Tag Archives: identity

Am I to be baptised again?

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I visited a London Chapel recently with a couple of Filipino Friends.

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ihs77-1b1b185

It was a good day. The meeting was like stepping back into the noughties but more formalized into a sort of liturgy of recognisable movements. God spoke as we sat beside the river. By river I mean the place people meet. Here’s a clue as to where we were.

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The message wasn’t in the medium which was very slick by the way. It was in the faithfulness of the listeners.

For myself, one thing was the realization that in these situations I feel watched and the need to perform. Too aware of my own presence, not sure that anything was actual worship on my part. Sitting quietly outside on the stone seats waiting, before the service, gave me pause and a great sense of peace as if I was in a holy place. A small mercy I could not achieve in the service, though I tried. The peace was lost as the service began.

Come on church, people-together what are we going to do? We need to work hard on this. Life teaches us that nothing comes easily. Out of hardship we grow or are destroyed. There’s no formula; our history, the way things have been, should not determine our future. We have to work. We can’t change what has gone, but we can secure ourselves in what we are. Deal with the past in a meaningful way and step forward.

Our pilgrimage will continue with the wounds and the marks of life. But only if we let them be healed into new life will they be glorified. And yes, visible in forms and buildings but not the main thing.

In Jesus, all is well and all will be made well as sister Julian says. Brother Augustine or was it Loyola or neither, says when before God He is all that matters but in our work it is we that matter. Sister Teresa tells us we are God’s hands and feet. Paul in his despair leans on an understanding in Philippians 2:12-13 that teaches us to work out our salvation with God in fear and trembling safe in the knowledge that it is God who works in us.

So, what we going to do? Gaze at our navels? Write books? Keep on keeping on?

Stepping out in twos and threes, maybe we could walk our neighbourhoods and listen to those who invite us to listen. Just listen; become active in works of charity; welcome others into our space and be open to them; build a practice together that holds stillness, praise, and prayer and meet around a shared table with bread and wine. Maybe investigate baptism and agree a rule together and live it. We could make sure the rule is open to all doctrines and that every sinner willing to be transformed is welcomed by it. Let us be chaste in our relationships, rich in generosity and obedient to the word within, acknowledging the person of Jesus, as he’s revealed to the ones we meet, to be the way, the truth, and the life not a book of standing orders.

Sometimes it feels hard to be authentic as the past clouds our minds, to walk and comfortably be in your own skin. Usually, it is because we’re not. I’m not comfortable as I am. I feel watched as I have said, and everything feels like a performance. I feel pretty lost to be honest.

Purpose is very vulnerable thing to have. I’m not sure purpose is a good thing. It takes you away from the here and now of being present to whatever is before you. It makes you make rules and lists as I just have done. A programme. I mean purpose in terms of having a cause, something external to yourself to strive towards. Of course, being present to the here and now is a purpose and carries you through the day, but I hope you know what I mean, let’s not lose the message in the means.

This morning I got up, wrote a letter, and posted it. Each evening, I’ve been asked, “What have you planned for tomorrow?” This is only a question because I’m on a break from school, and there are no calls on my time, no deadlines, no need to prepare, time to get on top of things. I’m being paid to rest. I earned to rest. That’s a good thing about teaching, you get a long break. But Soon I will not be working. In 5 years time my job will be done and presumably I will have earned enough to carry me through sickness and to death. Well, what then? I don’t play golf. I have no roses to tend. I still dream of finding community, a neighbourhood, a new start something like you read in the list above.

I realise I have used the technical word baptism as a way of belonging. It’s in my list! For me, the word carries the message of cleansing and flowing love. It carries a message of being buried and raised to new life; carries a story of the journey through to a new life. It’s a universal, available to all. And where there is water, there’s a promise of a newness; baptism embodies belonging to an ancient past and a new start. Am I to be baptized again? Is this the way the Spirit is blowing?

Well, here’s a poem and a picture to exercise your right brain after all that left brain.

Am I to be baptized again?
Have I journeyed this far to die?
A new life, or tired belonging.

 What am I called to?

I am encrusted.
Covered in life’s dust
Protecting me.

All hangs heavy, domed, enclosed with
No horizon. How can I look beyond if
There’s no rim of hope?

Oh, to be washed again, be
Authentic with a future,
To be me, where
Hope forms, moulds.

My eyes are open to see what the Lord would show to me.
I need a vision that will not fail,
A horizon to explore.

This is my prayer to be fulfilled in the daily
Today.

A picture I painted of Notley Road looking towards a local church in the centre of Braintree.

Crocheted Jesus

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A Poem

From a journal entry of October 2023, written in Wales, I wrote the following deeply thought through statement of where I was at. Two years later I am still moved by the thoughts captured.

