The science is clear. We are living in a warming world due to fossil fuel emissions. The world’s most vulnerable are already suffering...

I want to speak honestly, but not noisily, about emotional and psychological harm. Not to rehearse details. Not to settle scores. But to name something real. I keep returning to Walter Brueggemann’s language of orientation and disorientation. There are seasons of life where things more or less make sense. Where the ground holds. Where the world feels coherent enough to live in without constantly questioning it. And then something happens that pulls the ground away. Disorienta

The Shopfront, the Centre, and the Work of Truth Rev’d Jon Swales, 10 minute read. Churches, like most institutions, learn how to present themselves. There is a front-facing story — a shopfront narrative — shaped for newcomers, visitors, church networks, and social media. It speaks of welcome, healing, generosity, growth, authenticity, flourishing. Often it names something real. Often it names something hoped for. Rarely is it a lie. But it is selective. The shopfront tells

Jesus said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. —John 11:34–35 Once we knew where we were. The glass held. Light stayed put. The world obeyed the basic rules of cause and effect, of prayer and outcome. Meaning showed up when summoned. God was mostly punctual. We called this 'faith'— a life where the story made sense often enough that we trusted the gaps, where suffering felt tragic but legible. Then— a phone call that split the day i

The whole creation waits— not quietly, but leaning forward with the ache of expectation. Galaxies tilt toward the dark, spirals cupped like listening ears. Stars hold their breath between burning and blessing, knowing there is more than endless expansion and collapse. Rocks remember touch. They remember being named good before they were quarried, before they were broken for speed and profit. They bear the weight of violence, the long erosion of sorrow, and still they wait— pa

Life hurts — personally and collectively — and Scripture does not turn away from that reality. The Psalms of Lament offer a rich resource for prayer and life in a hurting world. Join Rev’d Jon Swales MBE for an online teaching exploring the Psalms of Lament, drawing on Scripture, theology, poetry, and lived experience. The session aims to be engaging, thoughtful, and challenging, connecting academic insight with practical reflection. Who it’s for:  anyone wanting to engage mo

Christian leaders are complex human beings. That shouldn’t need saying. But sometimes it does. We are shaped over time — by desire, fear, love, disappointment, trauma, hope. We change. We are never static. Christian theology speaks of a 'calling' towards Christlikeness, often named as cruciformity. But calling is not direction, and vocation is not arrival. Leaders, like the communities they serve, are a mixed bag. Some are being softened. Some are being hardened. Formation in

I. ENCOUNTER They tell him on the away day that eighty per cent are non-religious. Tick boxes. Yes or no. Faith reduced to data. As if the soul only aches when belief is declared. As if grief checks credentials before it speaks. He is a priest—though here he walks the corridors as chaplain, pastoral care. Same calling, softer tongue. The badge says St Julian’s Hospital— a cross in the logo, a chapel in the basement, psalms etched in stone, evidence of an age when mission and

Church leaders are storytellers by vocation. They retell the story of Jesus — not as a static account, but as a living narrative people are invited to inhabit. But they also tell other stories alongside this one: stories about the church itself — where it has come from, where it is going, and why it matters. These stories circulate everywhere: sermons, leadership meetings, PCCs, reports, funding conversations, informal networks. Over time, they create a shared reality. And th

The care home smells of polish and overcooked vegetables. Photographs line the walls— faces once fierce, now softened by forgetting. A woman says hello. Neither of us knows her name, but the God of the covenant does not forget— her name penned in the Book of Life. Later— the detention centre. Fluorescent light. Locked doors. Lives paused between borders. Someone asks how long this will last. No one knows. Names become numbers, processed into stats that serve political interes

I walk the path through the woods because I cannot stay still. Mud darkens the cuffs of my trousers, my hands are cold in my pockets, the ground yielding beneath each step. My eyes sting— tears arriving without warning, without a name. I stop. Try to pray. Nothing comes. No words. Only breath. In and out— cold air filling my lungs, fogging briefly before it disappears. And into the quiet I whisper the next line of the Creed: I believe in the Holy Spirit. The words feel thin t

We live on the scraps of Eden. Life — a tragic miracle, an echo of a deeper symphony. The fruit is rationed. Water tastes like metal. Joy comes thin — a brittle leaf in winter wind. The trees are silent. The ground yields only to sweat. Behind us, the flaming sword still burns. There is no way back. Time does not reverse. So we go on — with spit, sweat, blood, semen, and shit. East of Eden, we make children. We make war. We make myths to cradle our ache. We bruise. We hunger.

Kev turns up on Minster Mondays Leeds Minster, cold already by mid-afternoon. We gather from two till four. Games at tables, dice clatter, jokes land, custard creams and aldi knock off penguins. For a moment his hands remember play, how not to brace. Then we gather for worship. The light thins fast this time of year. We light candles and move through the Minster, past life-sized shepherds, Mary mid-breath, Joseph unsure where to stand. Between them, we make space for ourselve

Let the bells ring out for Christmas. Not to cover the silence, but to name it. Not to distract us from the dark, but to announce the light that has entered it. Let them ring for the mystery we return to again— God with us. Not above us, not beyond us, but here. The Word becomes flesh. Not an idea, not a symbol, but a person. Fragile. Dependent. Fully divine, fully human. The Creator steps into the creation, not as a king, but as a child. Not to watch, but to walk with us. To

He Will Return (Advent) He will not return to Eden. Not to clean mornings. Not to soil that never learned blood. The sword still burns. Time does not reverse. What was broken stays broken until it is healed. He will not return to innocence. There is no undoing of the long violence. No erasing of bodies used, lands stripped. He comes instead to flesh that remembers. To earth stamped flat by boots, by markets, by graves. He does not come to make things as they were. He comes th

Inde ventūrus est iūdicāre vivos et mortuos (From there he will come to judge the living and the dead) It is well past midnight. The house sleeps; I do not. The story I heard earlier still clings to me— a quiet cruelty carried out by cruel hands. I don’t repeat the details, but they sit heavy in the room, like a shadow that refuses to lift. I make tea I do not want, pace the kitchen floor, open the window to cold air— but nothing settles. The night feels bruised. I sit in the

He leaves the mission hall at Byker at 6pm. Tough one tonight. Found out Jamie had died. Only six months ago he was baptised, got clean, got saved, relapsed— tragic. Geordie wind slicing sideways— sharp as truth. He tells himself he’ll be home soon: Metro, short walk, ready meal, half a bottle of red, Netflix, bed. A simple plan. Aye, well. Newcastle has other ideas. He is knackered— happens every year— still weeks to go. He used to love Advent— moody hope, no hopium, no Disn

Across the UK, 14 million people struggle to make ends meet. In Hull, almost half of all children grow up in poverty. East of Eden: Advent in Hull He stands at the front of the church, East of Eden, paint peeling in tired curls, damp spreading like a wound no one can afford to fix. The brass eagle under dust looks out over the flock. The churchwarden nods— baptised here, married here, and one day carried out through that same door. Humber wind barges in, raw with iron, salt,

Dawn does not rush. It comes softly, as if the world itself is afraid to breathe. I reach the next line: On the third day he rose again. And the silence bends toward light. The darkest day is not the final day. The tomb is not the end of the story, but its turning point. What we call dead, God calls seed. What we bury in despair, Love raises in mystery. He rose— not to erase death, but to unmake it. Not to deny the wounds, but to show that they can shine. The cross still stan