Theology Everywhere

by Jo Cox-Darling.

Let’s think about Genesis 26: 12-33 – it’s worth reading the passage either before or after reading on here. There are a few things to tease out in this passage:

• Woundedness often begins when there is a power imbalance.  Isaac is asked to leave because he was too successful. Pay attention to power, how we use it, own it, offer it to others: but also notice the power in creation… this passage isn’t about two people, it’s about subterranean access to water!
• Who gets to name things? The Philistines had changed the names of the locations of the wells, and then poisoned them.  But reverting to the original names, and unblocking them – symbolically, brings the people back into contact with God.  This is about history and memory and spiritual sacred symbolism.
• When people get grumpy, Isaac uses names which remind the people of the quarrel, the dissent, and the conflict.  The quarrel doesn’t stop the overall project, and God still offers a blessing to those who know themselves deeply enough to know what they are doing and how they are doing it.
• ‘The water is ours’ (v20) – the main argument is that the hole is Isaac’s, but the contents is the Philistines’…who owns the underground, the subterranean?
• Like pathetic fallacy in literature (where the weather reflects the internal emotions of the characters) – that device is used here. Recognise that what happens in the locality/soil – is what is also happening in the spirit/soul.
• v29 – remember that hurt people, hurt people.

What is it to dig where we stand? Alastair McIntosh suggests that ‘the great disease of our time is meaninglessness.  If fresh wellsprings of hope are to be found…we must dig where we stand.  We must get beneath the grassroots of popular culture and down to the eternal taproot.  Here, new life can grow from ancient stock.’[1] In telling the story of land reform in Scotland he suggests that all acts of revolution, and action, and spiritual practice are acts of love, when they are done in true community together. Digging in to where we are, understanding the soil (literally), paying attention to what is present, and then working with that and with the people who are alongside us – it is possible to change the culture. ‘If we let ourselves be overwhelmed [wounded] – if we do nothing because we are thinking we cannot do enough – we misread, profoundly, the game of life.  We miss each season’s fleeting blossom.’[2]McIntosh concludes by reminding us that the darkness is a place of gestation, and that if humankind is to have any hope of changing the world, we must constantly work to strengthen community with the soil, human society and with the soul. ‘We need spaces where we can take rest, compose and compost our inner stuff, and become more deeply present to the aliveness of life… In short – is any of this concerned with the blossom?’[3]

Questions for Reflection

• What is it to dig where we stand?
• Which (metaphorical) ancient wells are those that we need to unstop, today?
• What are those places and resources that we need to rediscover in order to bring us greater clarity of who God is, and who we are called to be?

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part five of a series of six articles. Also see The art of vulnerability and This is my body and Love for the unloved days and The Place Where Beauty Starts.

---

[1] Alistair McIntosh Soil and Soul 2001 p2 Aurum Press

[2] Op. cit. p283

[3] Op. cit. p284

by Sheryl Anderson.

I was recently told by a friend and colleague that, in order to answer a question from an enquirer, they had found themselves having to give an account of the history of the Church. Wanting to be succinct, it had taken them about 15 minutes to get to John Wesley and Methodism. The enquirer was genuinely interested in what makes the different Christian traditions distinct from each other, and whether there was any rivalry between them. As my friend relayed the story I was in awe of their ability to give such an articulate account of the development of the Church, and I noticed something. One way of reading the history of the Church is that every disagreement, falling out, schism, divergence is about power; who gets to be in charge and who gets to say who is in charge. As an institution, the Church is as guilty as any other human institution, of the possibility of corruption.

The notion that ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ was first expressed by Lord Acton, who was an English Catholic historian, writer, and Liberal politician. Acton engaged in a lengthy correspondence with Mandell Creighton, an Anglican priest who was also an historian, about the nature and purpose of the study of history. In 1870, Acton had opposed the notion of the doctrine of papal infallibility proposed by the First Vatican Council and lobbied against it. Creighton, as an academic, had written extensively about the papacy in the medieval era and objected to Acton’s critique of it as immoral and corrupt. The two men met when Creighton was a professor at Cambridge.

