Bøger af Robin Morrison

This meditation is based on an imagined dialogue where listening, thoughts and speaking merge. The theme is the difference and relationship between "being" and "doing". In an ideal world, what we do, comes harmoniously and directly out of who we are. But as we develop and change, our 'being' is part of a becoming that is influenced by what we do, or don't do, and other peoples' reactions to it. So, the tension and search for harmony continue. Will we ever understand, and will we ever achieve the perfect balancing connection between them? The author is Rev Canon Robin Morrison who retired as the Bishops's Adviser for Church and Society in the Church in Wales. He now writes novels and poetry as well as playing competitive table tennis, archery and croquet. He is married to the lovely Linda and has a wonderful daughter Jane, a son in law Christian, and two adorable grandchildren. So the wrestling with being and doing continues and finds ever new challenges!

In a risk management, over regulated world, it becomes clear that the crisis is unexpected, and unveils itself in different ways, to different people. This story is set in the not too distant future, with technology we can already imagine. Adam works with some scientists connected to the Pentagon. He is away when it happens, and tells Terri, his partner - who works in an international company in New York - they must get out of the city. They flee to her parents, who live on a farm in the country. Things they say and do inspire Adam to look at 'time' and 'place' in a new, almost spiritual way. When he shares this new, instinctive approach with the academic teams working on the problem, they begin to rethink what might have gone wrong and why.

A story of 3 friends navigating their personal and professional lives, at a time of geopolitical crisis. How can the creative imagination, in the arts and culture, renew our perception of difficult and divisive political situations? In the mirrored room of international relations, how can fresh ideas connect people locked, by their attitudes and perceptions, into different and seperate corners? Samuel Taylor Coleridge found a way of steering through competing ideologies, events and ideas in his times. His 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' poem haunts the hero of this story, as he develop an Arts Publishing Company committed to a wider and deeper exploration of creative and imaginative processes. He remembers three nights of intense and formative discussion about Coleridge's philosophy, during a walking holiday in Wales, when the three friends remembered Coleridge's own time in Wales. Those ideas stay with him as the years pass and his two friends go there different ways. It is one thing to find connections between contrasting ideas. It is quite another to make or find connections between three people whose lives have changed. The action moves from Cambridge to Wales, to London, to New York and the Middle East.

There are times when just a short line or verse helps people meditate, using their own creativity, opening themselves to that magic meeting place between what lies within, and everything around them. It is hoped these short meditations are pivot points for the spiritual imagination in this way. Perhaps, they will inspire readers to listen to their own, inner voice, and produce their own meditations. This is the first in the series. It asks us to listen to something deeper in the silence behind, and between thoughts, before they become words, or if that is not possible, then to something deeper behind thought that can be found in the shape and mystery of silence.

Now retired and confused, Harry struggles to remember his friend's name. He does remember other things - his life as a spy in Vienna and Prague, working with his friend and a Czech girl, Jana from the Russian Embassy. He and his friend make a crucial mistake. Later, at a conference in Prague, dealing with North Korean and Chinese relations, he meets her again, but she is a different person. Then he is invited to a private dinner, by the chairman of the conference, in honour of the Russian Ambassador. The conversation moves through various philosophical and scientific subjects. He meets Dianna. The experience changes him forever. He is no longer the man who worked in the shadows. Will he let her change his life even more? Now, looking back, he stands at his front door, wondering if he will be able to open it and talk to the woman next door.

This is part of a series of meditations, each with their own theme. This meditation explores the tension between our experience and understanding of the ordinary and the extraordinary in daily living. Can the tension ever be creative? Do we have to view ourselves as either one or the other? It is often said that ordinary people do extraordinary things. How then shall we value the ordinary as the vehicle for the extraordinary, if that is what it is. Or is it a reduction, some kind of dumbing down? The author, Rev Canon Robin Morrison has been a hospital, university and industrial chaplain, as well as working in parishes from Hackney to Southampton. He is now retired from his last job as the Bishops' Adviser for Church and Society in the Church in Wales. He is a University and school governor and on the board of Artes Mundi. Meanwhile, he writes novels and poetry.

Creationism is no longer tenable, scientifically, although many still cling to it. This kind of religious 'literalism' can be found in geo-political examples of fundamentalism and particularly in violent, Islamic extremism. If creationism is dead, what do religious people think they mean when they say 'we believe in God, as Creator or Source' in a universe that 'makes itself?' What caused the Big Bang and the Big Birth? How could God be involved, let alone embedded, in natural processes of cosmological and evolutionary change, if any notion of divine 'intervention' undermines the vital autonomy of these processes? This trilogy offers a new way of understanding 'Creator' and 'Creation' alongside the science of cosmology, physics, quantum and evolution. This book (LE2) uses the surprising insights of some early, mystical theologians about Love, and Energy, to unveil how such a belief is possible in the worldviews of the New Testament, Origen, Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, the Cappadocians, more recent process theologians and others who have so radically changed our spiritual understanding of energy as the 'living force, ' kenotically present in the processes of creation. It also asks - if the world 'makes itself' what are the physical, political and personal dilemmas of autonomy and freedom? Love's Energy explores particular 'pattern paradoxes' of certainty and uncertainty, ontology and epistemology, order and chance in the 'indeterminacy' present in the fascinating story of science and theology. It provides the general and more specialist reader with an opportunity to make new connections between these formative parts of our intellectual map making and assumptions about the world. In an age when religious dogmatism is intolerant and dangerous, it offers an exciting new alternative for people of all faiths - the belief that Love's Energy is the source of cosmological and evolutionary creativity and embedded in natural processes and relationships.

