Theology Everywhere

by Sue Ann Mak.

If more people had grown up reading this children’s book, would we reject—or at least question and challenge—biblical inerrancy and infallibility, and a literal reading of the text?   

In turn, would there be less harm and abuse inflicted on vulnerable groups and individuals in the “name of God”?

Would we have prevented the current rise of Christian nationalism, the growing far-right propaganda around the world, and the ongoing anti-immigration rhetoric?

Would Christianity be more trustworthy and admired by people of other faiths?  

These questions have circled my mind as I read the illustrated Storybook Bible, God’s Stories As Told By God’s Children (2025).

I am in no way suggesting that this children’s book has the miraculous power to resolve urgent, disconcerting issues around the globe. It is not so much about the content in the book as it is the symbol and significance that this book project represents. This book’ blurb claims it is a “children’s Bible that takes its scholarship as seriously as its storytelling”. The stimulating combination of scholarship and story poses some larger question regarding hermeneutics and its consequences—good and bad. As one who only began the painful and confusing work of deconstructing and reconstructing theological beliefs and assumptions as an adult in my thirties, I see ways in which this book’s scholarly-yet-unintimidating approach to the Bible should be appreciated and adopted.

1. Transparency about Problems in the Bible

This children’s book does not shy away from problems that arise throughout the Bible—the authors (biblical scholars, theologians, and clergy) directly call out inconsistencies in the biblical records, including: instances of explicit deceit and lying; wrongful actions of enslavement, oppression, and partiality; and the sheer lack of women’s names and voices. The notorious passages in the Bible are not sidestepped, and the complexities of compilation and canonisation are openly discussed.

The offenses and deception of biblical characters as well as the discrepancies and contradictions in the biblical records serve as stark reminders that the Word of God did not “fall out of heaven” but is the product of many human hands and voices through many centuries. Therefore, there is no basis to claim that the Bible is pure, accurate, inerrant, and free from error. A commitment to inerrancy can lead to “bibliolatry”, which is defined as “an attitude of people who focus so much attention on the Bible as a book to be venerated and idolized in itself”[1]—in other words, the Bible has become God in place of God.

2. Variety and Safety

The stories in this children’s book are written and drawn by over 60 authors and illustrators, which means there is a wide variety of approaches, lenses, and interpretations.  The contributors consist of a wide diversity of people, many of whom do not fall into the categories of white, male, Euro-American, able-bodied, heteronormative, which naturally translates into exegetical views that are neither normative nor dominant. With a broad range of approaches and backgrounds, readers of God’s Stories will not be stuck in an echo chamber that merely repeats what one already thinks and believes.   

This book also emphasises safety. Stories are presented in a way that encourages the reading of scripture as a form of safeguarding.[2] Authors communicate clearly that the slavery, oppression, and harm of bodies observed in the biblical narrative are 100% wrong. Where there are weak, silent, and marginalised characters, authors deliberately write from their perspective and about their plight. When we begin to ask, “for whom is the text problematic?”; “how is a passage causing harm?”; and “who are being silenced or excluded in a narrative?” we are reading as safeguarding.

3. Contextual and Colourful

The very first chapter in God’s Stories is about the Babylonian exile in Jeremiah 29, not the expected Genesis 1 creation account. It is intentionally and brilliantly placed at the start of the book to explain the historical context within which biblical stories were passed down and compiled. Even the inerrantists will agree that context is very important for careful exegesis of a passage.

Because the stories are contextual, the characters are colourful. Jesus is not a white man with flowy blonde hair and blue eyes; neither are the other characters. The people on the pages range from light to dark brown, which accurately reflects the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean origin and context of the Bible. A serious contemplation of the skin colour of the Son of God and other biblical characters should end all white supremacist tendencies and promote the celebration of racial diversity and justice!

When some or all three of the above hermeneutical traits are not practised, the Bible can be used to uphold Christian nationalism, toxic masculinity, anti-refugee and immigration sentiments, homophobia, and to cover up racial discrimination and all kinds of abuses. However, when the above is demonstrated, I see how the Bible can be read in life-giving, wholesome ways from a young age.

American feminist biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, who refers to certain violent stories in the Bible as “Texts of Terror”, asserts the following about the Bible: 

To love this book is not to claim it is without faults, imperfections, violence, and evil. To the contrary, to love this book is to understand that it sets before us life and death, blessing and curse…. And to love this book is to understand that it places upon us, readers and listeners alike, the responsibility to choose rightly.[3]

My questions in the beginning of this piece are, of course, one-dimensional and oversimplified, because there are other factors—not least psychological and socio-economic ones—that shape a reader’s interpretation of Scripture. Nonetheless, I believe a responsible interpreter of Scripture who calls out the problems and inconsistencies in the Biblical text, is open to a variety of exegetical voices and approaches, takes seriously the context within which the passage was written, reads with a liberative and safeguarding approach, and argues for positions and applications that do good to all creation, will contribute immensely to the recovery and reconciliation of broken individuals and families and fragmented communities and nations. Whilst I do not have a child at home to read God’s Stories As Told By God’s Childrenwith, I look forward to more children and adults reading it and/or approaching the Bible differently because of it. Ultimately, every story and record in the Bible can be used for boon or bane; good or harm; human flourishing or languishing—the choice is ours.  

