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Climate Justice: Following Jesus in a World of Climate Breakdown (Teaching Videos)
The science is clear. We are living in a warming world due to fossil fuel emissions. The world’s most vulnerable are already suffering...
Jon Swales
Sep 23, 20241 min read
582 views
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Swing Wide the Doors
I hear it— a cry rising like incense from flats without furniture, from doorways where the prophets weep, from rooms where children dream...
Jon Swales
8 hours ago2 min read
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He Wrote the Date
He Wrote the Date (for the lad who once lived in the car park opposite Leeds Uni — a true story framed poetically) He slept beneath...
Jon Swales
8 hours ago2 min read
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The One Where the World Burns
The One Where the World Burns On the 22nd of September, 1994, six friends walked into a New York coffee shop and into global cultural...
Jon Swales
5 days ago1 min read
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Reading Revelation at Cottingley Crem
It was spring. The blossom tree stood, quiet, its branches soft with new life. Bluebells dotted the ground, fragile, waiting for...
Jon Swales
5 days ago2 min read
3 views
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He Set Himself on Fire
He Set Himself on Fire (A true story framed poetically) He had ink all over him— names, dates, wounds. But it was the teardrop by his...
Jon Swales
5 days ago2 min read
3 views
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Ninety-Nine and the One That Got Away
He reads it in a doorway, knees hugged to chest, back cold to the brick. Gospel half-torn, creased and smudged, given by Lighthouse,...
Jon Swales
5 days ago1 min read
3 views
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From Eden to the Empty Tomb: A Liturgical Reading of the Ancient Story
A Liturgical Reading by Rev’d Jon Swales MBE This liturgical resource is a prayerful journey through the ancient story — a story that...
Jon Swales
May 121 min read
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Cupiditas
Unfettered capitalism has cupiditas— not holy longings, not the ache that births justice or bends the soul in prayer— but the kind that...
Jon Swales
May 92 min read
51 views
1 comment


The Rock Returns
They say your past doesn’t define you. Maybe. But it never fully lets go either. The stink of fish, rope-burned hands— that’s where I...
Jon Swales
May 52 min read
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No One Can Snatch Me
No One Can Snatch Me (John 10:22–30) I never had a dad. Not one who stayed. The care home clock ticked— a cold taskmaster— counting down...
Jon Swales
May 52 min read
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Embrace and Exclusion
We are born with a deep longing to belong— to be accepted, embraced, and to find our place within community. This longing is not a flaw...
Jon Swales
Apr 301 min read
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Dust-Stirred Hope: Lazarus
“Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the...
Jon Swales
Apr 301 min read
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Two Poles, One Call
Just sketching things here, broad strokes. I know it’s not the full story. No nuance. But maybe it’s food for thought. The other night,...
Jon Swales
Apr 302 min read
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Who can stop the Lord Almighty?
It doesn’t make sense anymore. It used to. But not now. It’s not just a tension, not just a holy mystery you hold with trembling hands —...
Jon Swales
Apr 302 min read
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Wounds in the House of Love
Wounds in the House of Love Not all violence comes with swords. Some arrives with silence. With a kiss. With a deal struck in the dark....
Jon Swales
Apr 222 min read
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Stay with Me (Maunday Thursday)
Stay with me, he says— but we are weary. Weary of sorrow, weary of waiting, weary of a world that keeps unraveling. Still— he invites....
Jon Swales
Apr 221 min read
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Holy Saturday: I Who Once Was Blind
They say it is morning. They say the sun has risen. They say the dew is fresh upon the olive leaves, and the birds sing as they always...
Jon Swales
Apr 192 min read
6 views
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The Wood between the Worlds (Good Friday)
I lit a candle. Not for peace— not yet— but for the man who called himself the Bread of Life, now broken, butchered, starved by the world...
Jon Swales
Apr 192 min read
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The Rejected Stone
The Rejected Stone (Matthew 21:42; Matthew 24:2) They passed him by— this rough-hewn truth, still dusted with wilderness. Not the kind...
Jon Swales
Apr 151 min read
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