put my energy.

All the issues I most care about, seem to find their solution there, in that word: Community.

How will we cope with runaway climate change? 
                                                                        Community!

How do we stop the immigrant-blaming which is threatening to spill over into all-out fascism? 
                                                                        Community!

How do we give those with terminal illnesses a sense of worth so they don’t seek assisted suicide? 
                                                                        Community!

How do we give young people the hope they need so they’ll want to start a family?
                                                                        Community!

What do I mean by community?

We can be members of many different groups so which ones help provide these solutions?
Where should we put our energies and find our identity?
And where do we find God at work?

From the earliest times humans have naturally formed groups of different sizes. Some examples of these, from smallest to largest are:

• Immediate family and closest friends – those with whom we are really at home and can totally rely on.

• Our social network – people we genuinely know and have something in common with.

• Our local community – people we see regularly in our own neighbourhood, but we may not know very well.

• The tribe. In anthropological terms this would be defined by a shared language. But now we’re likely to think of it in terms of “people like us”. If you go to watch a football match, attend the Board Game Convention, or go to see an opera you know you are with people in your tribe. People around the world who share your religious beliefs might be your tribe.

• Then of course we have the group membership that none of us can deny – that of the species homo sapiens – but do we also think of this as a connection to al humanity past present and future?

• We can also see ourselves as part of the natural ecosystem at a local or a planetary level.

With so many different interconnected groups, where do we feel we most belong? Which groups help us thrive? Where do we put our energy? And which “community” is the strongest answer to our social ills?

Whilst feeling connected with other people at all of these levels can be great, I believe there are three important levels for the Christian Human to channel their energy, and find their strength.

All of us need physical closeness and people to love wholeheartedly and who love us unconditionally. Our closest friends and family provide this. And if we can pray with these people then together we can be a strong unit within wider society. “Where two or three (or five or fifteen) are gathered together in my name I am there among them”

If we are members of a group because we have something in common with them – be it family, friends we’ve gathered from different parts of our lives, or people who share our hobby, there’s nothing wrong with that, but as Jesus said “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”

Don’t get me wrong – these groups are really important. If you’re among my first subscribers here on Substack its probably because you’re in my extended social network, and I love you, you have inspired me, and I know we’d always help each other out when we can. But because of this mutuality, we aren’t fulfilling any great commandments with this love.

There is another potential danger in focussing too much on these social networks: that we try too hard to fit in, and look for approval in order to keep our group membership.

Most of us don’t feel any particular kinship with our neighbours, and yet with them we share something very important – a real physical place, our street, our town. Forming connections with our neighbours and looking after our local environment together, is a powerful thing to do.

We may even feel our that our neighbours, the people we see in the supermarket, or on the bus, are from a different “tribe”, but these are the ones we are called to love, as in the parable of the good Samaritan. We can love them actively as we actually come into contact with them. Our love may not be reciprocated, meaning it is the sacrificial love of Caritas rather than the love of Kinship. We see Christ in all we meet.

This is the local level at which we can act. But as the old saying goes, we can also think globally. We can remember that we are part of God’s creation, this interlinked planetary ecosystem and members of the species Homo Sapiens and share its common history over the eons of evolution. All are made in the image and likeness of God who created the world, enthuses it with the Spirit and entered it as a human.

I believe these are the three levels at which we can find God and find our vocation to love and serve, and ultimately thrive:

1. Through their intimacy and deep love for us, our closest family or friends can help us keep the Spirit alive within us, empowering all we do.

2. By being physically near to us, people we meet in our everyday lives call us to love actively, as Christ did. A strong local community will in turn be able to protect the local environment, whether that’s a green place or a high street.

3. By remaining aware of God’s presence in all of creation, the entire ecosystem and all humans made in God’s image – we can align ourselves to the universal and the eternal, and find our place in the world.

Of course, I’m speaking idealistically – every day my focus drifts away from these areas, I put myself above my nearest and dearest, or I put “people like me” above those who need help in my locality, or “my tribe” above the good of humanity and the planet as a whole,

People have always been tempted towards self-centredness, and to forget their dependence on each other and on God, but when we do this we risk being part of the problem and not part of the solution.