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[1] Arthur Patzia and Anthony Petrotta, 2002. Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies, p.21 (italics original).

[2] Special thanks to Rachel Starr for first introducing to me the phrase “reading scripture as a form of safeguarding” and consequently demonstrating it consistently in her interpretative work.

[3] Phyllis Trible, 2000. “Take Back the Bible”. Review and Expositor 97, p.431.

by Tom Stuckey

Theodicy is the problem of reconciling the active presence of an omnipotent, just and loving God with a world torn apart by horrendous evil and suffering. The traditional explanation has been the ‘free-will defence’ which argues that the presence of evil is the consequence of giving human beings free will. Human beings rather than God are responsible for the mess. This defence, even when re-worked by Plantinga, does not satisfy me.[1] 

John Polkinghorne, in Science and Christian Belief stated that God must bear his share of the responsibility for the existence of evil because ‘he is the one who ultimately sets the boundaries in which we live and move and have our being’. In the very act of creating the universe, divine self-limitation is necessary for the bestowal of the gift of freedom upon creation, but what if God’s self-restraint is excessive; permitting the emergence of the wild and unrestrained?[2] Ian Bradley, in his book The Power of Sacrifice, argues that the first creation story tells of the existence of wild watery forces of chaos which were later to flood the earth (Gen.1.1). Although tamed ‘they never lose their unpredictable power to upset the order and harmony of creation’. He also suggests that chaos possibly exists because of the failure of God’s previous attempts at creating.[3] Mess and creativity belong together as any imaginative artist will tell you, but what is the nature of ‘the mess’ out of which God creates? How toxic is it? Nigel Calder addressing the theodicy issue in a BBC lecture Violent Universe imagines God creating in the youthful exuberance of play. Maybe the energies of God’s Spirit are so explosive that the chaotic is released alongside the symbiotic.[4]

However one tries to explain it, there is tragedy here! Wheat and tares are mysteriously sown into the very structure of the universe in such proportions that evil is able to thrive more rapidly than goodness. Camus, speaking of the enigma of evil and suffering, may be hitting the right note when he says, ‘man is not entirely to blame; it was not he who started history.’[5]

I believe that prayers of protest and anger against God are therefore quite appropriate in such a broken world as ours. The Bible is not devoid of these as seen in some of the Psalms and the books of Job and Lamentations.[6]

Yet this suggestion of a dynamic of evil within God’s creation is contradicted by the Biblical refrain that God saw what he had made and it was not only good but ‘very good’ (Gen.1.31). The Hebrew word tov does, however, have a wide range on meanings (Gen.3.6) none of which suggests that ‘good’ equates with ‘perfect’. This does not imply that God has a moral defect; or that God has done an inadequate job. Rather it raises the issue of whether we can trust such a God who, from a philosophical point of view, may not have created ‘the best of all possible worlds’.

How does God respond to such a charge and restore our faith in him as Creator?  God does this by ‘choosing’ to hold himself accountable for the all the tragic defects which permeate his creation. He refuses to exclude himself or excuse himself from ultimate responsibility. For love’s sake he embraces the failed responsibility of human beings, and in an act of divine ‘repentance and promise’[7]  becomes the Judge who is Judged in our place.[8]  ‘God makes his own the being of man under the curse of contradiction, but in order to do away with it, God suffers it’. ‘He acts as Lord over this contradiction even as He subjects Himself to it.’[9] So grace, faith and hope are revealed in the ‘pain-love’ of God. This Triune God freely and graciously takes within himself/herself the ultimate responsibility for everything; both our sin and the possible failures within himself. This gives us the confidence to say with Job, ‘Though he slay me yet will I trust him (Job.13.15).’

So in recurrent acts of grace God scatters sparks of divinity into his evolving creation and, through the Spirit, leaves living echoes of his presence embedded in the moving matrix of history. This God is not like the entropic Humpty Dumpty of the Western nursery rhyme, always flying apart in a great measure of disorder. God is not split off from himself; that is our condition, rather we are witnessing here the pain-love of God as, in the words of Helmut Gollwitzer, ‘God himself is forsaken by God, God himself rejects himself’.[10]

The song of joy at the birth of the cosmos is also a cry of pain (Job 3). So creation became for God a moment of acute self awareness and discovery. Tangible good and evil came into existence and God has chosen to make himself accountable for everything. Sacrificial love lies at the very heart of the personhood of the Trinity from the very beginning.

The crucified Word made flesh was displayed in time on Golgotha’s hill; at the end of time is to be celebrated in the liberation of all things. This is also same Word – even Jesus – who ‘was slain from the foundation of the world’ (Rev.13.8).

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[1] God, Freedom & Evil, 1974.

[2] Polkinghorne, 1994, p.81.

[3] Bradley, 1995, p.66 & p.71.

[4] Nigel Calder, 1969.

[5] Camus,Vintage Books, 1956, p.297.

[6] Stuckey, Covid-19 God’s Wake-up Call, p.15f & 94f.

[7] C. S. Song, Third-Eye Theology, 1980, p.70f.  Song looks at creation from an Asian rather than a Western perspective. His book reflects on the pain-love of God and identifies the rainbow of Gen.9.16 as the covenant sign of God’s repentance.

[8] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, 1961, p.222.

[9] ibid., p.185.

[10] Quoted by J. Moltmann, The Future of Creation, 1979, p.65.

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.

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[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?

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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?