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

He didn’t leave Leeds for a fresh start. He left because staying meant fear. The flat was chaos — tinfoil graveyard, door kicked in,...

He’d seen things no soul should ever see, heard things that still rattle in his dreams— not just bombs in Belfast, but shrapnel lodged...

She sat at the back. Near the radiator. That’s where she always sat— if she came at all. Scarf wrapped tight around her wrist where last...

Ed used to crouch outside Morrisons— not always asking, just hoping someone, tipsy from a night out, might drop a fiver and not ask why....

It was raining. Sideways rain. Hard, mean, Leeds rain. The kind that says: You’re not welcome anywhere. She stood outside, soaked,...

She doesn’t talk about it much. Not the room, not the silence, not the way her body still remembers what her mind wrapped in thick fog....

It’s January 2014 — cold enough to chew through bone. We meet in the place named for the one who slew the dragon, but the beasts still...

She came in swearing— trackies on, a tinnie downed, tired eyes. A friend from the pavement, roll-ups in her pocket, playfulness in her...

She was alone. Not just lonely— but alone. Mid-fifties, no calls, no candles, just silence and the ache of being forgotten. Her world:...

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...

It was spring. The blossom tree stood, quiet, its branches soft with new life. Bluebells dotted the ground, fragile, waiting for...

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...

He reads it in a doorway, knees hugged to chest, back cold to the brick. Gospel half-torn, creased and smudged, given by Lighthouse,...

Lighthouse Beatitudes When Liberator saw the crowd, he went up a mountain and sat down to encourage his people. He opened his mouth and...

'For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.' At Lighthouse, we say these words together — sometimes...

Give us this day our daily bread Each Sunday at Lighthouse, after cries for the kingdom to come, we move to the next line of the prayer...

Each Sunday at Lighthouse, after a burst of heart-felt, honest, and holy prayer — the kind that comes when people have nothing left to...

Night spills across the earth like oil, thick with the hush of waiting. I slip between waking and the deep unseen, where time is...

I’m sat here in a doorway on one of Leeds’ busy streets. People rush past, their hands full of shopping bags, their faces lit by the glow...