The worry is that there are powerful people in the world now, who seem to think that human connection can be replaced with non-bodied machine intelligence. That rather than finding our place locally amongst people who need us, and whom we need, we should be encouraged to look for approval from a network of “people-like-me” and allow algorithms to find people for us, rather than direct encounters in the real world.

And there are increasing numbers of people who want to put protection of their tribe above the love of actual people. Sometimes they even call this Christian – ignoring the fact that the tribal God is very much stuck in the Old Testament. This view is especially dangerous when people believe that their tribe should equal their national identity.

And then certain billionaires (and one trillionaire) seem to be blind to the fact that this planet is our common home, and that we are part of a natural flow of generations each with their allotted time. They try to extend their own lives beyond their years, and are looking to extend human life on another planet, far from the only ecosystem which can sustain us.

In short, too many people are living in an individual – tribal – extra-terrestrial space, when God has intended us to live in a loving-family – local-community – planet-earth space.

If we focus on these most natural, real, embodied connections and work to create communities locally whilst thinking globally, we will find we are thriving in the life God intended, and healing for people and planet will follow.

The theme of the event was stories. That theme, and this story, were partly inspired by the book “Powsels and Thrums”, a collection of memories of the great Alan Garner, and the radio 4 series by Naomi Alderman “The Third Information Crisis”

Let me take you back in time, to when the first human told the first story…

Are you sitting comfortably?
                                  Then I’ll begin:

Follow me on Facebook,
Gather round the wireless,
Come into the parlour,
As the night draws in.

Meet me in the moot hall,
Sit around the fire,
Closer now and listen.
See the pictures in the cave,
                  As it echoes with my voice....

This is your story

You are a monkey come down from the trees. A hairless ape wandering the savannah, calling out to your family, sounds that mean “here, food!” and “look out there – wolf!”

You learn to make tools out of wood, stone, bone. Standing more upright, a straighter neck, a lengthened chin, a growing voice-box. You make different sounds now, with more meaning.

In your mind you can see what is not there. You remember the wolf, you make a mark in red ochre on the cave wall and you tell of the wolf. Now the others can see the same wolf that’s not there, that you see.

Many minds come together, seeing things that aren’t there, but could be. You make new tools, and weapons to kill the wolves. You plan a new thing: not to kill the wolf, but to tame the wolf. You have a new friend.

Read more

Recent studies have shown that in large swathes of the area this species inhabits it is not having enough young to replace itself, although there is no shortage of resources and no major catastrophe. In fact, populations from other areas where resources are under pressure are migrating into these areas, sometimes causing conflict.

You know that I know that you know, that I’m talking about human beings and the low fertility rates in “The West”, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and other places.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the issue, and the social and economic factors usually linked with it. But when you think of it as something happening to an animal species, don’t you think it’s weird?

We have stopped reproducing. like yeast when the sugar runs out. Or like a plant that won’t produce fruit when the conditions aren’t right.

Biologically, the conditions are right. But humans are no longer slaves to simple biology, and our evolution is now cultural (through “memes”) more than genetic (through genes).

Big Brains, Tiny Babies

What gave humans our great success as a species, and enabled us to adapt to and then control our environment, so that the major influences on our reproduction rates are now more cultural than biological?

The answer is, our brains.

Over a litre of white and grey matter, which is so flexible that the same intelligence has enabled us to design prey-specific arrows and to write computer programs.

But there is a cost to having this giant brain.

The cost is children.

There’s a limit to the size of heads that can fit through small pelvises and upright hips so human babies are literally born premature. They remain totally dependent, a paleo-anthropologist would say, for twelve years.

I’m not sure that the evidence of an anthropologist would stand up in court if I now turned my thirteen-year-old out to survive on his own. Modern society usually counts 18 years of dependence, and it seems that this much education, if not more, is needed for a young person to thrive in our modern world. Having a child is biologically and economically costly.

But the existence of children is also part of the winning formula. Babies grow in wombs to a size at which childbirth is just about safe for enough women to survive and have further children. The continuing growth and flexibility of the brain now exposed to the world, enables children to fully absorb language, learn vital skills, and form strong bonds with their caregivers and the community they are born into.

