Hannah Malcolm argues that homesickness in a dying world is the only response to the destruction of our home. Extracts from her award-winning piece for the Church of England’s Theology Slam 2019

It’s the new normal I think – a beloved pear tree, half-drowned loses its grip and falls over; the train line to Cornwall washes away. The new normal! We can’t even say abnormal to each other out loud – it reminds us of what came before. It’s hurting. It’s hurting in a lot of ways…It’s hurting me big time and I just keep it to myself. “The land mourns and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, even the fish in the sea will disappear.”

Extract from an interview with Rowan Williams

Joshua Malkin from Network of Wellbeing interviewed the Former Archbishop of Canterbury at the 2016 Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing London

Could you say a little more about the crisis we find ourselves in?

Rowan Williams:
“I think we are at a point of genuine cultural crisis in the West where we are in danger of being strangled and stifled by what we think is knowledge and what we think is expertise.

Dr Claudius van Wyk, founder of the Holos Project, explores some reflections upon the scientific foundations of a philosophy of kindness – from chemistry and biology to psychology and society. [i]

Recent holistic scientific perspectives show bonding and collaboration to be a driving force behind human evolution, so much so that a more accurate interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution could be seen as the survival and flourishing of ‘the fittest relationships’ !