Spy stories imagine a secret world, happening underneath the one we think we inhabit. At their best (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), they grip and empathize, lamenting the very existence of the espionage system. At their most popular (James Bond), they have been the frivolous backdrop to over half a century of serious war games, seeing out the Cold War, the eras of Reagan, Clinton and Bush, and now the post-9/11 confusion. Honest attempts at spy stories tell us that secret agents are scapegoats for communities unwilling to be transparent with each other, and that unless the general public is willing to risk the first move in de-escalating international tensions, their jobs will always be a necessary evil.

When I was ten years old, I got stuck on my bike in an underpass, the cacophony of mighty traffic racing above me, the choice of three tunnels in front adding to the sense of dislocation. Three was worse than one, because it meant I was twice as likely to take the wrong path. I remember the feeling of cold and isolation and confusion and terror. It was just a bike ride near my house, but I might as well have been in outer space. Everyone has had the experience of being lost, and “losing it” as a result. I expected that Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s film The Martian, in which Matt Damon is stranded on the red planet, would evoke similar feelings. There’s so much opportunity for awe (at the planet), empathy (with the main character), and being impressed (at the ingenuity of his and NASA’s combined attempts at getting him home).

Announcing our first Ireland retreat for 2016: I'm co-leading another trip to Ireland, with David Wilcox and friends, and applications are now open!  I've wanted to bring people to my homeland for a long time, and we've been doing these trips for a couple of years now, with guest co-facilitators and dear friends.  One of the constant refrains I hear from folk in the US who have visited Ireland before is that they 'didn't go to the North'. We're going to change that.

To call a film the "most" harrowing is not the "most" useful response, nor is it possible for someone who has never been a combatant in an active violent conflict to evaluate the "realism" of a war film. That said, watching BEASTS OF NO NATION felt like one of the more distressing experiences I've had in a cinema; and its portrayal of war as a subject too grave for mere entertainment makes it a more humane and noble use of the medium than previous war films. 

My friend the architect Colin Fraser Wishart says that the purpose of his craft is to help people live better. There’s beautiful simplicity, but also enormous gravity in that statement. Just imagine if every public building, city park, urban transportation hub, and home were constructed with the flourishing of humanity - in community or solitude - in mind. Sometimes this is already the case, and we know it when we see it. Our minds and hearts feel more free, we breathe more easily, we are inspired to create things - whether they be new thoughts of something hopeful, or friendships with strangers, or projects that will bring the energy of transformation yet still into the lives of others. If architecture, manifested at its highest purpose, helps us live better, then it is also easy to spot architecture that is divorced from this purpose.