The debate between them was part of a larger conversation about how historians should judge the past. Creighton tended towards a moral relativism and objected to what he saw as unnecessary criticism of authority figures. Acton disagreed, and argued that all people, leaders or not, should be held to universal moral standards.

On the 5^th April 1887 Acton wrote to Creighton

“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers’ lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”[1]

Acton was reflecting on the dangers of concentrated authority and understood that, unchecked power posed the greatest threat to human freedom.

Interestingly, Acton took a great interest in the United States. He thought its federal structure (with power vested largely in the states) was ideal to protect individual liberties. Ironically, this led him to side with the Confederacy who (among other things) fought to defend the states’ rights against a centralised government. Acton believed that such centralisation would inevitably become tyrannical.

It seems to me that this debate is ongoing in our times. Freedom of speech does

not include the right to use abusive or threatening language, but who decides what counts as abusive or threatening and on what basis do they do that? As our legal institutions seek to deal with increasing demand there is pressure to be more efficient, which threatens to concentrate the power in fewer hands – doing away with juries, for example.

As the Church, Methodism included, dwindles, there are fewer people to take on responsibility for running the institution, and consequently power is concentrated in fewer hands. Where are the checks and balances that keep corruption at bay, and who enforces them? The Methodist Church proudly announces that it is a justice seeking church but justice, like charity, begins at home. Would we be willing to invest the resources needed to enable all officers to be held to account for their exercise of power?

Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers[2] writes,

“Any attempt to transform a social system without addressing its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its concretions can the total entity be transformed, and that requires a kind of spiritual discernment and praxis that the materialistic ethos in which we live know nothing about.”

Perhaps then this is something to which we could legitimately give some thought?

---

[1] Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 Transcript of, published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907).

[2] Wink, Walter: Engaging the Powers, Fortress Press, 1992: p10

by Raj Patta.

Far-right leader and one of the loudest anti-migrant voices in the UK, Tommy Robinson urged his “Unite the Kingdom” movement supporters through a Christmas carol concert on the 13^th of December 2025 in London to “put the Christ back into Christmas.’ He intended this large-scale Christmas event to be show of national pride, saying ‘this event is not about politics…it is about Jesus Christ – fully and completely.’ This nationalist agenda is immensely hostile against people seeking asylum and Muslims, and is rooted in xenophobia and Islamophobia.

The Joint Public Issues team in the UK, a partnership between the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church is has offered ‘rapid resources’[1] to churches in resisting the co-option of Christian symbols for nationalist agenda including Christmas. Their posters ‘Christ has always been in Christmas’ and ‘outsiders are welcome’ challenged the anti-migrant campaign of the far-right during this Christmas. Before we move on into the season of Epiphany, let us pause to reflect on these issues which have looked large during Christmas this year.

There are twin dangers to our context today, particularly in relation to Christmas. One is the growing secularism where Christmas is interpreted as ‘winter festival,’ where market and consumerism has taken over our public sphere. The other is growing far-right extremism, where they hijack Christianity by spreading hatred in the name of faith against the other, particularly people those who are seeking asylum and against Muslims, with a claim of ‘winning back Britian to Christ.’ In the present climate, we must critically examine what it means to “put the Christ back into Christmas.” Which “Christ” is being invoked in such appeals? It is certainly not a Christ in whose name hatred is legitimized, nor one whose symbols are appropriated for nationalist projects, nor one evoked merely through perfunctory declarations that “Christ is born today.” The other slogan that I heard again during this year is “Jesus is the reason for this season.” But again, have we really reasoned out how is Jesus the reason for this season?

The Advent readings about John the Baptist can be a helpful hermeneutical aid in our discussion here. John when he was imprisoned by Herod, heard about Jesus, the Messiah’s deeds and sent his disciples to enquire whether Jesus Christ is the one who is to come or should they wait for another one (Matthew 11:2-10). Jesus could have answered a yes or a no, but rather he invites John’s disciples to go and tell what they hear and see, the kind of transformation Jesus the Messiah was offering to the people in the communities: the bling receiving their sight, the lame walking, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead are raising and the poor have good news brought to them. Jesus Christ’s identity is interweaved with people’s experience of transformation. Jesus further says that blessed is anyone who takes no offense at him. To put this in other words, blessed is anyone who is not offended in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Jesus could have proved his messiahship by explaining the fulfilments of the prophecies in his life, but rather Jesus Christ’s identity is known by the deeds he does in the community, by the transformation happening in the community and by offering goodness in his name.