Poems collected over the past 45 years under the themes of War and Remembrance, Autumn, Music, Painting, Places, People, Pain, Occasional, Seasons, Things, Good Friday and Easter, Christmas, Spiritual Gaze poems. They explore fragements of perception in the understanding of ordinary things as part of a spiritual gaze, or way of looking. Sometimes they interpret ordinary things as metaphors in the possibility of a greater narrative. They use words to find, indentify and shape meaning in the connections between words and their potrayal of things, events and experiences. They are written in the belief that connections can be made between what is on the outside and the inside of human experience. This connection will be personal in its interpretation but hopefully offers something that glimpses an inclusive experience of the human condition.

The novel is set in the Lebanon and uses archaeology and cultural references as the context for the story of a relationship between Harry - an agent working for a specialist intelligence unit in Washington and Julie - a Dutch woman who used to live in Israel. She is trained in archaeology and is working as a journalist. He fails to tell her the whole truth as their relationship develops, particularly his secret meeting with a Sheikh from Hezbollah on the border with Israel. Then she takes him to meet a friend in Byblos. With ancient stories as a backcloth to current political events and attitudes, something happens to change them both. The metaphor of a cobweb winds itself through the story, as a reminder of the complexities involved, some of which can never be unravelled or fully explained.

Two brothers, Adam and Zac experience their first relationships, but then have to learn to manage without them. Their first love leaves its imprint on what follows, as they grow up, facing new kinds of reality. Adam goes to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he meets Charlie, but then she is taken. Zac goes to work in Ghana, but then meets Adele Oya. Can they trust themselves to what a new relationship might mean, when the shadows cast by the horrors of real life reach so far into their lives? Adam tries to write a 'history of conflict' but then has to live with it. Zac tries to do good in Africa, but then has to question motives and outcomes. So, are the dark questions and realities the real framework for living, or just unfortunate exceptions along the way? What is waiting down there, at the bottom of the garden?

Is the truth the best place to cover up a lie, or a lie the truth? We all have our flaws, failings and foibles, as we seek to understand the world and easily jump to the wrong conclusions, searching for an answer, or a way to cover it up. The truth is masked in the presentation of what people think, depending on their point of view and self-interest. Robert, a Magician, and his Assistant, Annabel, are used to creating distractions in their act. Now they want to find the truth, when John, the caretaker at the 'theatre' where they work, is found murdered. There is much to learn, not least at the local circus in East London. Much has been covered up, a few years earlier, at the Russian circus in East Germany. So, they go on their quest, knowing the police will never follow this trail, and the local press distort it for their own purpose. Everyone involved seems to be distorting some part of the story, right up to its end. The truth is so easily twisted in the midst of misunderstandings and misapprehensions. Who then is Yana, and why did John hide himself away from everyone else? Who was he really, and how would anyone know? What will happen to Robert and Annabel on their journey of discovery? The story is set in the decade after WW2 in London, East Berlin and East Germany.

Creationism is no longer tenable, scientifically, although many still cling to it. This kind of religious 'literalism' can be found in geo-political examples of fundamentalism and particularly in violent, Islamic extremism. If creationism is dead, what do religious people think they mean when they say 'we believe in God, as Creator or Source' in a universe that 'makes itself?' What caused the Big Bang and the Big Birth? How could God be involved, let alone embedded, in natural processes of cosmological and evolutionary change, if divine 'intervention' undermines the vital autonomy of these processes? This trilogy offers a new way of understanding these questions alongside the science of cosmology, physics, quantum and evolution. This book, LE3, focuses on some key moments in the story of our understanding of natural philosophy - and how Darwin's courage challenged so many assumptions about evolutionary teleology. It also touches on the work of Ray, Buffon, Cuvier, Lamarck, Lavoisier, Paley, Malthus, Spencer, Chambers, Wallace, Hooker, Huxley, Sedgwick, Owen, Galton, Gray, Wilkins, Crick, Watson, Franklin, Gurdon, Oparin, Haldane, Dawkins and many others who have so radically changed our understanding of how life evolved and 'makes itself.' Love's Energy explores particular 'pattern paradoxes' of certainty and uncertainty, ontology and epistemology, order and chance in the 'indeterminacy' present in the fascinating story of science and theology. It provides the general and more specialist reader with an opportunity to make new connections between these formative parts of our intellectual map making, and assumptions about the world. In an age when religious dogmatism is intolerant and dangerous, it offers an exciting alternative for people of all faiths - the belief that Love's Energy is the source of cosmological and evolutionary creativity, and embedded in natural processes and relationships.

In 1979 the photographer Robin Morrison and his family spent seven months on the road in the South Island, where Morrison photographed people and places. The resulting book was published in 1981 by Alister Taylor and became an overnight success -- and the first photographic book to win a New Zealand Book Award (now the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards) for non-fiction, in 1982. Alas, conflict between Taylor and the printer, and the later loss of some images, meant it was never reprinted once it had sold out. It now has near legendary status and sells for hundreds of dollars in the used-book market. Now this groundbreaking book is back in a new edition. Morrison's original Kodachrome slides have been digitised using the latest technology, and his friend and fellow journalist Louise Callan has written a major essay on the book and its legacy, including assessments and recollections by Robin White, Laurence Aberhart, Grahame Sydney, Owen Marshall, Ron Brownson, Dick Frizzell, Alistair Guthrie and Sara McIntyre. Forty years on, Morrison's astounding images can now be appreciated afresh.