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Liverpool: Which Door Stays Open? Nicene Creed Series #9 “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” —- The Liver Birds keep watch above the city. Samuel is thirty-four. He comes from South Sudan. For now, he lives in the Britannia Hotel. One room. One suitcase. His white nursing shoes wait beneath the bed. Inside his Bible lies a folded certificate. Registered Nurse. Sometimes he unfolds it, looks at his name, then slips it back between the Psalm

County Durham: Will Anything Live Again? Matthew is fifty-two. He lives in Blackstone, a village built on coal. Rows of brick terraces. A welfare hall. A Methodist chapel. If you stand at the edge of the fields, the older folk still point and say, “That’s where the pit was.” You cannot see it now. The winding gear came down years ago. The railway was lifted. The earth has grown over what was once the beating heart of the village. Matthew isn’t sure whether that’s healing or

Belfast: What Are the Walls For? Nicene #7 For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried… — The peace wall is covered in messages. Schoolchildren. Tourists. Visitors from places Ryan has never been. People travel halfway around the world to look at a wall built because neighbours were afraid of one another. His son presses a hand against the concrete. “What’s this for?” Ryan looks up. The wall is taller than he remembers. Or perhaps that

Content note: This poem explores themes of pregnancy, childbirth, baby loss, homelessness, grief, and death. Hereford: And Was Incarnate Nicene #6 “And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” —— Sarah is fifty six and has worked as a hospital chaplain for longer than she cares to remember. Most mornings begin with the same road through the Herefordshire countryside. Mist hanging above fields, blackbirds lifting from hedgerows, the cathedral tow

Ilkley: What Will Save Us? Nicene #5 For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven… —- Peter is seventy-two. He lives alone in the stone house where he and Anne raised their children. The bookshelves are still full: politics, history, economics - the sort of books he once believed might explain the world. Most mornings begin with tea and Radio 4. Sometimes he sits long after breakfast, watching weather move across the moor. The house is quieter now. Not the quiet of a

Content note: This poem contains references to suicide, addiction and allegations of sexual offending. Glasgow: Whose Am I? Nicene #4 —— Michael is forty-three. He lives on the twelfth floor of a block overlooking the M8. Day and night, the traffic keeps moving: lorries, headlights, blue lights flashing somewhere. The city rarely sleeps, and rain freckles the windows. Sometimes he stands at the kitchen sink long after the kettle has boiled, looking out across Glasgow. Tower b

Manchester: A Longing for More Nicene #3 —— Rachel is thirty-six. Every Thursday morning she pushes a buggy through Manchester towards the church hall. She comes for the toddler group. At least that’s what she says. Her daughter loves it: the train set, the toy kitchen, the biscuits. Rachel likes it too— the tea, the conversation, the warmth. The church hall means a few less hours heating the flat. The food bank runs from the building next door. Most weeks she calls in afterw

At the end of Part One, I suggested that the deepest crisis facing us may not be political, economic or ecological. It may be moral and spiritual. We are confronting profound challenges at precisely the moment when we seem least able to agree on what kind of people we ought to be. That raises an obvious question: how should Christians respond? The temptation is either panic or retreat. Panic fills our attention with headlines, outrage and endless speculation about what might

Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Standing on the Mount of Olives, looking across the valley towards the city, he saw more than stone walls, crowded streets and the gleaming Temple. He saw where the road was leading. He saw a society becoming brittle. He saw tensions hardening. He saw a people losing their capacity for peace. And Jesus wept. "If only you had known on this day what makes for peace." Within a generation Jerusalem would burn. The Temple would be destroyed. The city tha

Canning Town: Where Do I Belong? Maker of Heaven and Earth —— Jay is thirty. Every morning, on the way to work, he passes the cranes. Glass towers rise above the docks. The billboards promise riverside living. Luxury apartments from £750,000. He laughs every time he sees them. Not because it is funny. Because he still sleeps in the room where he slept as a child. His mum has the room across the landing. His sister, who needs support, has the box room. The waiting list stretch

After Mass, Margaret stays behind. Beyond the church windows, the harbour at Oldhaven lies beneath a low northern sky. A handful of fishing boats rise and fall with the tide. The North Sea stretches beyond, grey as memory. The church settles into silence. She gathers the sacred vessels from the altar and carries them into the sacristy. The chalice bears the faint marks of a hundred hands. She polishes it carefully, the way Mrs Donnelly taught her more than forty years ago. Mr

“And now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again…. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.” Acts 20:25, 37–38 (NIV) In Acts 20, Paul meets with the Ephesian elders on a beach at Miletus. He reminds them of the years they have shared together—the tears, the trials, the ministry, the life t

I write poetry because I believe imagination matters. Not as an escape from reality, but as a way of returning to it. ……. Walter Brueggemann describes the prophetic task as seeking “to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” That has become something of a compass for me over the years. The older I get, the more I wonder if many of our deepest problems begin in the imagination

A Man Stopped Running - 12 years on, a true story framed poetically. Al carried guilt like a sack of coal. Not a regret.Not a mistake. A sack. The sort of weight that bends a person over even when there's nothing on their back. He thought he had a demon. And maybe the evil one had thrown a few spanners in the works, whispered lies into old wounds, turned shame into something that felt alive. But I never thought it was a demon. I thought it was a man who had crossed a line som

These reflections come after spending a day with Hope into Action at their annual conference, Rooted: Homelessness Ends in Community. In particular, they were stirred afresh while listening to the seminar Rethinking Poverty and Our Response with Jon Kuhrt and Rachel Arnold, both shaped by the wider imagination of Together for the Common Good and the work of Jenny Sinclair. For those familiar with these voices, there will be little here that is entirely new. I am simply trying

My friend and colleague Liz Harden was teaching last night on the Mission, Theology and Ministry for the Margins course about trauma. It was on Zoom, and even through a screen you could feel at points how heavy the subject was. But you could also hear from the feedback and conversations afterwards how much students appreciated somebody speaking honestly about it. It got me thinking again about church culture. If I am honest, I think some churches struggle with trauma because

A few rambling thoughts on church growth, “quiet revival”, and ministry in a secular age. Mainly for vicary types and an update from something I wrote a few years ago. —— Over the past year or so there has been a lot of talk about church growth, spiritual openness, and even the possibility of “quiet revival” in the UK. Newspaper articles appear. Podcasts get excited. Somebody notices twenty-year-olds attending Evensong in London and suddenly we are apparently one step away fr

In this part of Liverpool the supermarket stays lit all night. Blue-white light on wet pavements. Lorries backing in at stupid o’clock. A bloke asleep in his car near the trolley shelter. Inside more food than whole streets can afford. Avocados in winter. Strawberries in December. Three quid smoothies. Security tags on baby formula. Nathan Silver sits somewhere above it all. CEO. Millions every year. The sort of money that stops sounding real after a bit. People like Nathan s

Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus did not simply describe the Kingdom of God—he enacted it. He preached, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news,” and then he lived it: healing the sick, forgiving sin, welcoming the overlooked, confronting what dehumanises, and laying down his life in self-giving love. This Kingdom—the reign of God—is not removed from the real world. It presses into it. It speaks into how we order our common life—socially, politi