So, drawing on Jesus’ own self-accounting of his identity for his Messiahship, based on his deeds of transformation, is of great significance for us today in our discussion to ‘put the Christ back into Christmas.’ Which ‘Christ’ are we putting back into Christmas? It is this ‘Christ’ who self-identified himself through the liberative works of Jesus that we put back into Christmas.

Christmas is not merely a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ; rather, it is an invitation to discern the ongoing birthing of Jesus within today’s contexts of vulnerability. Christmas calls us to embody the life and witness of Jesus, revealing its true meaning—love expressed in concrete action, grounded in a preferential option for the weak. It inspires us to pitch our tents alongside those in need, extending home, hope, and hospitality to all who seek sanctuary in our nation today.

The Bus Stop Nativity by Andrew Gradd is a powerful image of the nativity of Jesus for our context, where Jesus is born out in the cold, in the rain, sheltered in the bus stop identifying with the homeless people seeking a shelter. Jesus is born amidst the busyness of life, at a crowded bus stop where some people are waiting for the bus to come and take them on their journeys. Jesus is born right on our street corners, in sites that we know, at stations we have always journeyed from, and is born right in our own neighbourhoods. Let us pray that this Christmas message continues to challenge us, as we begin 2026, to find and locate the nativity in our vicinities, among the vulnerable. This image inspires us to reimagine nativity scenes relevant for our times and contexts, and to put back the Christ into Christmas.

May the peace and love of child Jesus, the prince of peace be with us so that we resist the hijacking of ‘Christ’ from the claims of the far-right and celebrate with him in loving and caring for people who are on the margins, for the Messiah is born from within our communities.

---

[1] https://jpit.uk/joyforall

by Audrey Quay.

As the year draws to a close, I have been thinking about what it means to enter the depth of winter, with its shorter days and longer nights. The change is especially striking for someone who has spent most of my life in tropical climes instead of the temperate, four-season British Isles. In our modern world with artificially-created environments, the differences are easier to miss. We can turn on heating and light at the flick of a switch; LEDs and backlit screens keep our bodies in “daytime” long after the sun has set. Supermarkets offer out-of-season produce year-round, even as global supply chains carry their own costs for the climate. Add work schedules, entertainment and device notifications, and we can live as if the year has no dusk—no nudge to close the day, slow down and take stock, no permission to be less productive. Yet outside, creation keeps its own time, and looking outside, I recognise an older wisdom: a season not of constant output, but of conserving, recovering, and preparing.

Animals respond with practiced patience to wintertime. Hedgehogs and dormice hibernate and bats drop into torpor when cold bites, living off energy stored when food was abundant. Birds are thriftier: feeding hard in daylight, sheltering and surviving on what remains. Some leave entirely, like swallows and house martins migrating south, while visiting redwings and fieldfares arrive to take advantage of berries still hanging on (a reminder that British winters are milder than Scandinavia’s!). Even the relatively active make adjustments: foxes and badgers spend more time sheltered, and squirrels draw on hidden caches from their autumn’s work. Much of the plant world waits underground: bulbs sit protected beneath the soil, while many species persist as seeds, holding next year’s growth until conditions are right. Deciduous trees drop leaves to reduce frost damage, drawing resources back into trunk and roots until warmer days return. But the season isn’t empty; hazel catkins, holly berries, and gorse still flower—hints that life is being held in reserve.

Nature’s winter can help remind us to ease off our outward production and consider what we need to collate inwardly. What do we want to carry into spring—and what are we not meant to keep holding on to? As we move through the final days of 2025 and into 2026, what would it look like to store what is nourishing and release what is weighing us down? Who are the lonely and forgotten we have neglected through the year, whom we could reach out to at this time of recuperation and exchange of greeting cards? Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer describes an older “gift economy” in which abundance is not hoarded in private, but held in relationship, where “all flourishing is mutual.”[1]Ivan Illich terms conviviality “the opposite of industrial productivity”—a way of living in which tools and systems do not eclipse human agency or flatten the world into endless output.[2] Winter makes legible this logic, as it asks less of us outwardly, while drawing attention to the reality that life is sustained by reserves, reciprocity, and the givenness of what we did not manufacture, but can still pass on to others.

