St David's Day (2013)

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. — T S Eliot, 'Little Gidding'

It's that day again. But it is a version that feels different, not for the quality of light nor of heat, but because it has seldom marked so clearly the boundary between life and life.

Last night, I ended my first-ever lecture series at a theological college; this day, I begin officially as director of a new enterprise. And always, as Dewi Sant said, I have tried to do the little things. Today onwards, as I have before, but with renewed purpose, I ask that I do the little things even better.

And in the betterment of things, we remember our hope — that the best is yet to be.

The Difference Cliché

"What a difference a week makes!" is one of those clichés that relies on truism. It's hard not to find a difference between snapshots of anything taken a week apart, especially the closer you look. But my life has changed a lot.

Some of you know about the Atlantean enterprise that has been launched. Is it possible to break the narrative of the burning books and launch a kraken into the gates of the Temples of Learning? We call on those who have such hopes to join with us — and it is a call we would not have dreamt of making a week ago.

Meanwhile, back at the Citadel, they've bid farewell to the busy one and will be bidding farewell to the business one. Will times change? Will the Pillars of Herakles still stand guard at the mouth of the 'Inmost Sea of all the Earth'? Only the long view will tell.

And we look further across the world, wondering how a contender for a throne of the world can fail to differentiate between 'wooden ships, iron men' and 'nuclear carrier battlegroup, Iron Man'. A week (as the other cliché goes) is also a long time in politics.