In memoriam – Mary Oliver – 1935-2019 You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. I can still remember the wave of joy and…
Nick
Is relaxation over-rated?
HAS anyone ever told you to “chill out”? If you’re anything like me, this injunction creates the opposite effect – intense irritation, followed perhaps by shame that I haven’t yet mastered the art of inner peace. But recently I’ve noticed I’m getting more relaxed about tension. While low-level stress rightly gets a bad rap, I’d…
Drawn to Dance
NICK THORPE tries a novel way to let go of perfection and embrace the messy moshing of collaborative art. Recently I learned to sketch with my feet. It was one of several unusual skills I acquired at Drawn to Dance – a bizarre and exhilarating two-day experiment in which twenty of us gathered in a…
The leather cathedral
I once met a man who had built a cathedral out of leather. He showed it to me reverently in his back room – a two-foot-tall, perfectly-stitched gothic replica, enshrined on a carpet of rabbit-fur, complete with spires and buttresses and delicate snakeskin windows lit from within by coloured lights. “I started it eight years ago…
A life-changing friendship
First published in The Porch Magazine In memory of my dear friend and colleague, DAVID DRYSDALE, who inspires me daily to embrace who I am and live life as a gift. I FIRST met David Drysdale in the year of my 40th birthday, at a time when being a man still felt to me like a…
Michel Faber interview
A STORY OF FAITH AND SEPARATION
The novelist Michel Faber talks about his new book, his Evangelical background, atheism, and the loss of his wife.
ARRIVING to interview Michel Faber, I feel awestruck and slightly puzzled.
My Adoption Journey
In National Adoption Week, NICK THORPE reflects on the most challenging and fulfilling experience of his life… MONTHS before we met our son for the first time, I knew in my gut that I wanted to be his dad. The description from the social worker chimed for both of us: “A lively, sociable three-year-old with…
The Love of Stuff
The problem with our society is not that it values material things too much but that it doesn’t value them enough FROM AEON MAGAZINE On my desk stands a miniature of an Easter Island moai, carved for me by a Rapa Nui craftsman. It’s precious to me, hewn from the same stone his ancestors used for…
Sorcerers’ Tales
RENATO Cardenas lives alone in a bleached wooden house, shielded by pine trees and the kind of mysterious smile you might expect from a wizard. Not that he will admit to being a wizard. “I’ve heard that people call me El Brujo Cardenas,” is all he will concede, tantalisingly, as he ushers us inside, amusement twitching…
Exploring Dangerous Truths
Great to see John Rae finally getting the recognition he deserves on his 200th birthday. Never heard of him? Me neither, until I came across the story of Britain’s most undervalued Arctic explorer a few years ago in Orkney. Born in Stromness, Dr Rae’s accomplishments tower above those of many of his more famous Victorian…