As nature denies us the illusion of perpetual spring, it follows the wisdom of Ecclesiastes to remind us that fruitfulness has a rhythm: seasons for expansion and consolidation, for speaking and silence, for striving and for resting. God’s work in us is often patient root growth, gathering strength before it shows itself. Renewal does not have to be announced loudly with ambitious plans and resolutions. It can begin underground and out of sight, unnoticed by the outside world. The year-end culminating with the depths of winter invites me to exercise a purposeful restraint: to let some things remain unfinished, to turn down the noise, to accept limitations without shame, and to rest as a way of receiving.

From the beginning, God’s own rest is declared blessed and hallowed—a boundary woven into creation itself. Sabbath reaches outward to creatures and communities, a rhythm of relief and refreshment extended as far as the soil itself. Jesus defends it as a gift “made for humankind”, and Walter Brueggemann describes Sabbath as resistance because it is “a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.”[3] The God of ages is through all seasons Emmanuel. There is a time for everything; in the quieter season of winter, we realign ourselves with the rest of creation, learning again that whether in recuperating or making ready…God’s provision is present, even when we are at rest.

---

[1] Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” Emergence Magazine, October 26, 2022.

[2] Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 5.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).

Gregory Orr writes: 

‘Not to make loss beautiful,
But to make loss the place
Where beauty starts.’[1]

Orr was writing from a place of grief, which is so rich a part of love. But his words resonate at a time when so much of ‘life as we know it’ seems to be disappearing. Is there a different kind of beauty to be brought forth from this place of loss?

‘The place where beauty starts’ was the theme of a Lent 2025 email series[2] which reflected how the ashes of Ash Wednesday define the journey of Lent as involving loss, as well as gain: a laying down of self, a yielding to God, so that a beauty is revealed which may otherwise lay hidden. It’s an unconventional beauty, as the divine so often is: after all, the ashy ‘mark’ of Ash Wednesday is cruciform. It’s not ‘attractive’, yet how wondrous the Cross is to survey.

The prophet Isaiah suggests there’ll be nothing attractive about the Messiah ‘that we should desire him’. Yet his life’s work, which begins with his giving up of self-life in the desert, unveils the source and essence of divine beauty itself, in Him. His is the path of descent, the very embodiment of ‘wounded wisdom’.

Much of what automatically ‘attracts’ our attention is eye-catching or ego-stirring. Yet Jesus offers a very different path in which he gives himself away in selfless love. He dies to self and opens up the life of love which God longs for people to discover, even though it involves letting go of what they have held so tightly to.

Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTnYpE_bkNERosemerry to watch an interview with the American poet Rosemerry Trommer. She speaks movingly about the deaths of her teenage son and her father some years ago. Through tears of grief and sorrow she speaks with of the joy and wonder which, from her experience, still seeks to be found within all – if, with compassion and courage, folk are willing to look. She is the embodiment of wounded wisdom, and she asks a profoundly powerful question: ‘How can we say ‘yes to the world as it is’ even from within a breaking open heart of grief?’

Her “Yes” to the world had begun as a creative project, many years previously, when she decided to ‘show up’ every day, whatever life held for her, by writing a poem and sharing it widely. When asked how she managed to say, “Yes to the world as it is” in the aftermath of her son’s death, she reflected that really, what she’d most truly experienced was the ability to say “OK”. “Yes” was just not fully possible – but crucially, “OK is not no,” she said. It is, “Thy will be done” within each coming moment. It is, very gently, an ”OK… OK… OK.” Joy and grief can not only co-exist, but they bring out the beauty in each other, because they’re part of a mysterious whole. After all, ‘how can I be only joyful, when you grieve? How can I only grieve, when you are joyful?’

