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…
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…
*Disclaimer – this is a personal reflection and presents my own opinions and beliefs, not anyone else’s.* The call to follow Jesus is not one that we can put down when the going gets difficult or when life becomes complicated. When Jesus commands us to come and follow him, it is a demand which transforms…
I believe that the attractive power of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders can best be understood through the lens of the cult of the Virgin Mary. When understood as a form of modern sacred virgin-mothers, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (DCC) reveal the continuing power of the courtly ideal of love to unite lust with the sacred….
We are more than what we do. This might seem obvious, but it so often ignored or forgotten. The Sabbath reminds us of the fundamental fact that we are created in the image of God, invested with inherent dignity, and our value is not dependent on what we do but simply on our existence. I…
I was speaking to a friend the other day about planning a project at our corps. I generally tend not to believe that God has a plan for us, or that things happen because God wants them to. I believe God is involved in all things and is present at all times, but I struggle…
It can be really difficult to hold onto our faith when we are confronted with what seems to be God’s silence. God’s Silence on Easter Saturday On Easter Saturday there is the space between death and life, between crucifixion and resurrection. We often pass over the day quite quickly. Few people spend time mourning on…
Understanding Theopoetics simply means using poetic forms to practice theology, and I have been reflecting on this a lot lately. Poetic Theology – When Prose Fails Sometimes we don’t have the right words to explain what we believe. Sometimes we are confronted with the infinitely unknowable, uncontainable person of God, and find our response utterly…