Such a lengthy dependency is only possible because of this community. Especially grandmothers: humans are one of very few species to have a menopause, so that a woman can survive for many decades after her own fertility ends and focus on helping grandchildren survive.

If the genetic purpose for an organism is to produce young that will carry the genes forward i.e. become a grandparent, then for humans maybe our biological aim in life is to become great-grandparents – to see a grandchild grow up to adulthood and the ability to have children of their own. And then to be content to die and leave space for these future generations.

Why has the fertility rate fallen?

The fertility rate in 2024 in England and Wales was 1.4 live births per woman. This compares to when I was born and the rate was 1.95 (1978 figure). A rate of 2.1 is normally quoted as the minimum replacement rate. The number of women having no children, and the number of women having 4 or more children has stayed the same. It is the majority in the middle that are now having 1 or 2 children instead of 2 or 3. Which is not surprising since they are starting later: in the UK more than half of first-time-mothers are over 30 years old1.

The usual reasons put forward for this decline in birth rate can be categorised as economic or social. But I think there is more to it – another factor, that is making us behave in a counter-evolutionary way.

Economic reasons include the expenses of the things people believe they need before having children, most notably a house but also the costs in time and money of having more than one or two children, and providing them with all that it is thought a child needs – a bedroom each, holidays, activities, higher education.

In addition, we have reached a point where to have a what is seen as a good quality of life, two people in each household need to work, making family life seem out of the question for many. This links with the social factors by which I mean the lifestyle choices people are making, which are incompatible with them having children. Young women and men want to fulfil various aspirations, in their careers as well as their free time such as travelling, before they settle down.

How the factor of more women in the workplace is affecting fertility rates, could be explored and debated no end. It is great news that women and men have, more or less, in the UK, achieved equality in the workplace at the start of their careers. But women know that their career will still progress more slowly once they become a mother.

It is clear that there is still a motherhood penalty for women who return to work. It is unclear how much women’s choice to return to work is a free choice or one dictated by economic necessity.

Feminism is an incomplete revolution. Do women really have a free choice whether or not to return to work, or is it dictated by economic necessity? Or an over-emphasis on having a career to feel fulfilled? As a society we don’t seem to know how to place a value on someone simply caring for their loved ones.

There is also a general sense that children are hard work, and that parenthood is not enjoyable or fulfilling. Women are presented with an unrealistic idea of what a good mother looks like. A vicious circle is in place with young people not seeing their siblings or peers having children (or their parents having younger children) and barely knowing what a baby is until they are wondering about having one of their own.

A frightening Future?

Perhaps these economic and social factors are enough to explain the low fertility rate, but another factor is sometimes cited and merits more exporation.

Young people sometimes say that they don’t want to have children because of the sense that the future will be a dangerous one, usually due to climate change but also fear of war. Or they may look at it a different way – the flip side of the coin – and say that humans have caused so much harm, we have no right to keep reproducing. The planet would be better off without us.

It is the first version that seems more common and is perfectly understandable in our time of poly-crisis: Why would you bring a baby into such a world, with such a frightening future?

It is this existential factor, that may well exist in the subconsious of many young people, that I want to explore more, and to look at through a big-history lens.

There must have been a point in the evolution of homo sapiens, though no one knows quite when or how, that human reproduction shifted from being only an animal instinct, to being somethingwe had some control over. There began to be choice over who to partner with and when to have children. Perhaps women refused sex until they knew their man was ready to be faithful, provide food for them when they were pregnant and nursing, and help with the childrearing. Marriage was developed, as well as norms around expected sizes of families, and roles of men and women.

However it happened, whether or not to have a child became a choice2.

Carrying on and Handing Down

Throughout the bronze and iron ages and up to the industrial age, this decision would have been based on a desire to carry on and hand down:

My child 
       will inherit my hunting ground, 
                  carry on my farm, 
                                        my estate, 
                                               my kingdom, 
                                                      my business. 

My daughter or son will marry into another family and keep our community going. 
They will profit from the fruits of my labour. 
                   They might even do better than me. 

The family name will carry on.
                  I will hand down the faith. 