The mystic Hildegard of Bingen uses a wonderful metaphor when she writes that we’re like birds who fly with two wings of awareness: ‘The one wing is an awareness of life’s glory and beauty. The other is an awareness of life’s pain and suffering. If we try to fly with only one of these, we will be like an eagle trying to fly with only one wing’. As this geo-political world slips into fearful binary opposites, it matters to learn to hold the paradox of pain and joy at this time, and to find a richer kind of beauty here. The beauty that comes by learning to let go and enter the mystery of life in God’s kingdom, rising as if, indeed, upon the wings of eagles.

Questions for reflection:

• How can you learn to say yes to the world as it is, today?
• What small practice can you adopt, to help you in this regard?
• What difference does it make to look for the love within difficult circumstances instead of the fear?

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part three of a series of six articles. Also see The art of vulnerability and This is my body and Love for the unloved days.

---

[1] Gregor Orr, How Beautiful The Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)

[2] https://www.briandraper.org/product-page/lent-series-2025

by Brian Draper.

There are many reasons why Christians tend not to talk about their struggles. Here are two: First, suffering doesn’t always seem compatible with a positive faith that speaks of healing and seems to steer us toward the light.  And second, Christian people know there are plenty of others who are much worse off. ‘Everything’s relative. At least I’m not in Gaza / Ukraine / prison / hospital…’ So what right does anyone have to give voice to their own suffering?

The advent of Covid in early 2020 challenged that. It has been a time to taste both fragility and mortality, and a full recovery is still awaited. Meanwhile, of course, many of us struggle to speak about our ultimate mortality, even though it’s a universal experience and a fundamental part of our spiritual journey, irrespective of the promise of heaven we hold on to.

But what of the riches to be uncovered on this side of eternity, which come through struggles and equip us to share more deeply in each other’s journey? Brian, who’s lived for five years with long-Covid, shared some reflections in a 2021 ‘Thought for the Day’ (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09jftqc). It evoked a strong response and many wrote of how they felt they’d finally been heard.

While most folk know how they’d answer Jesus’ question to the man at the pool called Bethesda, are there not things to learn about what it means to be ‘me’ in weakness? Bishop John Taylor wrote that we might ‘cherish the weakness of limited means’ to explore what God’s promise of ‘strength made perfect in weakness’ could mean[1]. And the poet Kim Rosen’s question ‘What is it that shines through all this withering?[2]’ bears consideration.

How might Christians learn to love the un-loved days? This has less to do with finding a ‘happy-ever-after’ ending, and more about learning to meet each moment with a measure of whole-hearted love. It involves a shift from being braced like steel against what life might throw at us, into the softening openness of embrace, welcoming, with love, the circumstances, people, the feelings which might otherwise be pushed away.

Owning personal suffering and struggles gives others permission to honour theirs, and to see what ‘shines through all this withering’. And while all suffering is relative, every part of our collective whole is to be honoured because of Jesus, who suffered with us, and for us all. If there was anyone in the world who could trump anyone’s suffering and say, “Tell me about it!” it’s Jesus. He suffered to the point of death, and yet says with deepest compassion, “Tell me about it.” And, in responding, people open a little more to the mystery and wonder of life in all its different shades, and to love a little more those unloved days.

Questions for reflection:

• What elements of your own journey, especially your own suffering, have you been tempted to downplay from a spiritual perspective? What wisdom have you learned from someone who was unafraid to face into their struggles with an open embrace of their circumstances?
• How has your own theological understanding of life shifted through the suffering of yourself or those you love?
• What might it really mean to ‘cherish the weakness of limited means’? If God’s strength is made perfect in weakness, how have you felt God’s strength flow through the cracks of your own life and out into the world around you? ‘What is it that shines through all this withering?’

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part three of a series of six articles. Also see The art of vulnerability and This is my body.

---

[1] Quoted in Jonny Baker and Cathy Ross’s book Imagining Mission With John Taylor (SCM Press, 2020).

[2] ‘The Grand Finale’ by Kim Rosen can be read or viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52RYaFN4sc

by Jo Cox-Darling.

Our bodies matter.  Our embodiedness and our woundedness. Where we carry our wounds in our bodies. How we display our scars, or not. And what this says about our humanity.

