I am a birthright Quaker who loves the teachings of the Buddha.

I am interested in the ways in which language and values shape our lives and I have explored this theme through our own myths, through sacred texts and in the struggle to understand how we can dwell more lightly upon the land.

I am seeking to restore the word “holy” to our everyday lives and, most recently, I have begun to explore the matters of love and peace.

By discipline, I was a sort of an economist and, over the past twenty-five or so years, helped to create two consultancies.

Alongside this work, I have had professorial chairs at the University of Reading and University College London (UCL) and a fellowship of Wolfson College, Cambridge, where I worked with the Department of Land Economy. However, I would not really call myself an academic – just someone who has asked a lot of questions!

At some point, twenty-five or so years ago, I began to realize that the “language” that we use to speak of that which we take to be true shapes us and all that is around us. If you would like to follow the way in which this quest – or stumbling path – led me to from here to where I am now, click the link on the right.

As I grow older, I come to see that finding peace or coming close to that mysterious expression of Love that some of us call God has to start within our own hearts and with those with whom we share our lives on a daily basis. For most of us, this holy life is led in the ordinary and the everyday – simple acts of kindness and thoughtfulness, sustained by contemplation and prayer.

In all of this, I am much inspired by the following quotation by Rumi:

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the Dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground”