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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️

@cosmichope.bsky.social

390 followers 220 following 2.5K posts

Husband, Quaker, theologian, Hedge Druid, "Aristotelian Liberal". Woodbrooke Programme Coordinator for Applied Theology and Biblical Studies. Lover of dogs, Guild Socialism, Dutch beer, old musty books, and slow autumn afternoons.

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · May 8

'Once the basic needs of food and shelter are met, man’s greatest satisfactions are to be found in love, trust and friendship, in beauty, art and music and in learning, none of which are served by the mythology of growth for its own sake' (The Environment: A Liberal Party Report, 1972) 🔶️

“The Shore Near Croagh Patrick”, by Bradley Greene

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Reposted by Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️

Ulster Druid @ulster-druid.bsky.social · 8h

Cats are solar-powered, and I have never seen any creature as content as a stinky old tomcat basking in a ray of sunlight. May we all live to know such happiness.

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 37m

'[The] attainment of freedom...depends on the character of the objects willed...The good will is free, not the bad will. Such a view of course implies some element of identity between good will & bad will, between will as not yet corresponding to its idea & will as so corresponding' (T.H Green) 🔶️🌻

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 10h

"You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious'--that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil." (E.M Forster, Howards End) 🔶️

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 10h

'Under self-guidance individuals will diverge widely, and some of their eccentricities will be futile, others wasteful, others even painful and abhorrent to witness. But, upon the whole, it is good that they should differ. Individuality is an element of well-being' (LT Hobhouse, "Liberalism") 🔶️🌻

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 14h

The Davey strategy worries me deeply. There's lots of Centre-right mood music at the moment (private school VAT, Agricultural IT relief, ambiguity on workers rights) but we're not a Centre Right Party, we're an Egalitarian Liberal Party on the Left. We shouldn't mislead voters (or face two ways).🔶️

Ed Davey invites “one nation” Tories to join Lib Dems

As Kemi Badenoch frightened a lot of progressive horses with her plans to get rid of the Climate Change Act, leave the European Convention on Human Rights, put the Human Rights Act on a bonfire and be...

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 14h

'In more positive news for the Lib Dems, he said research carried out by his project after the 2024 election showed that the Liberal Democrats were the most active of all the memberships of the political parties' 🔶️🌻

Liberal Democrat membership has halved in 5 years, figures show - BBC News

Analysis of available figures shows the number of party members has fallen by 49% since August 2020.

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 16h

'A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things' (Merlin Sheldrake) 🙏🍄

Mark D Russ @markdruss.bsky.social · 22h

Why is #Quaker worship like searching for mushrooms? Find out in my latest Pause for Thought www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... #spirituality @quaker.org.uk

Pause For Thought - Mark Russ: "Waiting for something surprising" - BBC Sounds

Mark Russ on this week's theme 'Stories of the Great Outdoors'.

www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️

Stuart Masters @stuartkmasters.bsky.social · 1d

Be honest with yourself. What unpalatable truths might you be evading? When you recognise your shortcomings, do not let that discourage you. In worship together we can find the assurance of God’s love and the strength to go on with renewed courage.

Advices & Queries 11 (Britain Yearly Meeting)

The image includes the text below, plus a picture of two copies of Quaker Faith & Practice (red books on a black background):

Be honest with yourself. What unpalatable truths might you be evading? When you recognise your shortcomings, do not let that discourage you. In worship together we can find the assurance of God’s love and the strength to go on with renewed courage.

Advices & Queries 11 (Britain Yearly Meeting)

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 16h

'What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back into the world' (Alfred North Whitehead)

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 17h

"Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude." (Alfred North Whitehead). 🙏✨️

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Stuart Masters @stuartkmasters.bsky.social · 23h

A prophet is one who is able to hold God and humanity in one thought, at one time, at all times.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The image includes the following quotation in white on a background of a dark sky, with the silhouette of trees at the bottom of the picture:

A prophet is one who is able to hold God and humanity in one thought, at one time, at all times.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Bury St.Edmunds Quakers @bsequakers.bsky.social · 2d

Quite a few people engaged with us at our stall outside the Meeting House last Saturday as part of Quaker Week. We also held our monthly Silent Witness for Climate Justice (first Saturday of every month, 10am Angel Hill). Find out more about Quakers at www.quaker.org.uk

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 1d

God bless The Church Times for their ongoing insistence on responding moderately but forcefully to the Reverend Canon Nigel Biggar’s nonsense. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Even given all that Biggar writes about the universality of slavery and the complicity of Africans, three things might be said. First, Britain played a key part and, however others may want to respond to their own history, it is morally responsible to face up to our own heritage. Second, as a Tory, he might have made more of Burke’s view that society is a partnership not just between the living, but between the living, the dead, and those still to be born. Third, guilt is not the only spur to action. There are the obligations that we owe one another irrespective of any personal responsibility for atrocities in the past.

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 22h

'The river of demands, hopes, fears, in society flows eternally. We must think...in terms of movement. We must look at the forces exerted. We must have in any political system ready means of amendment, so that if the flood of human life changes, new channels can be found for it' (Jo Grimond, 1963).

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 1d

"[Historically being] liberal meant demonstrating the virtues of a citizen, showing devotion to the common good, and respecting the importance of mutual connectedness" (Helena Rosenblatt) 🔶️

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 1d

'While patriotism exists only by a vivid attachment to...the ways of life, the customs of some locality, our so-called patriots have....dried up this natural source of patriotism & have sought to replace it by [an]...idea stripped of all that can engage the imagination' (Benjamin Constant) 🔶️

The image shows a Costa Coffee shop that was vandalised with the words "Welcome to clone town".

Reposted by Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️

Alex Will Resurrect That Werewolf Pic 🔸🏳️‍🌈 @alexwilcock.bsky.social · 1d

OTD 1807: Liberal philosopher Harriet Taylor Mill
Co-author of iconic Liberal text On Liberty with her husband John Stuart Mill
(He credited her as co-author, but for some reason hardly anyone else did at the time – or even 166 years later. Wonder why? Hmm, it’s a mystery)

Harriet Taylor Mill portrait in gold dress

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 1d

2/2 The same people say they believe in consumer-choice, but when consumers make *the wrong choice*, they cut the courses. Believers in economism don't believe in choice, they believe that there is only one right way of living. They will use the state to enforce it.

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 1d

1/2 Capital-driven utilitarians are the most tolerant people in politics. A liberal society should be a diverse garden of values (where people have the chance to live in a variety of ways). This lot (Labour too) only care about the consumption-machine. They want us all to worship money.

Article headline: 'Badenoch: Curb students taking 'rip-off' degrees such as English'.

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Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 2d

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

Paul Haine @paulhaine.bsky.social · 3d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 2d

'There’s always one more war to win, or one more election, before the good life; meantime they wrangle about the good, those who still believe in it. So we dream. Of what? Some man sent by the gods, first to make us believe in something' (Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo)

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Victoria Collins MP @victoria-collins.bsky.social · 2d

I recently wrote to the Chancellor after hearing from constituents worried about private finance returning to the NHS to ask what considerations the Treasury is giving these concerns, and what safeguards are being put in place.

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Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 2d

2/2 And lest you think I'm being boringly partisan, Orange Bookers (and Orange Book enablers) within the Liberal Democrats need to take responsibility for appalling spending decisions between 2011-14. These Blue Orange birds have now come home to roost. But who wants to take responsibility?

Ben Wood /|\🔶️🌿✝️ @cosmichope.bsky.social · 2d

1/2 Re. Robert Jenrick recording ("no white faces"). People have ignored the earlier part of his statement. He describes the area of Birmingham he visited as 'like a slum". There you have it. This lot had 14 years to arrest social decay. But when Conservatives see it, its nothing to do with them.

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glastomichelle.bsky.social @glastomichelle.bsky.social · 2d

Autumn colour this morning here in Glastonbury.

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