“If I showed you my scars, would that make me more human to you? If I paraded my degrees, would that make me more valuable to you? (…)  Does my body need a name for you to include it, learn from it, love it?” (Amy Kenny)[1]

In this post-covid world, we’ve become more aware of the impact of communal trauma on the body, and the on-going health implication of high cortisol hormones on the main organ systems. The Vagus nerve connects the base of the brain to the base of the spine, controls our body’s response to situations and releases adrenalin, cortisol, and dopamine into our system. It controls how we feel and, because it runs away from the brain rather than to it, it can determine what we do before we have time to think about why we are doing it.

The Vagus nerve regulates our heart-rate, skin and muscle sensations, respiratory rate, blood pressure and mood. When it over-reacts to stimuli, or encounters a traumatic incident – not least a global pandemic – it can go a bit wrong and lead to symptoms such as abdominal pain, dizziness, loss of appetite, chronic mood issues and sleep and breathing difficulties.

Psychologist Bessel Van Der Kolk is an expert in the science and psychology of the Vagus nerve, recognising that when people are in a traumatised state their body gets ‘stuck’ and they become incapable of giving or receiving love.  They become tetchy – displaying abusive patterns of behaviour – relationships get strained and everything just feels more difficult.

Such patterns of behaviour are prevalent within our church culture, as well as within our social systems. Van der Kolk says:

‘I wish I could separate trauma from politics, but as long as we continue to live in denial, and treat only trauma while ignoring its origins, we are bound to fail.  In today’s world, your postcode, even more than your genetic code determines whether you will lead a safe and healthy life.  (…) Poverty, unemployment, inferior schools, social isolation, substandard housing are all breeding grounds for trauma. Trauma breeds further trauma.  Hurt people hurt people.’ [2]

Despite being a breeding ground for triggers and traumas, the church is also one place where there is an opportunity to explore the spiritual and psychological practices which enable healing and wholehearted living. Practicing mindfulness, meditation or yoga can help to keep our Vagus nerve healthy by calming our nervous system. Singing may also stimulate the Vagus nerve as vibrations stimulate the parts of the in the back of the throat. Creativity and things that need the connection of body and brain – especially when our hands need to be connected to the outcome – forces the brain to make new synapse connections.

Breathe. Pray. Stretch. Sing. Learn. Laugh. These are all deeply embedded in spiritual formation and practice, as well as having parallels in Brene Brown’s work on courageous community.  The things that we need to get back on track are the things of rest and creativity. If hurt people hurt people, healed people can help people.

Questions for reflection:

• What does it look like for us to thrive – individually, as a society, and as a congregation?
• Where does our healing start from?
• What can you add into your routine that helps heal your parasympathetic nervous system?

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part two of a series of six articles. Also see The art of vulnerability.

---

[1] Amy Kenny, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

[2] Bessel Van Der Kolk, The body keeps the score p348

by Jo Cox-Darling.

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part one of six forthcoming articles.

The art of vulnerability

by Jo Cox-Darling.

“Wounded Wisdom” carries connotations of Henry Nouwen’s famous work The Wounded Healer.  Nouwen, and the now controversial Jean Vanier, have been responsible for a fundamental shift in pastoral theology, emphasising the importance of leadership being vulnerable and located amongst those who are marginalised for being different – rather than being the best of the best.

When military hierarchy are asked what sort of person succeeds in becoming a Navy Seal, the response is that there are groups of people who regularly don’t!

• Star college athletes who’ve never faced anything tough
• Tough guys wanting to prove that they are tough
• Leaders who constantly delegate their work to others

The people who get into the Navy Seals are those who, when they are exhausted, still dig deep inside themselves and find enough energy to help others. Research discovered that it is service, not strength and intelligence, which makes the best of the best.

Might our discipleship journey be similar? As a Church we constantly tell ourselves that we’re tired, ageing, declining, and dying, but what if that is only part of the story? What if our story is one of servant-hearted, wounded, wisdom deep within the Kingdom of God?

Dare we dig deep, and from the place of our pain, vulnerability – perhaps even fear and shame – find something of Spirit which enables us to serve the other… whomever that might be.

