Theology Everywhere

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.

by George Bailey.

Last week I enjoyed a long two day walk on the ‘Camino Ingles’, a pilgrim route officially recognised as a section of the Camino de Santiago. It begins at Finchale Abbey, a few miles north of Durham, because that is where many early 12th century pilgrims from the area would go first, before embarking on their journey to Spain, in order to see the resident hermit, Godric. After his own wanderings across Europe, initially for money and adventure, and later, inspired by a visionary meeting with St Cuthbert, as a follower of Christ, Godric had discerned a new call instead to anchor himself in one place. Granted a plot of land by the monks in Durham he stayed for decades, dedicated to prayer and to be available for counselling seekers and pilgrims – Godric exemplified the life of a hermit, anchored to one site.

This contrasting conjunction of pilgrimage and anchoring, both in the life story of Godric, and in the experience of pilgrims, including now myself, opens insights into the way that these two vocations are both important in our conception of discipleship. This relates to two important aspects of the Christian conception of God. On the one hand, God is not confined by any limitation and God’s Spirit is active throughout and within all creation. On the other hand, God is uniquely located in Jesus Christ, divine and human together in one particular bodily individual. We might suppose that the experience of pilgrimage relates most closely to the everywhere-ness of God and that of anchoring relates to the particular located-ness of God. I think, though, it may be the other way round.

As Rodney Aist argues in his excellent theological analysis of pilgrimage, the practice is not about an aimless drifting through general ‘space’, but is instead defined by a spiritual desire to reach towards a particular ‘place’.[1] Pilgrimage affirms and connects people to the vital divine importance of the material reality of specific destinations. Though in Roman Catholic theology this has often been focused especially on objects, in the form of relics, the relevance of a particular destination and a chosen, often communally defined, route are also central characteristic features of the Protestant experience of pilgrimage. By leaving our usual place of residence and travelling through space towards a specific destination, we celebrate the way in which God is encountered in particular places, limited by physical boundaries, time bound and unique. The incarnation in Jesus Christ most supremely reveals this, and pilgrimage is an exploration of our desire to meet Christ in the real singular moments and places of our lives.

The vocation of a hermit, and even more so of a formally recognised anchorite, confined a human life to one location, but through this becomes a witness to the eternal immensity of God who is not confined and whose Spirit is active throughout all space and time. The decision to practice ministry and mission by staying in one place, to pray and talk only with people who choose to visit, is an act of faith in God whose work is not restricted by human material limitations. Another medieval anchorite, Julian of Norwich, is shown in prayer a round ball the size of a hazelnut, and God reveals there is contained in this all that is made. The intense focus on life in only the small place of one room proclaims faith in the immense God who is real everywhere: ‘It needeth us to have knowing of the littleness of creatures and to naughten [hold as nought] all thing that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade.’[2]

In scripture these twin themes are both affirmed – for example, in Genesis, Abraham is called to a life of pilgrimage, which heads eventually towards a particular place and vocation for the people of God; in the gospel of Luke, Zechariah is called to a life anchored in the temple, which is visited eventually by the Christ who is to be the light of God for all the world. In the missionary development of the Acts of the Apostles, we see both vocations working together, some who stay rooted with faith communities in each location and some who travel between them and then on to new places. We also need these complementary vocations in the Church. Some are called to stay and some are called to go; we need both anchors and pilgrims. In our own discipleship there may be different seasons for each vocation to be at the fore. Although pilgrimage is increasingly part of contemporary discipleship practice, perhaps recognition of some people’s vocation for anchoring a community, committing to a locality for the long term, needs to be celebrated afresh.

In Methodism it is too easy, and in my view, unhelpful, to too closely relate these twin vocations to the distinction between ordained ministry and everyone else’s ministry. For ordained Methodists, ‘itinerancy’ does not mean constantly relocating, but obedience to the Church’s discernment of how God is calling ministry to be shaped – which sometimes means a decision to stay. In my experience many others in church life are more mobile than the ordained, responding to professional and family vocations which require relocation to live elsewhere. Many indeed move between countries, following the call of God to a new life, or escaping crisis and seeking refuge. In these experiences, we long to see the work of God’s Spirit who is active with all people in all places, as well as the reality of Christ’s presence, uniquely revealed in Jesus, and so affirming each loving human encounter. This is central to what it means to be the Church – those who are rooted in local places, ready to welcome and offer hospitality, meeting those who travel and seek – anchors and pilgrims in solidarity.

---

[1] Rodney Aist, Pilgrim Spirituality: Defining Pilgrimage Again for the First Time, (Cascade Books, 2022). chapter 13.

[2] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, translated by Elizabeth Spearing. Penguin: 1998. p.47.

by Angie Allport.

The UK Government is proposing the introduction of digital identity cards. Whilst the issue has sparked off yet another ‘for’ or ‘against’ debate, my thoughts have turned to the idea of identity, which, in itself, is a multi-layered, slippery concept. Who would people say you are? What defines you: gender, job, family, nationality, faith? Many use pseudo-identities for their online presence.  This can provide a level of protection through anonymity, but it also raises a question-mark about authentic identity. 

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is (Matthew 16:15; Mark 8:27; Luke 9:18). According to the disciples, opinions are divided between him being John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Jesus then asks for their personal opinions, as though copying what others think is insufficient. As is always the case, we do not know how Jesus asked these questions, what tone he used. Was it a casual enquiry or was there a hint of challenge in his voice?

Unsurprisingly, Peter is reportedly the one who jumps in first.  He proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah.  This connects with all the religious hopes and predictions of a great leader sent by God from the family of King David – the one who will set the people free. The moment when Peter is willing to take the risk of saying this, of expressing his relationship with Jesus in what at the time would have been controversial terms, is the moment when he demonstrates both his faith in Jesus and his willingness to be involved in Jesus’ mission. In Matthew’s account, Peter is then given a new identifier, he is to be ‘the rock’, the foundation of the Church.

