Some questions are not primarily intellectual. They are personal. These articles sit at the intersection of theology and human experience — trauma, neurodivergence, mental health, grief, and the practical challenges of faith formation. They take seriously the idea that good theology must be safe for the people reading it. Here, theology is in service of healing, not performance.
There is a difference between Neurodivergent Theology and a theology of Neurodivergence. In this article, I’m going to explain the difference, why the church needs both types of Theology, and finish with some suggestions for creating safe churches for Neurodivergence. In the newsletter linked to this article, I will be sending out a PDF on…
Guest Author Post by Lieutenant Chelsea Brevitt Neurodiversity, Church, and Belonging In recent years, the church has begun to ask deeper questions about belonging. As congregations grow more aware of differences, conversations about inclusion have moved beyond physical accessibility to the inner life of faith itself. One of the most important of these conversations concerns…
To be who God wants me to be means I have had to learn to keep putting myself to death so that I can find new life. Which feels absolutely rubbish! Because the process of being made new means confronting all the things we wish we could forget or try and justify. Part of the…
Over time, the initial pain of grief gives way to the dull ache of absence. People think this is because grief shrinks over time. I think it is more that we grow used to it, and the sharpness of its edges is changed into something else. I think that grief over times ends up being…
I’m not ok today. My particular brand of neurospicyness means that I occasionally go through periods of depression. Sometimes these last for a day, sometimes for a few weeks. Sometimes it’s just a general feeling of melancholy and anxiety; other times it feels like a big pit of icy darkness waiting to swallow everything good…
We make a mistake when we think of discipleship as something which develops in a straight line from A to B. Instead, when working with survivors of, or people experiencing, trauma, we need to recognise the fragmental nature of human reality and so also avoid faith-tropes such as holism, wholeness, and flourishing. We need to…
If we take seriously the claim that God experienced the fullness of human experience, particularly in the crucifixion of Jesus, then we can speak about God having traumatic experiences. This changes not only how we see God, but how we can relate to God in our suffering. A God who experiences trauma is a God…
We often feel pressure to know ourselves. We are told that one of the most important parts of our journey is discovering who we are, to find ourselves, to know our authentic self. I think this is by and large a waste of time. Instead of trying to find out our so-called authentic self, we…
Content note. This is a personal reflection on living with depression and anxiety, and it includes a description of the thoughts that come with that — including feeling that others would be better off without me. It also refers to the Columbine school shooting. If now isn’t the right time to read this, that’s completely…