Girls in headscarves is not exactly what you would expect to see walking through the doors of a Catholic school in London. Yet for young people living in London today interfaith encounters are not as rare as they used to be. While opportunities to meet people from other cultures are increasingly common, meaningful learning doesn’t [...]
This last month sees the official marking of three years after the end of the 28 year old war that plagued Sri Lanka, killing thousands and setting the country back in terms of development and prosperity. Yet three years on, it seems that not much has changed. Whilst Sri Lanka has tried to portray [...]
The contemporary Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, has developed a compositional system that—reduced to its sparest minimum—consists of the dynamic interplay of two musical lines in a field of silence. The melody, which proceeds mainly in steps up and down the scale, might be compared to a child tentatively walking. The second line underpins each note of [...]
Intense theoretical debates about the virtues of democracy have been taking place over the past months as we attempt to analyse events in the Arab world. Democracy, most conclude, should be the goal: it is the best political system, one in which citizens can see that their political choices are respected, their freedoms and rights [...]
The biggest part of Thanksgiving is sharing and caring. It is a day to express friendship and kindness to those who are struggling with the difficulties of life. It ought to bring out the best in us for others. Why should we do that? The Native Americans believe that the world is one large family, [...]
Last night as a birthday treat for my wife, I took her to see the hit musicalWicked in London. Needless to say, I loved the whole story and the interconnection it has from the original story ‘Wizard of Oz’ especially as it tries to provide some insight into the origins of some of the main and [...]
As one gets older it is not surprising that one’s thoughts turns to how life was so much better in one’s youth. It just seems that the world is a much more different place today than it ever was. Some of it is really exciting in terms of the progress made in technology but there [...]
After 26 years of war which cost thousands of innocent lives and the displacement of an equal number, with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka is at a cross roads. Yet despite the victory, there has been widespread international criticism about how the war was handled coming from many [...]