These were the thoughts of young people as they got married. And the childless, without heirs, were pitied.

As a teenager studying poetry for English A Level, I thought that Michael by William Wordsworth was the saddest poem in the world. It tells of a shepherd and his only child, Luke, who is sent to work in the city when they fall upon hard times. All the while the old shepherd is building a sheepfold – his life’s work and Luke’s inheritance. The boy never returns home, having disgraced himself in some unnamed way. Michael and his wife die and there is no sign now of their old cottage. Only a few stones mark the place in the valley, where the unfinished sheepfold stood.

This poem exemplifies a time and a way of life, when a person felt their life’s purpose was to provide an inheritance for their children. It seems narrow to us now. It was certainly simpler.

But now, in the tech age3, things are much more complicated.

Our obsession with naming the generations (Gen Z, Millennials, etc) reflects that there are very real differences between the experiences of each cohort. We have had a century or more of rapid and accelerating change.

Not only do we not expect our children to follow us in our livelihoods, we can’t expect them to experience the same lifestyles that we had. My children’s childhood is very different from my own in the 80s; in basic ways with online shopping, socialising, communication; and in political ways with culture wars on issues we thought we’d solved, and the fog of the post-truth world.

For centuries since the enlightenment there was a sense of progress in Western society and many people don’t feel this anymore.

A crisis of imagination

It isn’t so much that the future seems a frightening place – we’ve faced wars, famines and plagues before – it is that we can’t actually imagine what life might be like, in a climate changed, AI-ridden world. I have no idea whether my children are gaining, from me, or from their education, the tools that they will need in this new world.

I would have even less idea how I could help my own children if they become parents – their babies might almost be living on a different planet. Especially considering that it could then be 60 or more years since I was a child.

And yet the extended dependency of human children only works because of the support of the wider family and community. A community that is uncertain of itself and its direction, can’t provide much support.

To be a young adult now, and to consider having a baby, with all this uncertainty – and your life might not get better as you get older, so grasp that life now! – to make that decision, is incredibly hard. If your own childhood was not too happy, and you struggled with poor mental health, you may not perceive any joy in become a parent yourself.

It requires a belief in something that is beyond our imagination – that this rapidly changing world will settle down and be a predictable place once again. Or that there is, above everything, a benevolent master planner, who understands our needs better than we do.

The economic and social factors behind the declining birth rate are real, but could be overcome. Being poor never stopped anyone having a baby, as long as they believed that life would be better for that child, and they felt that imperative to carry on and hand down.

I hope that we will all remember that we are happier and more fulfilled when we recognise our interdependence and that our young people will grow up knowing the value of giving oneself to others – friends and family, a spouse and children.

As a mother I find that part of this sense of fulfilment comes from knowing that you are passing on to your children the skills, values and wisdom that will set them up for their future. But I sometimes doubt I can do anything that will really help them.

Finding hope and a new vision of the future

We have had crises before during which the birth rate has dropped, but the population has always bounced back. And I have hope that it will bounce back again once the future seems a bit clearer.

It might take some time and the subsection of the human species which now has these low fertility rates, might be rather diminished in size. Life will carry on in these countries thanks to migrants who will be needed to care for, and pay the taxes to support, the ageing population. If it so happens that the newcomers, perhaps coming from less individualistic cultures, remain immune to the social trends that have caused the low birth rates, then we will see populations stabilise.

Meanwhile some of the areas the migrants are coming from are becoming uninhabitable due to climate breakdown.

The world will look very different in 100 years.

We need to accept this fact. And ultimately, the populations and cultures which are more ready and able to have more babies, will be the ones who survive and grow.

These will be the people who are able to look to the future and trust in something.

For me, hope comes from thinking about the human race’s incredible adaptability, and the fact that crises kick start newly evolved features (in genes or memes), so that a sense of progress will return.

I also cling to the belief that God has a plan for his creation and we are still, somehow, part of it.

Here might I stay and sing–
no story so divine!
Never was love, dear King,
never was grief like Thine.

