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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 19, 20252 min read


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 19, 20252 min read


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 15, 20251 min read


Spikenard & Ash
She moved like silence in a room full of eyes, broke the jar like a prophet breaks the sky. No words, just oil — and the scent of burial....
Jon Swales
Apr 15, 20251 min read


A Christian who Weeps
I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel— who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields, and silences sorrow with a...
Jon Swales
Apr 12, 20252 min read


Magnificat in the Gutter
Found a Bible in the foodbank queue, someone left it wedged in the radiator. Fell open to Mary’s song— The ‘Magnificat’, they call it....
Jon Swales
Apr 8, 20252 min read


One Foot in Eden
One foot in Eden, where light spills soft through the branches, and the river sings a song without sorrow. Here, the air is thick with...
Jon Swales
Mar 3, 20251 min read


A Canticle for a Burning World
Blessed be the One, wild and holy, whose breath stirs the void, whose voice hums in all things, whose light flickers in the deep. ...
Jon Swales
Feb 25, 20252 min read


The Dream
Night spills across the earth like oil, thick with the hush of waiting. I slip between waking and the deep unseen, where time is...
Jon Swales
Feb 16, 20253 min read


The Pastor's Dream: Lazarus
“We may possess and may practice a dogmatics, an ethics, and a proper worldview such as the given tradition requires but still leave...
Jon Swales
Feb 14, 20252 min read


The Harrowing of Hell
Today, the Lighthouse team continued their book study of ‘The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross.’ After discussing...
Jon Swales
Feb 4, 20251 min read


A Psalm for a Secular Age
Give thanks for the longing within, for the hunger that will not be silenced. Speak of the beauty that lingers still, of the mystery that...
Jon Swales
Feb 4, 20251 min read


The River I Step In Is Not the River I Stand In
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man." —Heraclitus The River I Step In...
Jon Swales
Feb 4, 20251 min read


Bats or Newts? A Lament
“Bats or great crested newts?” “Neither, because I want growth, ” - Rachel Reeves, Times Interview, Quick Fire Questions ‘Bats or Great...
Jon Swales
Jan 28, 20251 min read


Fragility-A Dialogue with Psalm 46
There is a trembling beneath all things, a quiet undoing woven into the fabric of being. The earth shifts, waters rise, and I too am...
Jon Swales
Jan 25, 20251 min read


As the Deer: For a Secular Age
There is a thirst— a restless, raging thirst we cannot name, a yearning without object, a hunger beyond the reach of reason, a void...
Jon Swales
Jan 25, 20252 min read


Drill, Baby, Drill!
Drill, baby, drill— strange words, a chant from a strange man in a strange world. Forests burn, their ancient voices smothered in smoke....
Jon Swales
Jan 22, 20251 min read


Soup, Soap & Salvation
Step beyond the comforts of romanticised religion, beyond a hope too soft, too distant. Move towards the wounded, the image-bearers in...
Jon Swales
Jan 21, 20252 min read


Find Your Own Calcutta
You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see”- Mother Teresa Find your own Calcutta— a descent, an incarnation...
Jon Swales
Jan 15, 20251 min read


Hope: Peering through a Veil
Hope is not a calculation, not a tally of gains or losses, but the ache of a heart stretched toward the horizon, a whisper of...
Jon Swales
Jan 13, 20251 min read
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