Peter ‘the rock’ is still Simon, son of Jonah, a flesh-and-blood person living in relationship with others. He is not a simple, one-dimensional character with only one function in the Christian story. It was this ‘rock’ of the Church who was to go on and deny three times knowing Jesus before rediscovering his call to witness. When we become Christians, we are no longer atheists, agnostics, non-beliers (or whatever other identifier we might use), but we are still a flesh and blood person living in relationship with others. We can still mess up but know ourselves forgiven and valued by God. As Peter found, recognising Jesus transforms us and brings clarity to our identity and calling.

We live in a society which is suspicious of people speaking about their faith, but Christians are nonetheless called to witness in the world. Just as a member of parliament belongs to a particular party yet is required to work on behalf of all their constituents, whatever their politics, so Christians – informed by the Church that nurtures them – must speak of God’s love and care for all people and our planet. How do you talk about Jesus to people outside church? Given the secularisation of society, we can no longer assume religious knowledge or opinion, meaning that many people are actually very interested to know what and why Christians believe; it’s the Christians who are often too afraid to say anything. Indeed, do people know if you are a Christian?

Each person is called to a fresh assessment of Jesus, not to copy what others think. That is what makes faith real for them. Jesus calls us to recognise his true, God-filled identity, to emulate it and to share it. This is modelled in the account of Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4:1-42). She (Photina in some traditions) encountered Jesus, wondered if he was the Messiah and invited the people to come and see the man who had told her everything about herself. They came to believe not because they copied her, but because they had their own encounter with Jesus and were able to identify him as the Saviour of the world for themselves.

When you think about how Jesus shapes your life, can you condense those thoughts to just a few words should someone ask you who Jesus is? Meditate on those words or other words so that they become part of you, so that if and when the subject comes up in conversation, you can testify to your experience of Jesus and the difference he has made to your identity.

by Simon Edwards.

“Where shall we go on holiday this year?” In our family we start asking this question long before holidays are upon us. We want time to delve into all of the available places, to think about what activities we would like to do, and see where that leads us. The odd thing is that we almost always end up going somewhere that we have already been. Our children value the predictability that comes with knowing what the campsite looks like, which food vans will turn up on site each day and so on. There is great value for them in an ‘old’ place, one they know, one they can picture as they look forward to the holiday. Yet, each time we visit an ‘old’ place, we have a new experience. We may pitch the caravan in a different area of the site, and there are always new people camping nearby. We encounter a mix of the familiar and the new at the same time, and that seems to be what we need.

I sometimes wonder if we talk or think about newness too much in the life of faith and in the life of the church, or if we talk or think about newness in the wrong way. Does everything have to be new, without any link to what has come before to be missional? Is newness always about starting from nothing? New Places for New People is an important strand of God for All, and across the Connexion there are all kinds of initiatives that are growing and exciting. Sometimes, though, I hear people ask “what about old places?”, I worry that we can become so obsessed with creating something new that we fall into what Michael Jinkins calls ‘the hyperactivity of panic’ which he believes ‘manifests itself in clutching for any and every programmatic solution…in the desperate hope that survival is just another project or organisational chart away’ (1999, p.9). Do we cling to the hope that something new is what the world wants from the church? Is maintaining the old and familiar, or clutching for newness the easy option? Can newness be found in renewal that embraces both old and new?

A growing part of my work in circuit ministry is in the oversight of pioneering work. One such space, The Haven, is an ‘old’ place, a church building, rich with stories of faith grown and shared. The society ceased to meet a few years ago, and after hard work and prayer, The Haven came into being. Each Sunday morning there is still a broadly traditional act of worship with a small group of people. It is similar to the worship that has occurred every Sunday morning for more than a hundred years in that space. However, there are also less familiar moments of worship. For example, in the garden at the rear as a small group weed and plant, a ray of sunlight shines on the ground, and the conversation turns to the presence of God. Both old and new exist together in that space. The emerging community is embracing both the familiar and the new, learning to dwell in a known and familiar place, while encountering fresh experiences of faith and life each day in different ways. It is discovering the richness in tradition and innovation, old and new, and recognising how these diverse expressions of faith can support, challenge, and deepen one another.

In The Haven there is a mixed ecology of ‘old’ and ’new’ living alongside one another, not fighting for superiority, but offering different perspectives, creating a new experience as each learns to live together in a shared space. Mixed ecology is not just a way in which we can explain that different communities in different contexts can remain connected to each other, though that is true, it is more than just a way to explain that different communities engage in different activities or worship in different ways, though that that is also true. It is also the way in which God’s people live together in one space, sharing and growing in faith together. In his 2012 work, John Walker proposed that mixed ecology of fresh expressions and traditional church was only seen as an interim measure (2012, p.217) born out of necessity, and would fade away as ‘new’ communities grew in confidence. I believe that a mixed ecology is a fundamental part of the church, it is the way that the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ coexist, always bringing a new experience as life is lived.

The church must resist the temptation to chase the kind of newness that always means starting over, as a measure of missional success. While initiatives like New Places for New People are exciting and vital, we must also reimagine ‘old places’ where faith has long been nurtured. The church needs a mixed ecology, a space where ‘old’ and ‘new’ coexist, in mutual enrichment. The vitality of the church lies in the interplay between the old and the new, where both contribute to a living, growing, transformative, faith community, where all can find their voice and their home.

We will holiday in the caravan again this year, we will again travel to a familiar place and yet we will experience some newness. Perhaps that is a vision of a mixed ecology too?

Jinkins, M., 1999. The Church Faces Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Walker, J., 2012. Testing Fresh Expressions. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.