161: Edward Owen

My guest this week is Revd. Edward Owen, Vicar in the South Cardiff Ministry area, the most multicultural area of Wales, who like me did his degree in Lampeter in the early 1990s. We learn that Edward’s grandmother’s brother was Richard Burton and he talks about a photo from when he was aged three of him with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor taken in his grandmother’s front room. We find out how Edward ended up in Lampeter and we talk about the overlap between St. David’s University College and the Church in Wales. We talk about what might be said to comprise the hub of Lampeter and how it has changed but also remained the same, and how Lampeter had a connection which bigger universities lacked. We discuss why nostalgia is important for one’s own development and why Edward has chosen to be an inner city parish priest. He talks about the concept of ‘intentional community’, misremembering the past and our capacity to cling to a past that is not real. Edward identifies the importance of belonging and the Church’s role in rebuilding that common narrative, and we find out about Edward’s interfaith walks. For Edward, bringing together people who are different is more important than bringing together people who are the same. We hear about Edward’s work with conflict resolution and mediation, and Edward explains why nostalgia enables us to change and how we only get better by embracing that which is difficult. Edward reveals that his father thought he should become an accountant and was dumbfounded when Edward left the teaching profession to become a priest, and Edward talks about the self-criticism that comes with looking back at the past. Then, at the end of the interview, we talk about how there are things we do now which we couldn’t have done in the past, the role of social media and the public vs. private interface and how our lives are often led through a filter. Edward refers also to the running community of which he is a part, why his memories are mainly positive and Edward explains why ‘Why’ is such an important question for him.