Slowly but surely I’m finding my feet in the office. This week I brought two plants and today installed them in their pots, with our new peat free compost. Today I saw that my new nameplate adorns the door of our office. I also saw a jar with bright pink powder on the desk of …
Interfaith dialogue
For me, the power of faith has never been described more eloquently than in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. The book is about Piscine, a 16 year old boy from Puducherry, India. After he is shipwrecked, he goes through a terrible ordeal. His love of God pulls him through: The blackness would stir and eventually …
Retribution or restoration?
After the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, the groups that were previously opposed to each other had to find a way to deal with the past. For this, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established, led by Desmond Tutu. There had been so many human rights violations that it was impossible to build criminal …
Fasting for peace
The British people never cease to amaze us with their crazy habits. For example, we recently discovered that the day before Ash Wednesday is called ‘Pancake Day’ here. They organize actual pancake races, whereby participants toss a pancake up and down in a frying pan while running. We are always in for pancakes, so tomorrow …
Darwin at Tahiti
Because today is the birthday of Charles Darwin, I have browsed the essays of Stephen J. Gould to find something to write about. Gould was an evolutionary biologist, with a great interest in the history of science. He is one of my favorite authors. We have one book of him, a yellowed Penguin edition of …
Thinking about eating
At high school we had a course called ‘Caring’ (Verzorging). One of the few things that I still remember from that, is a movie with a woman who was jumping rope and singing: “Know what you eat, kno-o-ow what you ea-eat!” (This was in Dutch, where the words ‘know’ and ‘eat’ actually rhyme) After this …