Simeon had waited so long his bones had learnt winter. Dust in the folds of his cloak, incense caught in his beard, Rome at the gate, taxes like teeth, the poor bent double under empire. Still he came. Morning after morning to the place where promise thinned the air, where stone and heaven almost touched. Waiting for the consolation of Israel, for a God who would tear the sky open and come down. Not comfort as the world sells it. Not the soft lie that tells the bruised to mov

It was Easter Sunday. Dawn had only just begun to lift itself over the city. Somewhere lilies were being carried into church. Somewhere a priest was lifting bread with tired hands. Somewhere someone who had slept rough was waking cold under a thin blanket in a church porch. And on the screens the old empire was speaking again. Open the fuckin’ strait, he says, you crazy bastards. On Easter morning. The day we dare to say that death does not get the final word. The day the wom

Night gathers early. The room is dim. Bread on the table. Wine holding the last light. Outside, boots on stone. Empire still turns. Now too: Propellers in the dark. A drone circling above sleeping roofs. The long whistle of a bomb. Glass becoming rain. A child waking into fire. Inside, a bowl of water. He stands, slips off his robe, and takes up a towel. No one speaks. The one we call Lord kneels. Hands in water. Water on skin. Dust giving way. This is where kingdom begins. N

It looks alive. Leaves out, green enough to signal blessing. God on our side, favour resting, certainty thick in the air. From a distance it all looks like it’s working. A people fluent in Scripture, a faith wrapped tight around a nation, prayers spoken with the confidence of power. Chosen, they say. But chosen for what? There was once a promise; blessed to be a blessing, a light for the nations, a people through whom the world might taste what God is like. Not where blessing

Before It Ends in Blood He doesn’t come waving a flag. No anthem, no polished speech about strength, no promise that God will make us win. He comes weeping. Not abstract grief— but the kind that catches in the throat when you can already see the bodies. Jesus the God-Man looks at the city and sees its ending: stones torn down, smoke in the lungs of the poor, mothers learning the language of loss. “If only you knew what makes for peace…” But they don’t. Because peace that does

There were two ways into the city. Two winds moving through the same streets. Two gospels already being believed. From the West—empire. Boots on stone. Iron catching light. Horses restless for violence, their bodies remembering what they were trained to do. Standards lifted—bright, unquestioned. Carried like certainty. A kingdom fluent in power, calling it peace. A kingdom drenched in blood, calling it righteousness. A kingdom that names God without fear of God. Church—be car

Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.' Jesus answered, 'Have I been with you this long? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father' ------ Tony is from Middlesbrough. You can hear it in the accent. Kindly. Friendly. Geordie-ish— but not quite. He’s been around church for a while now. Not the tidy kind of belonging— not the polished testimony version. More the kind where you drift in near the end for the cuppa and a custard cream, & stay close

How long, O Lord, while cities burn? How long while the earth is lowered into graves? Your disciples once said, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” It is not hard to imagine asking the same. That instinct sits close to the surface — the desire to answer violence with something stronger, to call it justice, to feel certain we are right. You turned and rebuked them. And later, in a garden heavy with fear, you said, “Put your sword back in its p

There is a place for celebration. You feel it when the doors open. Music already rising, hands lifted, voices gathering strength together like fire running through dry grass. People arrive shaking rain from their coats, umbrellas stacked in the corner, latecomers slipping quietly along the rows, someone laughing too loudly near the doors. The room fills with the confidence of people who know how the story ends. God reigns. All will be well. The songs move easily in that direc

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

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

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