Teifi Estuary from road to Poppit

Jesus is more than the figure on the page. Jesus is and was and will be; a flow where the future meets the now and the past is revealed. What’s on the page is a flicker of what was experienced, heard and touched; a taking account of what had been. Jesus on the page reflects the simple men who wrote from their experience of an event that wrenched their hearts. All is love, all is trust in love, love of all and forgiveness. Salvation. A saving from who we are.

Jesus points away from himself. He is the problem. He points to the Father and enjoins us to see only the Father in him. He is but bread, he is simply wine- broken and poured out in a time splitting event. God is revealed in the event of the cross- rent- only a man- rent- son of Mary- rent.

Where does Jesus become real? In the words and recollections, the dogma, the mystical truth that divides? Grace calls us to simplicity. Jesus is the person of God revealed so that we may perfectly know God. Jesus is the incarnate reality that reveals we are all one in God. This union is real, experienced and heals. The attestation is not the person- the stories aren’t the man. The words are not his words. They express an encounter with the divine, an impression of a transfiguring presence. This was the man who revealed deity- not the son of a virgin, not a healer or miracle worker, not a resurrected King but God.

If there is truth in the words, it is because Jesus is already known. He is already there, within, seen and heard.

Beach at Aberaeron

New home, new year

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We have been in Braintree since November. It’s my first time living on a fairly busy road. But at its start is the river Brain and you walk up from it to our house. So going into town involves walking down to the river and up to the church, then market square. On the horizon are the spire, water towers, and white of the old weaving sheds.

We moved here to live in a town. We have found the convenience of being able to walk to the shops, the doctor and the chemist, and catch a bus. We have also found the beauty of a town plan that has grown up around a river and the countryside. At the top of the road we can walk into open countryside.

So, looking up the hill having visited the fantastic library, two tiny brown birds caught my attention as they at first landed on bushes near the river and then excitedly flew into the woods. I’m not good enough to identify them, but they lured me into Hoppit Mead, the park land at the bottom of our road. And that’s the picture you see at the head of this blog.

As I walked in, a troup of tiny Long Tailed Tits flew into the branches above. I became aware of their chattering and a new sound: the sound of the leaves flowing in the wind, a gentle rustling. As I walked on, a Speckled Wood butterfly flew up and danced its way through the shadows and the nettles. Gradually the road noise died away and as I looked up towards the houses that fringed the green I noticed an elderly person sitting in their front garden taking in the sun and the view.

Carrying on through the sounds took on a new importance.

Yes, Braintree is a busy town, and yes, both planes and traffic stream up the A120 corridor, but within easy reach, there is parkland, river walks, and pathways through trees.

Beauty, truth and good

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I am late to Ian McGilchrist but yet another British thinker to be listened to.

In the podcast he reads a poem part of which says,

And in the sea reflected sky,
And in the sky there shines the sun,
Within the sun a bird of gold.

Within the bird there beats a heart,
And from the heart there flows a song,
And in the song there sings a word.

In the word there speaks a world,
A world of joy, a world of grief,
From joy and grief there springs my love.

From there as Martin Shaw says the “Awen” falls.

Kathleen Raine: a spell for creation

Thomas Hardy: at Castle Boterel

Episode 284: Jennifer G. Bird – The Myth of Biblical Marriage – The Bible For Normal People

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https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-284-jennifer-g-bird-the-myth-of-biblical-marriage/

Jennifer G. Bird joins Jared and Angela Parker to bust the myth of “biblical” marriage. She dives into the ways scripture has been used to enforce traditional gender roles, the cultural assumptions embedded in biblical texts about marriage, sex, and property rights, and how these interpretations have influenced Christian thought.

Healing

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God heals. We pray, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Surely, in the healing of minds and bodies and deliverance from oppression, God is healing. In the mystery of God in all things, upholding all things, God is present in a way that wills only good, that brings light and life.
This is the aroma of God, and we see it in the healing ministry of Jesus who says, if you don’t believe in me, believe in the works that I do. Through community, care, and prayer, followers of Jesus embody this. Followers of Jesus are distinctive only because of love, love of God, and love of those around them.
And so in history we see collections for the poor to feed and clothe them, rescuing of the destitute especially children caringbforbthe sick and teaching, and, as medicine develops, hospitals, and in recent times schools for children.
Visiting the sick and clothing the naked is a work of humanity, as is caring for the indigent and those in prison. Jesus calls us to his perfect humanity, accountable to the light he has placed in everyone. He is light, and we are called to be light. God is not divine deodorant. We are his holy aroma recreated and formed by the renewal of our minds. We are called to be holy as he is holy; to be fully human. Kindness and compassion make us truly human.
The place of gathering for those on this journey, the holy place, is a meal, a table where life is shared in its fullness in all circumstances. A meal that encompasses Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection. The mystery of faith is, being in Christ, being fully human as Jesus was and is, resurrected, making all things new. All creation is in Christ from the beginning, and Jesus reveals this truth, as he is so are we redeeming, redreaming, all things.
This is our religion, our worship, that causes us to sing and praise and to enter the quiet place of intimacy with God. In him, we look with the eyes of Christ and in all see Christ.



