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Making Footprints Not Blueprints

Andrew James Brown/Caute

Welcome to “Making Footprints not Blueprints”, a regular podcast about matters philosophical and religious. My name is Andrew James Brown and, despite being an atheistically inclined free-thinker, I’m also the minister to the Unitarian Church in the city of Cambridge, UK.The title of this podcast is borrowed from the philosopher Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018) who, in his book, “The Self in Transformation” (Basic Books, New York 1963), offered us studies that were “outcomes rather than realised objectives” which were offered to the reader as an encouragement to make “intellectual footprints, not blueprints.” This podcast tries to proceed in a similar fashion and takes seriously an insight of the poet A. R. Ammons who felt that true human freedom only comes when we have understood that full scope always eludes our grasp, that there is no finality of vision, that we have perceived nothing completely and that, therefore, and thankfully, tomorrow a new walk is a new walk. 

Episodes
S07 #26 - Deep and again deep - The gateway to all mystery . . . A meditation on the total eclipse of the sun, 2024 - A thought for the dayApril 13, 2024
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S07 #25 - Jjiyū Shūkyō (a creative, free spirituality) as a Silken Tent - A thought for the dayApril 06, 2024
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S07 #24 - To touch again the finely woven, seamless cloth of joy & woe — an Easter Sunday meditation - A thought for the dayMarch 30, 2024
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S07 #23 - Bringing into being an ethics of motion — A meditation on John Ford’s 1950 western, “Wagon Master” - A thought for the dayMarch 15, 2024
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S07 #22 - It’s always possible to embody truth, even when, technically, we’re not able to tell it - A thought for the dayMarch 02, 2024
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S07 #21 - What an apprenticeship in tailoring might tell us about the making of a creative, free spirituality or religion . . . - A thought for the dayFebruary 24, 2024
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S07 #20 - Will ready-made religions ever really fit us properly? - A thought for the dayFebruary 15, 2024
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S07 #19 A gentle plea for some basket-weaving and aphanipoiesis - A thought for the dayFebruary 10, 2024
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S07 #18 - The sustaining sea and the need to take even strokes in these very uneven times - A thought for the dayFebruary 03, 2024
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S07 #17 - How new are you? - A thought for the dayJanuary 27, 2024
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S07 #16 - The new parable of “Mr Bates vs. The Post Office” - A thought for the dayJanuary 20, 2024
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S07 #15 - A mystery is something in which I am myself involved - A thought for the dayJanuary 06, 2024
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S07 #14 - A Small- Sized Mystery — A New Year’s Eve meditation - A thought for the dayDecember 30, 2023
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S07 #13 - “The Eternal Buddha is no one else but the Eternal Christ” — A Christmas Day Meditation - A thought for the dayDecember 21, 2023
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S07 #12 - The Quantum Manger — A Christmas Eve Meditation - A thought for the dayDecember 21, 2023
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S07 Bonus Episode - The Japanese Yuniterian [sic] tradition . . . or the dove that ventured outsideDecember 15, 2023
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S07 #11 - Beyond the binary of supply and demand — bringing citizens, business and industry together through a deep, but simple, creative, free spirituality - A thought for the dayDecember 09, 2023
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S07 #10 - Embracing climate adaptation positives in our settings in good company - A thought for the dayDecember 02, 2023
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S07 #09 - On freeing ourselves from being held captive by a particular picture of history - A thought for the dayNovember 18, 2023
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S07 Bonus Episode - "New Heaven" - Making Footprints Not Blueprints Theme TuneNovember 11, 2023
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S07 #08 - Why “upholding the liberal Christian tradition" need not be the same thing as upholding Liberal Christianity - A thought for the dayNovember 05, 2023
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S07 #07 - What a kite can tell us about the making of a modern, creative, free-spirituality or religion (“jiyū shūkyō”) - A thought for the dayOctober 28, 2023
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S07 #06 - It is human to have compassion for those in distress - A thought for the dayOctober 21, 2023
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S07 #05 - What is still possible to do so that, at some point in the future, there might be a reconciliation and peace? - A thought for the dayOctober 14, 2023
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S07 #04 - Faith in one's own spiritual community and a creative, free religion or spirituality - A thought for the daySeptember 23, 2023
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