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New Year 23/24: A Prayer
Father of Creation, God of Faithfulness, The First and the Last, You show your love to us through time. Every moment of existence is a...
Jon Swales
Dec 27, 20232 min read
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Advent Four
Father of Creation, God of Hope, We marvel at the sacred mystery of faith, The incarnation, The enfleshment of your Son, Fully God, Fully...
Jon Swales
Dec 20, 20231 min read
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The Return: A Poem
We found ourselves east of Eden, Estranged and alienated, Hostile and unholy. We, broken sinners, yearned for a Savior, Homesick exiles...
Jon Swales
Dec 18, 20231 min read
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Advent 3: A Prayer
Father of Creation, In our bleak mid-winter, we are confronted again With Something startling Something shocking And something profoundly...
Jon Swales
Dec 15, 20232 min read
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Advent Two: A Prayer
Father of Creation, God of Hope, The prophets speak, And dream and hope For a different world, The age to come. Maranatha. Father of...
Jon Swales
Dec 9, 20232 min read
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Incarnation: The Word Made Flesh
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made...
Jon Swales
Dec 9, 20232 min read
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Incarnation: A Christmas Reflection
In the incarnation, God confronts man face to face—a confrontation, a holy mystery, a sacred enfleshment full of both grace and mercy....
Jon Swales
Dec 9, 20231 min read
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Advent Pilgrimage - A Poem
Stumbling towards Bethlehem to gaze upon the humble King, While the city lights entreat me to linger, to stay, to spend. Stumbling...
Jon Swales
Dec 9, 20231 min read
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Lament
Lament is a gift for a church tempted to deny reality, residing in a world of romanticized, spiritualized abstraction. The language of...
Jon Swales
Dec 6, 20232 min read
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Beyond Business as Usual: Enacting the Kingdom in a World of Injustice
Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus proclaimed, performed, embraced, and enacted the Kingdom of God. He preached, ‘The Kingdom of God...
Jon Swales
Dec 5, 20234 min read
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All is Not as it Seems: An Advent Poem
In fragile faith, With the tenacious audacity of hope, All is not as it seems. A veil, like winter's fog, separates the divine from...
Jon Swales
Dec 2, 20231 min read
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COP 28: A Prayer
Father of Creation, God of Compassion, We thank you for the fragile gift of life, And the beautiful world that you made. To you be all...
Jon Swales
Dec 1, 20231 min read
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Advent One: A Prayer
Advent One Father of Creation, God of Hope. The prophets of old looked forward, With expectation, And anticipation, To the arrival of the...
Jon Swales
Dec 1, 20231 min read
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Audacious Hope/The Great Defiance
“And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will...
Jon Swales
Nov 29, 20232 min read
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Where is God?
Where is God? Silent, in darkness, neither moving, nor listening nor speaking, His lifeless corpse is laid in the tomb. God is dead, and...
Jon Swales
Nov 28, 20231 min read
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Hope is a verb. Hope looks like something.
Hope is the tenacious refusal to accept the 'status quo' as the final word, and it whispers, or dare we say, shouts, a defiant protest...
Jon Swales
Nov 27, 20232 min read
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Christian Hope
Death adamantly utters ‘no’ to the gift of life, mirroring the ‘yes’ spoken by the violence of crucifixion to both empire and injustice....
Jon Swales
Nov 27, 20232 min read
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Climate Justice Evening: Prayers and Readings
‘It becomes ever clearer that climate change is the greatest threat we and future generations face. A true horseman of the apocalypse....
Jon Swales
Nov 24, 20235 min read
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Dear Chichester Diocese- An Open Letter
Dear Chichester Diocese , I noticed that you have recently voted to continue investing and making financial profit from the fossil fuel...
Jon Swales
Nov 18, 20231 min read
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Myths and the Need for Ecological Conversion
We find ourselves entangled in a fairy tale, woven from deep-seated myths that serve as the underpinning of our political and economic...
Jon Swales
Nov 18, 20232 min read
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