God is ever healing, drawing all creation to the good. Miracles happen, but the miracle of the human endeavour is to be celebrated. What we see in medicine today should bring us to our knees in praise and thanksgiving. Medicine in all its forms expresses the miracle of the light within. Humanity expresses itself in healing and curing. Jesus is revealed in our care for the sick and oppressed and in the advances of science. This is the life we are called to. He is not revealed in turning away from the goodness of science to a spiritual desert of disappointment. Does God heal in miraculous ways? Yes, look around you.
People experience the extremes of genetic collateral, physical attrition, and just plain bad luck. All is in God’s hands but is not God’s will. Jesus’s answer is to put in our mouths a prayer that asks for God’s will to be done and in our minds a will to cure.
Does God intervene? Only in love. We are to pray constantly, expressing compassion and kindness for those afflicted and in need of saving. Open your eyes, love wins. Do not be put off by the charlatans who profit from your disappointment. It’s not your fault.

Before Moses died on the borders of the promised land, he said,

‭Deuteronomy 31:26 NRSV‬
“Take this book of the law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; let it remain there as a witness against you.

He then wrote down a song, and in it, he sung,

Deuteronomy 32:3-6 NRSV‬
For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation. Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?

https://bible.com/bible/2016/deu.32.3-6.NRSV

To Christians, this sounds familiar. Jesus had come down from a mountain where his true glory had been revealed, but in the meantime, his disciples had not been able to cure a fitting boy, and the disciples wanted to know why.

‭Matthew 17:17-18 NRSV‬
Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.17.17-18.NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/deu.31.26.NRSV

Jesus words seem to say we are at fault when there is no healing, How much longer must I put up with you? I’m not sure this was directed at the hapless disciples.
Jesus has just communed with Moses, who saw how the people had failed and how they would fail despite the law. He had also communed with Elijah, who in the time of Israel’s deep apostasy did many miracles. I feel that Jesus was constantly bringing the people back to Moses; the heritage they were so proud of, what they felt defined them. We see the practices of the way of the law angering Jesus, and here, he reminds them of the prophecy of Moses.
Jesus heals the lad and then teaches the disciples about faith. I believe he was drawing a contrast, reframing the song of Moses, anticipating an end to the curse of the law and healing the lad. I think Jesus words and healing were a parable; the disciples would see Jesus recalling the song of Moses and speaking out frustration at the way of the Law, then there was healing, then joy, a new way that always was the way, a revelation of the true way..
Afterwards, the disciples wanted to know why they were not able to deliver the boy; their expectation must have been that they could, but nothing happened. Had they not healed people and raised people from the dead?

‭Matthew 17:20 NRSV‬
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.17.20.NRSV

Does this mean their lack of effectiveness was their own fault? What was the lesson? Your faith is less than tiny, but tiny faith can alter stuff. You can read this all as a rebuke or as playful teaching. It was the demon that was rebuked, not the disciples.
The whole incident is redolent with hyperbole. otherwise, he would be denying his own faith. We learn there were occasions Jesus himself was unable to heal.
We have been taught to feel bad about our lack of faith, but Jesus is telling us we don’t need much and encouraging us, not telling us off. Read it again, seeing Jesus after coming down from the mountain, and overjoyed that life was coming, acting out the song of Moses, then healing with a huge smile on his face. Keep coming to Jesus and asking.



Does suffering cease? Only through love, and if our tiny faith does not prevail, we can trust in that love and draw on it, as Jesus stands with us in our anguish. We bear in plastic shopping bags a fullness beyond measure, and yet death and destruction stalk our daily lives and evil picks off the innocent. I hope Jesus is frustrated with that, and we see that he is. I am.

We are to seek the good of all in our actions and in our prayers. This is our work. A prayer for healing is an act of love. We can not be other than fully human in our spirituality. Sometimes, our prayer is a groan, and in this groan, the Spirit knows deeper than we can know what to pray. Every prayer drives the cosmos forward in Christ. We need to realise the power of Christ in us, the light we bear and shine out.
Our hope is that all is in God’s hands. We are taught that hope is not what is seen. Hope, faith and love are our virtues; a growing faith that breaks through the wall of transactional childish ways into a deep trust; a real hope which prays with all our humanity, sure that God is love.
Do not become slaves to events, people, and places but worship in spirit and truth. Do not be those who naval gaze, but become those who act to bring unrelenting good into this held but broken creation.
My dream is that we will break through to a place where we don’t hold God to account for not healing: a place where we can integrate all creaturly experience as being held in Christ.
It is good to ask the question and wrestle with it, but don’t give up praying and meeting together, losing hope. God is healing, and our prayers are effective: God is sovereign in and through love and only in and through love. Love is difficult. All creation, the good and the bad, is perfected in love. Wrestle. Imagine. Dream. We should see more healing, and it is frustrating, but don’t give up or concede a vision of a good and powerful God.

