Category Archives: Spiritual

Of Magic and Medicine

Posted on by David Lloyd

a spoonful of sugar

I’m not a scientist. But I’m fairly certain that water doesn’t have a memory. At least, no more than a first generation iMac. I’ve been acquainted with water all my life and it still forgets to send me a birthday card. So it’s odd, isn’t it, that Homeopathy took this premise as its starting point and has been running (rather successfully) with it ever since.

If water did have a memory, imagine the stories it could tell. Imagine the techniques it would have developed to stop us having a little wee in municipal swimming baths. Seventy percent of the Earth – all water. All that memory. Water should be cleverer than Steven Fry. It should follow Yvette Fielding around derelict Roman Baths saying ‘I sense there was great lewdness here between off-duty Centurions.’ Continue reading →

This Blog Post Can’t Change Your Life

Posted on by David Lloyd

and you can make my career

I’ll tell you where it all went wrong. When Paul McKenna lost his job at Radio One and started to believe he was the Dalai Lama of Enfield.

When a nation starts thinking that God is a (failed) DJ you know that, before long, our Highways Agency is going to forget that it gets icy in winter, that we’ll all shuffle off to Shanghai’s World Expo to congratulate China on killing duped bipolar drugs mules, and that Waterstones will devote a greater surface area of shelving to Self Help than to Science.

And it came to pass…
Continue reading →

How to Stop Thinking

Posted on by David Lloyd
Stillness is the way. Apparently.

Stillness is the way. Apparently.

Barry Long has a question: “May I speak to you of death, bereavement and dying, on a single CD?”

Well, no, Barry, if it’s all the same to you, you may not.

But, to be fair to Barry, who died in 2003, he’s probably better placed than most.

Not one to give up without a fight, he tries another tack: “Do you long to make real love? Over two CDs, I’ll teach you about the problem of sex.”

Continue reading →

Faith No More?

Posted on by David Lloyd
Mary, mary quite contrary.

Mary, mary quite contrary.

Saturday morning. Hangover. A woman’s just knocked on my door, telling me that the reason there’s so much suffering in my life is because, 6,000 years ago, God decided to test us out, to see if we could be trusted to get on with running our affairs in a sensible manner. The ascent of man, to her, was no more than some really, really dull Big Brother task. And one that we failed. Or, more specifically, that I failed.

This woman had picked the wrong day to evangelize. Yesterday I’d fallen out with my cousin, who’s Jewish. She was debating whether to send her kids to a local faith school. In the end, that’s exactly what she decided to do. Now, she opted-in to the Jewish religion as an adult. Her choice. Fine. But her kids? Well, they’re five. Are they able to tussle with the complexities of theism while, at the same time, learning all the words to High School Musical 3, and eating caterpillars? Continue reading →