Rev elations

Imagine that someone has sat you down, perhaps a new friend, and says so ‘tell me your life story’. Where do you start and what do you say? What can you share; what do you want to share? How do you present yourself to another, do you re-write yourself as a hero , or perhaps a victim :   is your life a comedy or a tragedy , or is it too boring so that you need to invent some better details? Are you afraid that you will be judged or are you ashamed of details in your past? Perhaps not, perhaps your story is an acceptable one , one that lives up to so called societal expectations. Well, have a think about your life-story so far. The demoniac (one possessed by many demons) in Luke’s Gospel 8:26-39 has cause to cast himself as a victim. His identity obliterated by his occupiers, outcast, living in the tombs, chained up for his own safety, naked and self-harming. When Jesus meets this man he can’t even address him personally, it is the demons he has to speak to. This extreme examp...

How does a feminist married to a stay-at home Dad relate to Father’s Day? What does being a Father mean in contemporary society and what can the Christian God, who we so regularly address as Father, tell us about Fathering? This is a difficult and complex subject to approach for so many reasons. Human fathers leave, abuse, die, love, hate, nurture and encourage their children. None of us has a neutral relationship to the concept of fatherhood and our own particular experiences of our own fathers, or their absence will have had a deep impact on our lives. Think about your own relationship to the concept of fathering, based on your own personal experiences. What would an ideal Father be like? Are there memories of hurt and failure that you can ask God to heal, today? Perhaps you are a Father who is struggling to live up to that ideal? God meets each of us in the middle of our messy and difficult lives and gives us that stability and continuing presence that no earthly Fat...

I was on retreat last week and I was powerfully reminded of our human tendency to be called away from the most important things in life, by mundane and unimportant things. The best illustration of this is predictably our fascination with technology. The mobile phone ring, the beep when you get a text message, email, notification…….   And that instant desire to respond, to look, and to see what you are being called to. It can by its noisy insistence - that it is the most important thing in our life- call us way from proper priorities. Then on retreat I was presented with a disciplined community that had at its centre the call of God; and for them it was the bell that called them to prayer. That bell ‘re-called’ them consistently through the day back, always back, to their essential reliance upon God. It made me realise that I let too many distractions call me away from God. When I got back from retreat there was a small miracle that brought this all together. Th...