Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSWis a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth14 June 1950
CitySwansea, England
order creative world
So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.
equality way rewards
Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.
jesus names perspective
I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort.
truth believe unity
I value unity because I believe we learn truth from each other in this process.
communication rooms grows
Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.
anger culture growing
Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old.
letting-go self protected
We shall not find life by refusing to let go of our precious, protected selves.
eye journey order
Keeping our eyes on journey's end is what we need - the place where we see at last the world that is greater than the world, the new creation that cannot be contained in present thought or social order or piety.
integrity silence silence-is
Silence is letting what there is be what it is. In that sense it has to do profoundly with God: the silence of simply being. We experience that at times when there is nothing we can say or do that would not intrude on the integrity and the beauty of that being.
thinking one-direction temptation
Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn't resolve the question of whether it's true or not. I can see the temptation of simply thinking, 'Well, there's a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it'. And that really won't do.
country art years
If there is one thing I long for above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture.
understanding world way
How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us?
eye animal vegetables
We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.
marriage unique covenant-with-god
Marriage has a unique place because it speaks of an absolute faithfulness, a covenant between radically different persons, male and female; and so it echoes the absolute covenant of God with his chosen, a covenant between radically different partners.