As Henri Nouwen writes in ‘The Wounded Healer’: “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish… Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

Elsewhere, Brene Brown, whose research has been grounded in places of genocide, division, racism, and abuse survival, argues that in order to be fully human, creative and courageous – people need to share their stories of vulnerability and shame.  She says,

‘shame happens between people and it heals people…shame loses power when its spoken…Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it… Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light… The willingness to tell our stories, feel the pain of others, and stay genuinely connected (…) is not something we can do half-heartedly.  To practice courage, compassion, and connection is to look at life and the people around us, and say I’m all in.’

To live in the power of wounded wisdom leads us to a place of vulnerability where we get to know some of our scars and traumas – not to poke or to fix – but to hold with tenderness, and the invitation to curating a shared space of wholeheartedness, together.  To provide to the world an antidote to disconnection and brokenness which leads us into a place of authenticity, intuition, creativity, play and rest.

Wounded wisdom is tender work, asking much of our selves and of each other.  It also asks much of the God we know, and risks losing sight of that altogether.  This journey can be experienced as much as God’s presence as it is in God’s absence. 

It is possible to be so wounded and broken that faith seems utterly pointless. But these moments of desolation and disillusion can also be the catalyst for a whole new discovery of God. Through the wounds, the breaks, the pain, God is present and can be discovered – and this wounded wisdom can mean that the world is never the same again.

Questions for reflection:

• What are your core values, and what is sacred for you?
• What woundedness are you bringing into the room?  Where do you find wisdom?  And how might they be interconnected?
• What does it mean for us to be ‘all in’ to our lives? 

by Leslie Newton.

Across many parts of the church today we find ourselves navigating a landscape marked by fatigue. Congregations feel stretched; buildings often carry a heavy weight of responsibility; ministers and lay leaders often speak of holding more than they can sustain. This leads to us too often coming to think of church as something we must hold together — something that depends on our effort, energy, and resilience.

Yet in scripture, the church is born not as an institution to be maintained but as a movement of grace, a people called and sent. In Acts, communities take shape in homes and marketplaces, in synagogues and by riversides, discovering again and again that the Spirit goes ahead of them. The church grows where grace is recognised and joined, not where it is anxiously preserved.

This invites us to rediscover the church as a living ecology — a landscape of worship, discipleship, hospitality, and mission.

Here the historic Methodist Circuit offers a distinctive and timely gift.

From its earliest days, Methodism saw that church takes many forms. People gathered wherever the gospel stirred life — in fields and foundries, kitchens and chapels, class meetings and preaching houses. What united them was not uniformity but a shared pattern of grace-shaped life: discipleship in community, mutual encouragement, a life steeped in the means of grace, and a commitment to mission. The Circuit emerged as the scale at which this diversity could be woven into one body — a community of communities held in connexion. It was a primary place of belonging, oversight, discernment, and shared identity. The Circuit was never simply administrative; it was the framework through which a movement could remain a movement.

To re-imagine this gift today, it helps to name three faces of church life:

1. People – the community of disciples gathered in Christ.
2. Structures – the patterns that hold and sustain our shared life.
3. Places – the physical spaces where ministry, hospitality, and presence take root.

Trouble arises when one of these dominates: when buildings set the agenda, when structures harden, or when community turns inward. But when people, structures, and places are held in a balanced, relational tension, the church becomes open, hopeful, and responsive to God’s leading.

This is precisely the scale at which the Circuit has unique capacity.

The Circuit is not simply a layer of governance. At its best, it is — or could be — the ecclesial space where different expressions of church are discerned, nurtured, encouraged, and generously held together. It invites us to attend to the wider whole rather than only to the needs of any one congregation. It prompts questions such as:

• Where is grace already emerging, and how do we bless it?

• Which buildings might be re-imagined for hospitality, community presence, prayer, or justice?

• Where is pioneering possible, and who is be called to lead it?

• How might inherited and emerging expressions sustain rather than compete with one another?

In this sense, the Circuit becomes the curator of a blended ecology — a garden home to multiple forms of life. It creates ‘spaces for grace’ where stability and risk, familiarity and experimentation, tradition and discovery, are held together. It frees local churches from feeling they must be everything and instead supports them in being faithfully themselves within a shared landscape.

