Making Sense Of Life

S3 E11 What does it mean to grow old gracefully? Welcome to a serious, but light-hearted conversation between two 'old men' who at the time of recording were only 69 and 56 years young!

S3 E10 Is it possible to enjoy lasting friendship – friendship so good that it lasts forever?  In a cynical, complex and challenging world, we might wonder at the idea. Cultural forces of individualism, loneliness and suspicion question the ideal. And personal stories of betrayal and disappointment plague our ability to try or trust again. 

S3 E09 There is a dark side to friendship that destroys relationships and damages people. In this 2nd episode of our 3-part series on friendship, we look at how we can apply wisdom to guard against friendship’s dark side.

S3 E08 Friendship allows us to be the best of ourselves. It confirms what we know to be true – that we were made for relationships. Yet many people lack friendship in their lives.

S3 E07 The path to a fulfilling life isn’t always what it seems. Our culture tells us all sorts of stories about what can make us happy. For example, you can be successful and then relax....

S3 E6 How do you define success? This is our third and final conversation with Mark Greene, author of “Thank God It’s Monday: Flourishing in Your Workplace”. God is interested in all of our life including the work we are doing. Our work can be an opportunity to bless and serve others in the midst of our more mundane responsibilities.

S3 E5 We continue our conversation with Mark Greene, author of the book “Thank God It’s Monday: Flourishing in Your Workplace”. Mark is passionate about whole life integration so that our faith and work are not separate from each other, but a continuation of who I am.. This is the second of a three-part interview with him.

S3 E4 How can the work I do better reflect the person I am and aspire to be? To help us answer that question we have the privilege of interviewing Mark Greene. Mark is currently Mission Champion at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity. He is also author of the book "Thank God It's Monday: Flourishing in Your Workplace". https://youtu.be/3fPgJlLfplI Here is some more background on Mark from his bio that we unpack: "Mark grew up Jewish and joyous in North-West London. In his last month at university God wooed him not his kingdom and he went on to work for ten years in advertising in London and in New York. Gripped by a desire to dig into God's word, he took a career break to study at the London School of Theology. The career break turned into a career change and he ended up on the staff, teaching Communications and Engaging with Contemporary Culture, and serving as Vice Principal. He joined the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in 1999, eager to focus on the call to see all God's

S3 E03 The way we look at the world and ourselves profoundly impacts the way we live our lives. In a world of so much cynicism, complexity and confusion, wisdom can help us move forward with less emotional baggage and more hope, awe and wonder with the daily decisions we have to make. How can we unpack what we mean by wonder?

We are arguably the most overstimulated and under-reflective generation in all of world history. Do join us in this 30 minute conversation as we explore timeless truths about what it means to live with awe and wonder in a cynical world.

S3 E01 We have an exciting and fascinating series of conversations in store for you in this new series of the Dancing With Wisdom Podcast! In this first episode of series 3 we discuss: - How wisdom is much more than dealing with the complex problems of life - The promise of wisdom being the key to the whole universe - Unpack the proverb "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." - Fear as awe, reverence and wonder. - Wonder as bewildered curiosity. These are more than mere words. I believe they hold the key to combatting the deep cynicism and mistrust of our age. You can listen to or watch this 28 minute conversation below: https://youtu.be/NRGPFildnxI Do let me know what in our conversation particularly resonated with you.

S2 E16 The place of discipline in learning to grow in wisdom

S2 E15 Silence, solitude, and a deep relationship with God though His word are often in competition with an inner restlessness, worry and anxiety. How do we tap into the wisdom of silence? In this podcast, Sunil and Elliot discuss the power of solitude, and what we can find when we can comfortably sit in silence.

S2 E14 The legacy I leave in the lives of others. Do join us in this conversation as we seek to live with confidence, joy, and the responsibility of knowing our life has consequences.

13 Dancing With Wisdom: What should I do? The question of discerning what I am uniquely called to do.

12 Dancing With Wisdom: Who matters to me? In case you're wondering the picture is of me around early 1968 with the friends from the street where we lived at the time in Allahabad, India. I am the one on the lower step at the front. We have no idea of what lies in store for each of us in the future! Life only makes sense in the context of relationships. That is the conclusion I have come to after many years of questioning and searching. When relationships are going well there can be no greater sense of joy and fulfilment. On the other hand, when relationships are going badly there can be no more painful frustration or headache. That's certainly been my experience.

"How does wisdom equip and empower us to live life such that we rise above the meaninglessness and mediocrity around us and the different challenges we face?" That is the opening question of chapter 8 of the Dancing With Wisdom book. To answer that question we begin by raising the question of identity or being - who am I called to be? It is the most fundamental question of my personal existence. We are, after all, human beings and not human doings! Yet how often so much of our identity seems to come from what we do? Its the basic question often to a stranger we might meet at an event, asking them "What do you do?" The problem is by basing my identity on my performance I can quickly fall between the extremes of arrogance at how well I am doing or despair when I don't measure up to my own or other people's standards. This is something we don't necessarily give much conscious thought to but in deep and even mysterious ways it can drive our behaviours, actions and motivations. In the 16th century the theol

Exploring the subject of wisdom is like looking at different facets of a diamond and even more so when we add an infinite reference point. As my co-host Elliott Frisby and I continue our conversation on what it means to define wisdom with respect to the Divine, we face the insight that our secular world conditions us to believe this life is all there is and that is all that matters. However, the fact is all religious traditions for thousands of years are agreed there is more to life than what we experience in this world. Indeed modern secular belief is out of keeping with much of human thinking since the dawn of time. It is not possible to make sense of this finite world without an infinite reference point. Do join us in this conversation as we explore: How the concept of emotional intelligence overlaps with wisdom, but is also different. The role of the Jewish carpenter in understanding wisdom. How the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job look at wisdom from different angles. How understandin

In our quest for wisdom it is vital to grasp that this is much more than simply making better decisions or getting what we think is best for us. Understanding wisdom in all its richness gets to the heart of what it means to be human. It is as intense as thinking about the wonder of a baby’s birth. While the physiological and genetic details of birth are well understood and documented, a scientific approach does not account for the wonder of bringing a new life into the world. I remember as a medical student witnessing a birth. On one level, this was another of the 130 million born every year into the world. But for me, as a raw eighteen-year-old, it was a profoundly reverent experience. As the writer Eugene Peterson puts it: "In the presence of birth we are at the source of life . . . Here is a mystery, but a mystery of light, not darkness, full of goodness, brimming with blessing. Every birth powerfully recalls us to this source: we have our origins in someone other than ourselves, and greater than ours

Do you find some people really annoying? The things they say or the way they behave can be so bothersome and irritating. I know I do and I am sure I am not alone in that! We say things like ‘she makes me so mad’ or ‘he frustrates and irritates me so much’. And maybe there are legitimate things that the other person says or does which are understandably frustrating and annoying. However, the diagram below (from Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) challenges those assumptions in some radical ways. In Biology at school we learnt that for simple organisms like an amoeba or relatively straight forward structures like the knee joint, there is a predictable response to a stimulus. You prod an amoeba and it goes in a certain direction. Or you strike the front of the knee and you get an involuntary knee jerk reaction. But we as human beings are much more complex than that. Granted most people do react to circumstances, but just because they do does not mean you and I have to do the