Musings on faith and real life
Most of the time churches are friendly, kind places where people can grow in trust because they are supportive. However, as thinking about safeguarding has developed over the past few decades, and churches have had to come to the humbling realisation that abuse of many kinds goes on in their congregations, the category of spiritual […]
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For those who have been significantly traumatised it is important that churches are non-shaming environments. Memories of traumatic events can leave any of us feeling deep shame for not being able to avoid or protect oneself from what happened. However, creating church cultures which do not reinforce shame often has a long way to go. […]
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My training as a cross-cultural mission partner taught me that there are many ways to talk of the gospel. The book of Acts shows St Paul adjusting his message depending on who he was talking to. For Jews he spoke of their history (Acts 13); for the Greek philosophers he uses their altar to the […]
Read MoreLots of Christian friends I meet have not gone back to church yet, and I’m wondering why. What is it? What is it that has so disturbed our souls in this pandemic that means the previous ways will no longer do? What are we reaching for? In what ways are in-person worship services now failing […]
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The chain chinks as I wiggle the key in the bike lock. My finders are clumsy in the December cold. I dump my bag in the basket, and I’m off, slowly gaining pace in the late afternoon fog. As I emerge from side-streets to turn onto the main road to the hospital, I become aware that this […]
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Treehouse Suspended between reality and dreams, cedar walls breathe out their warm welcome – a scent from some Other place. Spider’s webs and dust motes allow a relieved settling into unsophistication. A garden chair, softly padded, receives me quietly. A match scratches, flares. A candle flame finds its balance. I settle to awareness. Leaves flutter, […]
Read MoreWe know Jesus’s death on the Cross helps with guilt. But how does it help with shame? Artwork by my friend John Elson helps me explain in this video:
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As a child, I was always a bit horrified by my great aunt’s shoes. Dark brown, functional, but lumpy in all the wrong places. No-nonsense shoes for a no-nonsense person. Shoes that reflected her strictness. I wondered whether I would like to be one of her piano pupils, as I’m sure they were scolded regularly […]
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I lay shivering in my sleeping bag, muscles clenched against the cold. How was I ever going to get warm? 10,000 feet up in the Mountains of the Moon in a remote corner of Uganda, I wondered whether I would ever be warm again. I fretted about whether I would ever get out of those […]
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My great granny was awarded a degree by London University in 1905. The man she married (my great-grandfather) became Provost of University College London. Their daughter (my granny) won a scholarship to Girton College Cambridge and studied hard (though she couldn’t get a degree because Cambridge didn’t award them to women in 1932). Her husband, […]
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A candle in my treehouse 