Sometime around the turn of the century, a group of students gathered at the chaplaincy of the University of Warwick, ready to witness a debate between representatives of three or four world religions. These members of the Student Christian movement were proud of their open mindedness, progressiveness, and tolerance. Their main motivation for choosing topics for their meetings was that the Christian Union won’t like it.

The university’s Anglican chaplain, a man I respected highly in spite of, or probably because of the fact that I am a Catholic, took to the floor.

“Why” he was asked “are you a Christian?”

“Because Christianity tells the best story.”

At first I thought this isn’t going to stand up to scrutiny from his Muslim and Hindu counterparts. But then it sank in. And it sank in deep. These five words “Christianity tells the best story” have nourished me for a quarter of a century.

Up until that point (and very often afterwards) I had been searching for The Truth, trying to find ways of marrying up scientific ideas with theological ones. This Anglican priest gave me permission to see Christianity as the best explanation – or the explanation that makes most sense to me – of a whole range of mysteries.

Last year I finally began gathering together my ideas on the importance of storytelling, ready for series of presentations and activities over three days as the chair of a Catholic People’s Weeks event.

Some of the ideas I worked on including a short story – will appear in this Substack.

Here is an adapted version of one of the presentations I gave during that gathering.

Christ the storyteller and the story

As we know, the gospels are full of parables. There are probably many reasons why Jesus spoke in parables. For one thing, storytelling has always been part of the Jewish tradition. For another, very practically, people are more likely to sit and listen to a story than a theological lecture or a list of rules.

Many parables resulted from people, pharisees and others, asking legalistic questions. The Good Samaritan is a prime example – Jesus was asked “who is my neighbour?” The familiar story follows, but Jesus ends by turning the question on its head: “which of these behaved like a good neighbour?”

Because the point is not to define who your neighbour is, but how to behave in a neighbourly way.

Jesus’s stories give us examples of the types of people we should be, in ways that can’t be defined by laws.

Only through stories can we get to the heart of the matter, the spirit not the letter of the law. Jesus knew then what behavioural psychologists tell us now: we are persuaded by stories, not facts. Only stories can actually inspire action and conversion.

Humans are built this way. It is shown time and time again that we build our beliefs on stories, not facts, that we define ourselves and our communities through the stories we tell, and that we need stories to understand the world around us. The laws of the universe might be written in mathematics, but as humans we only know the world through stories.

Any explanation of the big bang or of the inside of an atom that doesn’t slip outside of the mathematics into some kind of story or image, is no explanation. It might lose some element of rigour of the mathematical equations in the explaining, but without a sense of story, the human mind can’t really grasp the scientific facts.

A story can hold a mystery that cannot be expressed in any other way.

The story of the life of Jesus – the only story I know of that has been given the title “The Greatest Story Ever Told” – inspires billions of people around the world. People follow Jesus’s example, his preaching, stories and actions as they try to live good lives.

For Christians, the story of Jesus Christ is also the climax of the story of our salvation. Being separated from God through sin, it is only Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection that has won back for us our position as children of God and opened the door to eternal life.

There are some days when I think of that story of salvation, which doesn’t really take into account the scientific discoveries about human evolution, as beautiful but out of date nonsense. It contradicts science in so many places, it can’t surely be true?

But perhaps, as a story, it is still the best explanation?

Or perhaps there’s another way of seeing it – not thinking of the stories of Jesus, or the story about Jesus, but Jesus Christ as the story.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”

Gospel of John, Chapter 1. New International Version translated from 1^st century Greek.

I have been told that the Greek word Logos here translated as “word” can also have the sense of “narrative”

So try this: “In the beginning was the story…”

In January 2020, for World Communications Day, Pope Francis wrote:

“Sacred Scripture is a Story of stories. How many events, peoples and individuals it sets before us! It shows us from the very beginning a God who is both creator and narrator. Indeed, God speaks his word and things come into existence (cf. Gen 1). As narrator, God calls things into life, culminating in the creation of man and woman as his free dialogue partners, who make history alongside him.”

And later in the same document:

“The Gospel of John tells us that the quintessential storyteller – the Word – himself becomes the story: “God’s only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (Jn 1: 18). The original verb, exegésato, can be translated both as “revealed” and “recounted”. God has become personally woven into our humanity, and so has given us a new way of weaving our stories.”

