Out now
Mid-faith Crisis 389: Ten Years!
It’s our tenth anniversary! Who’d have thought it? We’re so grateful for the support of this great community. Anyway, in what can only be described as ‘more of the same’, we reflect on the origins of the podcast and what, if anything, we have learnt along the way.
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Mid-faith Crisis 388: Embodied Spirituality - an interview with Lacey Finn Borgo
Joe talks with our friend Lacey Finn Borgo about the importance of acknowledging our bodies, of listening to them, and of recognising their fundamental importance to spirituality and how we encounter the Divine. As the blessing at the end says, we have holy hands, holy face, holy feet, and holy everything in between.
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Mid-faith Crisis 387: Not a Bible study
The big announcement this week is the Mid-faith Crisis Church Weekend 2027. All the details in the link below. Meanwhile, in a possibly ill-advised move, we explore a Psalm together. We talk about sacramental moments, what fulness of life really means, find out the names of Joe’s enemies, and discover why Nick hates Bible study. So dig out your spiritual ears and have a listen.
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Mid-faith Crisis 386: Make faith great again
We’re back! Nick is back from Canada and Joe has forgotten to read the Bible. In our continuing tour of the house of faith, we revisit the attic but also consider the bar and even the playroom. Also, there are some very important announcements and an update from Denmark.
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Joe talks to Mary and Charles Hippsley about their excellent book, Reimagining the Landscape of Faith. What is our map of faith - and what do we do when the map is no longer helpful? How can we find new pathways? Who will help us on our travels? Mary and Charles share their own experience of spiritual change and offer wise, encouraging and helpful insights into the crucial journey of spiritual transformation.
Currently reading Banbury Bog by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, a mystery author I’d never heard of. The book is entertaining enough, but I bought it for the design: I really like these old Dell mapbacks. As the name implies, each has a map on the back of the cover illustrating where the action takes place.
And there’s a website devoted to them and scans of the covers can be found on the awesome BookScans website.
I have a new book coming out next year, with an accompanying website. So I may be more active on social media than I have been for some time. No idea who will read this stuff, but that doesn’t matter… What I haven’t cracked to do is work out a workflow for posting on the blog and cross-posting to Mastodon and Bluesky. So let’s see what happens here.
An intelligent, humane critique from some mathematicians.
The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas, and these we nurture with great care. We feel responsible to let them grow to their full potential, until they can live a life of their own in the mathematical world. For students we often suggest problems with the core intention of developing skills making them well-positioned for advances in research and elsewhere… These processes invariably take time and are based on human interaction.
As a Japanese proverb says, ‘the journey is the destination’.
The task of a scientist or a writer or any kind of maker, really, is to think. And it is in the thinking that the real work takes place. The importance of the work lies precisely in the fact that the creators do not take shortcuts.
But the issue with AI is that it is all shortcut.
We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.
Out now
Mid-faith Crisis 384: The stuff in our spiritual attic
We’re coming to the end of our season of spiritual decluttering, and taking a look at some of the things that we have hidden away in the attic. What practices have we stored away up there, hoping they might come in useful again some day? Also, we check in on our themes and Nick has been thinking about the topic of maintenance. Thrilling stuff, I’m sure you agree.
Out now
Mid-faith Crisis 383: Communion - ritual and grace
In a slightly unexpected moment, we delve into the ritual of communion. Last week we talked about it as a key Christian activity, but what is our understanding of it? We discuss the importance of ritualism, but also the dangers of exclusion. Also, we announce new ways of supporting the podcast, and Nick may or may not be able to balance on one leg and be a tree.