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A love letter to the fearful
Posted by Simon Parke, 16 Sep 2019
There was a monk who pestered Buddha about the finer points of life, philosophy and the universe.
He felt that Buddha had the answers, and with a little more knowledge, all would be sorted.
Clearly he couldn’t make any commitments yet…
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Emptying the illusion cart
Posted by Simon Parke, 16 Sep 2019
When wealthy English families in India were escaping at the end of British rule, their essential possessions were piled high in hurriedly-arranged carts.
Though the journeys were often long and fraught; and by the end, very few of their essential possessions remained on board…
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Proroguing parliament and other stories
Posted by Simon Parke, 12 Sep 2019
Who would have imagined the king of England in prison? No one! It was impossible! God’s anointed one in gaol?
Yet this is where Charles 1st finds himself in 1647, incarcerated variously in Hampton Court, then Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight and finally, a brief stay in Hurst Castle.
And he was imprisoned mainly for his lies, which we’ll get to…
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After the fire
Posted by Simon Parke, 11 Sep 2019
After the fire, when the flames have died, stand still with what was
If the ash still smokes in the morning dew, rake it gently over
As the robin watches on and a leaf scuttles by
The embers still flicker, a defiant echo of yesterday’s blaze…
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Prism life
Posted by Simon Parke, 10 Sep 2019
It’s no fun going to prism.
It means the loss of freedom, the loss of honesty, and with those gone, there’s not much left.
We’re in prism when we see everything through one set of lenses and must therefore contort truth to make it fit; or avoid the truth completely.
If you’ve listened to the Labour MP’s Barry Gardiner or Rebecca Long-Bailey - or any member of the present Tory cabinet, you may know what I mean…
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Julian of Norwich, contemporary of both Chaucer and Langland, was the first woman to write a book in English. Yet remarkably, she disappeared from view for 600 years, before her rediscovery in the 20th century. My new novel is Julian’s own telling of her life.
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In the first of my Abbot Peter mysteries, in a prequel to the Abbot’s Stormhaven adventures, Peter takes us back to the monastery of St James-the-Less. There in the shadows of Mt Sinai, Abbot Peter faces a discomforting cocktail of deception, delusion and death.
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