Blog « Roger Collis

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Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Melvyn Bragg on the King James Bible

An inspiring view of the King James Bible from a BBC broadcast.

“Science is supposed to have superseded religion as a way of explaining the origins and workings of the universe so it’s surprising that the man credited with jump-starting modern observational science in this country Francis Bacon wrote in the early 17^th century that there were two ways to discover the truth of life; one was the book of nature – but the other was the scriptures; and just as the scriptures couldn’t be widely debated and tested fully until the bible was translated into English, so nature needed to be examined fully and in a similar way and for the same purpose in order to discover the mind of God. His intellectual heirs met here about 40 years after Bacon’s death in these gardens in the recently built Wadham College at Oxford in the 1650’s.

These men were all Christians, some passionately so; they’d all survived the Civil War, they’d all read their bible. They were to form the Royal Society in 1660, the most famous and effective scientific society the world’s ever known; it was devoted to the ‘glory of God the creator and the advantage of the human race.’ Click here

Posted in Blog, Roger

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Blackberry blues

‘Stuff happens,’ as that egregious man said. It certainly does, and always happens when you least expect it, and at the most inconvenient times.

My Blackberry went berserk the other day when I checked my e-mails just before going into a meeting. The familiar format had suddenly been reconfigured, from blue to a sort of magenta with a greenish background and new icons. Where were my e-mails; where was my voice mail? How was I supposed to make a call? When I opened a message the typeface was faint and too large to read. I wasted precious minutes finding the new ‘set- up wizard’ to bring the type back to normal. It was days before I figured out how to turn the damn thing off. Click here

Posted in Blog

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

Hanky panky at 40,000 feet

Nearly half (45 percent) of airline passengers admit to flirting while in the air, with 95 percent aspiring to join the Mile High Club, according to a ‘Valentine’s Day’ survey by Skyscanner a Scotland-based travel booking site.

The survey of over 1000 travelers revealed that one third of those who admitted flirting on board, ‘had a rendezvous after the flight,’ with 8 percent resulting in a relationship. Click here

Posted in Blog

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

Listening out for God

Prayer is at the heart of our faith; it is the essence of worship; it expresses a hunger for God, exercised, and we hope, fulfilled through the liturgy. But the liturgy is simply a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a framework, a fabric, on which we can hang our prayers, privately and in communion with our fellow worshipers in church.

Religion is not simply about believing, it is about belonging, worshiping together; the spiritual fellowship of communal singing, chanting of psalms and prayers – become mantras for our private communion, as we reach out to God in humility and hope. I can understand why the Koran relies on oral interpretation; like poetry, chanting of it can communicate to us, like poetry, without necessarily being understood by the conscious mind. Click here

Posted in Blog, Columns

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

The case for God?

‘The case for God?’ is the title of a recent BBC program in which Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks interviewed half a dozen skeptics and non-believers.

I transcribed parts of the broadcast and added it to notes I had made of an earlier Sacks’ talk:

‘Faith is the refusal to give up; faith is the question, not the answer. Listen to the music; faith is like marriage; we are partners with God. Jews always approve of questions; Judaism is God’s call to responsibility… the moral purpose to the universe. Jews have an advantage; they don’t go through a middle man but talk direct to God: The inner voice is also the voice from beyond… Click here

Posted in Blog

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

‘A life in food’

‘A life in food’ by Bea Tollman is a luscious coffee table book self published by Red Carnation Hotels. It is, surprise, surprise on display everywhere, and was handed to all 350 delegates at a tourism conference last week in Cape Town.

Well, yes, so much for that, you’d think. But the 29 recipes in the book describe what I call ‘real food’ as distinct from ‘mucked about food.’ They are an inspiration for anyone who needs to get everyday food on tables. In fact I’ve borrowed one very simple recipe, ‘The best Dover sole in London,’ for my own forthcoming cook book, ‘Food & the Single Man.’

Here’s the review I posted on Amazon. Click here

Posted in Blog