Thought for the Day

In an interview on this programme yesterday, the former national security adviser Peter Ricketts; was asked ‘what about that old thing…. Wisdom’? it was in the contemporary context of the war between the US, Israel and Iran. It’s a modern question that echoes the question in the Book of Proverbs: Where can wisdom be found?
Good question. Difficult question. The search for wisdom today is in the context of the escalation of violence in the Middle East, and in the counting of over 60 active state-based conflicts and wars worldwide, the highest number since (records began in) 1946. And in the context of another escalation; the exponential growth in the capability and reach of artificial intelligence, which scientists are now calling the ‘Intelligence Explosion’ predicted back in the 1960s, when human beings cede control of the growth and development of AI.
In both of these enormous endeavours, the speed and scale of revolutionary action is disorientating for many populations around the world. And in both the prosecution of global war, and the ceding of the growth of AI to AI itself, the illusion of human control over events is both inaccurate and has the potential to be ultimately destructive for, well, everyone.
In short: it’s easier to light the spark of AI than to control the spread of its flames. And it’s easier to start a war than to end it.
It is a question for our time – what is it in human beings that is served by our need for speed and escalation? As a species, we seem to give free reign to these instincts, sometimes useful of course, but also with the capacity to brutalise and crush us. These instincts leave little room for creativity, kindness and selflessness that take more time than we seem to think we have. But the search for wisdom in Scripture is characterised by the taking of time, by a commitment to restraint, self-discipline, and closely linked not so much to the acquisition of more knowledge but a desire to understand.
Tomorrow, the first woman to be Archbishop of Canterbury will begin her public ministry with prayer, music, silence and the gathering of community in a house of prayer that has stood for 1400 years. In gathering to sing and pray, it might look as if the church is fiddling while Rome is burning. But the ancient liturgies and symbolic actions form a different sort of public statement: that wisdom matters. And that even in the perilous times that we are in, humility and grace point the way to another vision of what it is to be human before God.

23 MAR 26

Good morning,
The words of Jessie Buckley dedicating her Oscar win to ‘the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart’ have been echoing in my mind throughout this week. She picked up the Best Actress award for playing a grieving mother in Hamnet. The film reimagines the lives of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway as they cope with the tragic death of their 11-year-old son.
This idea of the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart moves us beyond the saccharine pinks and yellow flowers of Mother’s Day to the reality that motherhood is wild and earth-shattering and terrifying. My goodness can it be joyous, too. But for many mothers, it is all those things – sometimes all at once.
Sometimes the chaos of a mother’s heart has to deal with the worst things imaginable: the death of a child.
On Thursday night, I hosted an event in conversation with Gee Walker at Chester Cathedral, exploring black motherhood and grief. Gee’s 18-year-old son Anthony was murdered in a racially aggravated attack while walking near his home in Merseyside 20 years ago.
In the book by Maggie O’Farrell upon which the film Hamnet is based, are these words: “Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never forget that they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.”
I had planned to ask Gee Walker at the end of our event what gives her hope, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I resisted the urge to wrap her grief up in a tidy bow, to end on a glib message so we could all go away feeling better.
This Easter, Christians will celebrate Jesus’s resurrection – the great story at the heart of my faith. But perhaps what many of us also take from Holy Week is that resurrection doesn’t erase the reality of the brutality of Christ’s crucifixion. His mother watching it all at the foot of the cross.
Gee Walker told me she finds solidarity in “Mamma Mary”, as she describes Jesus’s mother”: a mother who – just like her – experienced the nightmare of watching her son die and not being able to do anything to help, not even be able to hold him. Gee described doing the little that she was able to –while Antony lay dying- holding tightly to his feet while police and paramedics intervened.
In the months following Anthony’s death, Gee’s family started the Anthony Walker Foundation, raising aspirations of schoolchildren and providing comfort to other grieving families. For her, it’s through this work that Anthony lives on. So too did Mary mother a movement that took her son’s message to the ends of the earth.
Perhaps the “beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart” is that even when it is broken, it can speak life.

20 MAR 26

19 MAR 26