We can’t know God.

Anything we try to say about God will always be way off the mark.

Stories are the way that we understand the world and are the only way into understanding mysteries.

So: God tells a story
                               and that story
                                                    is Christ.

And

Through Christ-the-story, all of creation is narrated into existence.

Like all stories, we don’t get pure factual accuracy here. Our minds are not capable of knowing the pure truth about God. Our minds evolved to understand through stories and relationships, and this is God’s great gift to us – Himself as Story.

This is why we can say that Christianity is the greatest story, and maybe that’s all we can say.

I dare to even say the Christian story is True, fully aware that I might only be saying it because it is the story I am most familiar with. I believe the Truth of Christianity and acknowledge that every faith and world view is trying to encapsulate a Mystery in the only way we can, through telling stories.

I can’t escape the fact that the Christian story is also part of my identity, and links me with my own particular community, and that to leave it behind would be to cut myself off from myself. But here I am going to say it:

The Christian Story is of a triune God, creating out of nothing but Narrative and then entering as a cameo act into this Story, in order to make us all key players in the eternal Story.

For me, there’s no story so divine.

Welcome to my Substack, and thanks for joining me here.

You will find a whole mixture of styles – poems, stories, blogs and essays. These are my efforts at pinning down my fleeting mind.

The title comes from a song from Ocean Colour Scene’s 1996 album Moseley Shoals.

There are times in my life when I see so many connections between thoughts and ideas, fleeting glimpses of insights and truths that just cannot quite be grasped. In the odd moments that I manage to make sense of these, I have decided to write them down.

The lenses through which I see life are deep history, (I read a lot of books on paleoanthropology), progressive Christianity, and the early logical training of my brain through my maths degree. Sometimes, this helps me stay sane in the changing world. In particular, I believe that God – the great connecting love that fills the universe – has plans that are outside and above anything we can even dream of.

If you also like exploring connections, filling gaps, and putting pieces of the puzzle together, please subscribe. And don’t only subscribe, subscribble. Comment below my posts and let’s have a conversation.

There was a time, spanning thousands of years, when human intelligence moved from separate, specific intelligences about tool making, hunting and social connections, to an interlinked, general intelligence, and imagination was born. Our brains are incredibly flexible, and women’s brains in particular change through different stages of our lives.

Sometimes I worry that I should be able to focus better on the task at hand. But if my thoughts fly off in different directions, while beautiful and interesting things distract me, I thank God for my amazing brain – my fleeting mind. Although it seems cruel to pin it down, perhaps some of these ideas of mine might be of interest if not of use, to you my dear reader.

If you can spare a few pounds each month please become a paid subscriber, to motivate me to learn more and write more.

Let me know what you like, and what you think.

God bless,

Louise

Last summer I took my family to Ireland for the first time. We took the slow route, through Wales, on the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin and across to county Mayo via Ballaghaderreen where my father was born.

We couldn’t find my dad’s precise birthplace, but we were able to see where my grandmother was born in the early 1900s. They had a farm on the banks of the river Moy near Swinford. She lived through interesting times, with at least one brother in the IRA, fighting for independence from British rule. In the late 20s she married a Scotsman who was travelling through, they had 3 children in two years before moving to Romford, Essex, in 1931, where the fourth child was born.

The old house is just a tumbling down shack now, but thanks to the excellent Museum of Rural Life near Castlebar, I got a sense of what life was like a century ago in rural Ireland.

Two things really struck me. Firstly, how they had to make everything they needed out of the resources to hand. Ireland having been deforested centuries earlier, this meant a lot of plaiting and wickerwork using reeds and straw. Fuel came from the peat bogs (We saw turf still being cut. Interesting to see this traditional way of life continuing, but also, of course sad, knowing the ecological destruction this does)

The other thing I realised was how in tune with the circle of the year people had to be. Each month had a religious feast which also marked a stage in the agricultural cycle, from St Bridget’s marking the start of spring, through to Halloween, when the old rituals to ward off evil segued into the Christian feast of All Saints. It made me vow to mark the seasons better myself, but find my life is ruled more by school terms than seasonal feast days. And its not always clear when the seasons start these days, when February can be milder than April, or wetter than Noah’s flood.