My hope is that we will share spiritual practices that deepen the life of service and maybe take a few up. But I think they are best done together and voluntarily. I think they then feed the multiple personalities and dispositions of the gathered who can choose what to do in their daily life. Only do not then leave the table.
To be authentic, the body of believers minister Christ to those around them in eating together, walking together, and listening. We model a non transactional way where people come and do life together because they are being met by Christ. We resist framing people’s experience of God and killing it with practices.
It is enough that they want to be there. Church is voluntary, and leadership in the body is in teaching, facilitating and guiding; providing the fuel. There is also judgement, routing out hypocrisy and exposing harm, which Jesus shows is directed towards the powerful and is uncontroling.


There is a life worth living, and it first draws us inward to the secret place, and we are cleansed. We become in our lives faithful to Jesus, the one who lived died and rose again, revealing God as Father, Son, and Spirit: Christ for all. In this life God is healing.

The silence of the teacher.

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God appears silent, distant, disengaged. Our hope is he is really there. The fact that we even consider him is because we believe  we have experienced him, not in our reason alone, but in his felt presence. We may have been told about him, but unless we have encountered him, he is not there.

As a friend, it would be a deception to try to persuade you; truth, beauty, and justice are everywhere, but so is ugliness, suffering, and despair. In fact, the goodness that is creation is concealed by death. Every particle operates to preserve itself, and even life itself is selfish. The vastness of space, though awesome, appears empty and threatening, and life is cruel. Yes, at the heart of trying to know, there is falsehood and deception in ourselves that leads us from seeing things as they are. Can we ever know we have encountered God?

For God to be true and good, he, in his very essence, must be uncoersive love, not insisting on his own way and a fountain of forgiveness. How else are we to be saved, except if God is not steadfast in love, ever drawing us to himself? Truly, he speaks out creation in chaos, and the sound of his voice is sheer silence. He speaks out new creation in the chaos of our lives, and we only know this because we love as he loves us. We love as our hearts teach us to love.

As a teacher, I am careful not to leap in with the answer when a pupil has a problem. I hope they will look again and, if I do well, I guide them to see their own solution. Sometimes, I try to figure it out with them, not taking the lead.

When I don’t give an answer, they may get frustrated and may even doubt whether I can solve the problem. My silence is intended to spur them on to solve it for themselves.

It’s a matter of growth. When they were new to the task, they needed help, but they need to get beyond my help. To progress, they must engage and trust themselves, disrupting what they already know. My silence is necessary if they are to progress and move further than I can lead.

God is ever present, ever knowing and anticipating our every breath, holding us. We can be reassured that we are held. Moment by moment, he is pouring out self giving love.

Love empowers us to be true to God, trusting that even in his silence, he is guiding us so that we are freed to do his will. Daily, we set our plans before him, seeking to obey his command to love. His presence, known or unknown, enables us to walk in truth, beauty, and justice, and we grow to recognise his voice in all things. Truly, we become like him.

Our goal is to walk with him, unhindered and unfettered. In this veil of death, the promise is beyond the horizon, and everything senses its draw, groaning for it to be revealed. It’s a call back to the garden of Eden, a paradise lost. From the Chaos of our first parents’ sin in a creation made very good, our present creation is formed in death. This is not a point in time but in a reality formed in anticipation; we are in an altered state of being, which from the beginning knew the lamb that was slain yet was very good. And so, out of the very real loss of paradise, all creation carries the mark of death. Eden is beyond myth, it is the mystery revealed on the cross of Christ that drives us to the consumation of all things in the fact of the risen Christ, now and forever in the coming new creation when heaven joins earth once more in our resurection in him.

‭John 15:13-17 NRSV‬
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/jhn.15.13-17.NRSV

Luther

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I have been listening to The Rest Is History

| 433. Luther: The Man Who Changed the World (Part 1) on

Podbean,

https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-5kfqx-1de25232

Spotify,

https://open.spotify.com/episode/10iZL7NCRAC4rB1EwSYsGE?si=qTv3u2ZDRtqqzqurafoxuw

To say that culture forgives a lot would be to concede too much. Scripture tells us that a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. Jesus was meek and also said it as he saw it, not sparing the blushes of the rulers of his age.

This bears contemplation as we listen. Beautiful hymnody, liberating theology; is it nothing in view of the man and his gutter language and hateful ideas that fuelled genocide. And yet from this root came Bonhoeffer.

How much are you prepared to forgive?