To see the Circuit this way is to reclaim its missional purpose. Not to abandon what is cherished, but to receive our heritage as a resource for what the Spirit is growing next.

The Circuit is a scale of church that has the potential to notice these threads and weave them. To rediscover the Circuit as a curator of grace is to remember that the church is a living tapestry — continually being re-stitched and woven by the Spirit.

by Catrin Harland-Davies.

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19)

These words, written around two and a half millennia ago to a nation in forced exile in a foreign land, have been echoing round my head over the last couple of months.

Perhaps this is because September and October are always a time of newness for me, and this year more than most. It is the start of the connexional year, bringing new colleagues and, on occasion, a new appointment for me. Much of my ministry has been in a Higher Education setting, as a university chaplain and now as a theological educator, and so the new academic year brings with it new faces. And this year, as well as the usual entirely new cohort of students, we have new colleagues making up half the Ministerial Formation team (both Anglican and Methodist) here at Queen’s – including a move into a new role for me.

Such a high proportion of new people within a team is a joy and a challenge. It challenges us to reexamine old habits and practices, and to confront new ideas. It invites us to answer difficult questions about why we do certain things in certain ways – and sometimes to realise that we don’t know the answer! And it forces us to recognise that we are all changed by changes around us. It should, of course, be the case that even one new member does all these things, but too often we can just expect one person to assimilate and accept the culture of the place as it is. But when as many in the team are new as are established, we don’t have that luxury. We have to face the challenge of becoming a new community. And this challenge is, if we allow it to be, a joy. It is an opportunity to let go of habits that have become a burden, and to embark on an adventure of discovery. And no – I didn’t say that was easy! But it can be joyous.

The words I quoted at the start of this article were written by the prophet known as ‘Second Isaiah’, and they are written to give comfort to a community living in captivity, a long way from home, deported there by a hostile, occupying power. They are words of comfort to forced migrants, whose homes and lives have been destroyed. And they continue to bring comfort to those facing difficult endings. They are cherished – and sometimes feared – by those facing the end of a relationship or a way of life, those losing their employment, those facing death, those forced from their homes. They are cherished for the possibility they bring of life, love and future. And they are feared for the fact that a ‘new thing’ involves the loss of the old.

That is, of course, a very different situation from Queen’s earlier in the summer. The change and newness of this September wasn’t a message of rebirth to a community suffering. But we had just gone through a season of goodbyes, which is often hard. So a season of welcomes and of new opportunities does bring a sense of refreshment.  We, too, mourning the fact that valued colleagues had moved on and that familiar ways had come to an end, can find joy and hope in the fact that God is in the new beginnings, the new ways, the new opportunities – even if it does also bring its challenges. When we want to hold onto what is past, God says to us, “I am about to do a new thing, and it may bring new hope, new life, new life.”

But some things feel desperately in need of change which doesn’t come. In our world, and sometimes in our own lives, we cry out for change. We see seemingly endless wars and conflict. We see no end to poverty and inequality. We see prejudice and injustice, which seems to increase rather than die away. And even when the news brings ceasefire, the release of captives, joyous reunions, the return from exile, it is hard to shake off the suspicion that it can’t last – that this is just the latest pause in the endless rounds of hostility. In our individual lives, we may feel the relentless path of poverty, pain, despair, loneliness, fear, and see no possibility of a better tomorrow.

Then, more than ever, God’s words need to be heard. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” So often, the answer is, “No, God. No, I don’t perceive it. I can’t see it, I can’t hear it, and I can’t believe in it.” But that’s also, perhaps, partly why God created us in community. When I can see no hope or future in my life, when I can’t begin to perceive even the possibility of a new thing – that’s when my family, friends and community of faith can hold that light of hope for me. The famous tale of the footprints in the sand speak of seeing only one set of prints when times were tough, because that’s when Christ carried us. But maybe there are many sets of footprints in those times, for all those walking with us, and maybe helping Christ to carry us – or at least helping us to carry some of our burdens.

Wherever you are right now – whether you are embarking on exciting new beginnings, mourning the passing of the old, or longing for change that seems never to come – may God’s new thing in your life be a blessing, a challenge and a joy.