I’ve been pondering the turning of the generations recently, since my eldest son is now 18 and one of my nieces is expecting a baby – making me a great aunt! Each generation, surely, has a duty to hand on wisdom from those that came before, to those that come after. Each family passes on its traditions, the significance of which we might not understand until we realise we’re in danger of losing them.

I never knew my Irish grandmother or my Scottish grandfather and my dad didn’t speak of them much. My parents both died in the last 8 years. I often wonder whether I’m managing to pass on anything to my sons. It is hard. They don’t seem very interested, and the way we lived even one generation back is so different to the experience of today’s young people.

Last Autumn I watched the BBC documentary “Human”. It’s about the expansion of our species out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago. In one episode the presenter, Ella Al-Shamahi, describes how the first homo sapiens living in Europe couldn’t cope with rapid climate change as temperatures plummeted in just a few dozen years.

“Imagine what it would have been like for our ancestors to live in this world where the land of their grandparents was not the land of their grandchildren” Al-Shamahi says “And when that happens, inter-generational knowledge … that’s so important for survival in these environments, suddenly isn’t very useful because the plants, the animals, the landscape is all different. To survive, each generation had to discover the world anew.”

We are also living in a time when the landscape is all different. The climate is literally changing – but metaphorically too, everything feels like its shifting. Socialising is done differently, many practical skills are no longer seen as essential and our understanding of people’s roles in family life has changed.

Given this, what can my children learn from rural Ireland 100 years ago? Or from the life in the London suburbs where my parents grew up in the 30s and 40s? Or even my own childhood in the chalk hills of Bedfordshire?

It does feel like the younger generation are discovering the world anew.

All I can hand on, perhaps, are the values that I think I learned from my parents. Things like courage to work for justice and freedom; a sense of duty to family and friends; the joy of connecting with nature and the seasons; and above all, my faith in God.

Here’s Psalm 78:

My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
² I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
³ things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
⁴ We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
⁵ He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children,
⁶ so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
⁷ Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.

Easier than the end of history was declaring triumph over nature.
In sixty-nine, we saw the whole and thought  “now this is mine.”
Remembering, we won’t forget, and this shall be the sign.
Peace, democracy and freedom and the rule of law 
to men and women of goodwill and more.
We live to die of illnesses we never knew to cure.


Twenty proved us wrong about the bugs we need to fight,
And only the privileged can say that white’s not might,
That people always will believe a liar when he lies,
The truth of science cannot beat a promised light.

But soon we’ll start to miss the sunshine and the rain,
The snow in the midwinter and the warmth to swell the grain.
Searching for the perfect bed where Goldilocks still lies
The conquering heroes will be on the move again.


Toolmakers invent new tools, so it will go.
And some will help and some are just for show.
And some will tear apart and some will bind
As humankind continues humankind
Still and always talk and talk and talk
Our greatest invention, greatest tool. 
Listen speak remember hope and walk,
Declaring life for one is life for all.

January 2026

A Christmas poem, in the style of Ogden Nash

Here’s another thing the understanding of which I find hard,

And that is the issue of the Christmas Card.

To explain myself with more clarity:

It’s the not sending of Christmas cards and instead giving the money saved to charity.

Now I think charitable giving is Good, after all, one pays my wages,

But would you continue this logic across all life’s pages?

If I invite you to my house to stay

Would you tell me ‘thank you’ but you think it is better to spend your time helping the homeless that day?

Which is different from saying no because you had a commitment to volunteer;

That’s like saying you can’t buy cards because you gave all your money away already this year.

And if you don’t have time or energy to send a card,

No need to apologise because I’m your friend and life is hard.

But you are probably saying “what about the environment?”

Which is important but there are other things you can do like don’t use glitter or drive so much, or write to your member of parliament.

You see, I can’t hang an email on my wall,

And if I don’t have enough cards with which to deck my hall

I might go out and buy some plastic tinsel,

Which after Christmas I might accidentally drop into the ocean where it will drift around for years and then strangle a turtle.

Louise Cook

circa 2011