East of Eden: The Train to Release

“You brought me out into a spacious place.” – Psalm 18:19

He boards the early train at Minsterleigh.

Black coat buttoned,

collar set.

A Canon on study leave –

though others

know

what that means.

The carriage smells of coffee and rain.

Across the aisle:

a student scrolling,

a man tapping at a laptop.

He takes the window seat,

bag at his feet,

carrying the kind of tiredness

that lives behind the ribs.

He serves at the Cathedral –

a place of beauty,

liturgy,

and gentle control.

On paper,

everything glows with life.

But something beneath

it has been dying for years.

He opens his tablet.

Not emails.

Not minutes.

A blog – 'When the Church Controls the Narrative.'

He skimmed it once,

called it bitter,

too certain.

But now,

with time and motion around him,

he begins to read.

“There is a sickness that grows in churches,

not suddenly

but slowly,

like rot beneath polished floors.

What once was love

becomes control.

What once was prudence

becomes deceit.”

The words land harder this time.

He scrolls.

“When churches prize reputation over repentance,

fear becomes the quiet force beneath it all.

Jesus never called us to manage appearances –

only to walk in the light.”

He turns to the window.

Fields blur past.

Light slides over them like mercy.

Every line lands –

vestry meetings, Chapters, PCCs.

He remembers those rooms:

the unsaid rules, the careful votes,

truth delayed until it dissolved.

He had thought,

If they knew what I knew,

they wouldn’t vote this way.

But truth had to be managed,

postponed, softened –

for the sake of peace.

For the sake of unity.

“Spin replaces confession.

Spiritual language becomes camouflage.”

He has preached such words himself –

dressed fear as prudence,

called silence peace.

He has watched power operate gently, politely,

with tea and minutes and follow-up emails.

He has felt how easily

the call to care

becomes the instinct to control.

And now something in him gives.

A shudder.

A breath held too long.

His eyes sting.

He weeps quietly.

No one sees.

He had known ministry would cost him.

But not this.

Not his soul.

He’d believed faith meant faithfulness,

that obedience would protect him,

that restraint was righteousness.

But somewhere along the way,

he learned to survive

by suppressing the truth.

And he wonders now –

if the system has marked him more than he knew.

If he has harmed more than he helped.

If the clarity of his leadership pathway

came at the price of something sacred.

He leans forward, face in his hands,

the hum of the train like a lullaby he doesn’t trust.

What if he has gained a future in the Church –

but lost the voice of Christ?

The train hums north.

Fields widen – bare, rain-washed, merciful.

He whispers a line

he’s spoken at gravesides and hospital beds,

barely audible above the wheels:

“You brought me out into a spacious place.”

Then he reads the final words:

“Prophetic hope begins where spin dies.

When churches stop protecting themselves,

they rediscover the living God –

who never needed their protection.”

He leans his head against the glass.

The rails beneath sound like heartbeat, like prayer.

He thinks of the Christ he met in silence –

unmanaged, unbranded, crucified and free.

And he sees it now:

Power in the Kingdom was never meant to control.

Power kneels.

Power listens.

Power washes feet,

and lets itself be broken.

The train slows into Salisbury.

He closes the tablet, shoulders the bag.

No one notices him leave –

another priest in black, disappearing into drizzle.

He’ll tell them he’s reflecting on “Cathedral ministry.”

And he will mean it.

But the truth is simpler.

And harder:

he is leaving a system of control

for the chance of something true.

Not whole.

Not healed.

But lighter.

Some journeys end in arrival.

This one ends in release.

- Rev'd Jon Swales