In Conversation with Henry Giroux - June 2017

Here's the film of the event organised with my School of Education colleagues Diarmuid McAuliffe and Shirley Steinberg, in which Diarmuid, a large audience and I had a very interesting and stimulating dialogue with the excellent Henry Giroux.



In Conversation with Henry Giroux from UWS Artist Teacher Programme on Vimeo.

The Kingdom of God is like a Yoghurt Plant

One of the things we've managed to do over the last year is to pull together a small volume of my father's writings - we gave it out to friends at his Memorial Service in June 2017. There are still a number of copies sitting in my garage looking for a new owner. If anyone would like to buy one, (a potential Christmas present?) they are available to order here.

The description on the back of the book reads as follows:

"This is a collection of sermons, lectures and writings by Bob Jeffery, selected by his children from his considerable archive. We have chosen pieces that particularly caught our attention and that seem to retain relevance and resonance in the 21st Century."

I'm hoping to put together an e-book version as well that we can distribute; maybe a job for some downtime around the midwinter break!

There are a number of very kind and thoughtful tributes and obituaries for my dad out on the web - for example, Michael Sadgrove's sermon from the Memorial Service; and an extract from the book - the opening parable about the yoghurt plant - transcribed by someone who stumbled across it at a friend's house can be found here.

All of the papers relating to his theological research, a large number of sermons, and his work in the  ecumenical movement have been lodged with Gladstone's Library, so that researchers interested in the history and politics of the Church of England in the second half of the 20th century can access them - it will be interesting to see if any projects emerge that make reference to his work.

In the meantime, we are also thinking about what might be a suitable physical memorial for him and my mother - it's likely to be something embedded into the fabric of Tong Church, like a restored window, but we're not sure yet. Bob's grave is still unmarked (according to his wishes) and as he fades into the ground and into memory we'd like to ensure that there is still something left apart from all the words - the conversations, the encounters, the relationships (which perhaps, as Michael said, are possibly their biggest legacy) to mark their time with us.