Scary Love


A couple of weeks spent worrying and, at times, sitting beside a family member as he came through a series of operations does something to your perspective. You watch the machines quietly keeping him nourished, oxygenated, monitored, and free from pain. Tubes, wires, beeps, and human hands all working together for good. The patient is suddenly taken from self-sufficiency to total dependence — held together by things beyond himself. That was what stirred these thoughts in me.

If only we could allow ourselves to become dependent on God — overcome by the wild bigness of Him.

I think I need somehow to merge the gentle Jesus I have always known with the mighty, frightening God my Aunty Evelyn spoke about with such 1960s certainty. Surely peace comes when God becomes larger again and I become smaller; when I stop trying to hold myself together and instead surrender to being held.

We quote the verse about perfect love driving out fear, but perhaps that love is not always soft and cosy. Perhaps it screams at us in great neon letters across the universe — frightening in its magnitude, terrifying in its holiness, yet still love. Scary, perhaps, like the fierce medical devotion shown to this hospital patient: unknown, unexpected, unnerving, yet necessary.

We are all on a kind of spiritual life support. Our bodies are “shutting down,” as they say in the medical trade, and little by little, we are being handed over to the power of God. And that is not a tragedy at all, but grace. For as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19:

“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”


The Runner's High

I’ve heard people speak about the “runner’s high” with a kind of pushiness, like it’s a secret they’ve discovered. They describe it as lightness, euphoria, and seem to wish that I could have that feeling too. I’ve tried running in the past—I know the rhythm, the breath, that need to use the will to keep going—but that high? I’ve never found it. If anything, I’ve known the opposite: heaviness, boredom, and a sense that I’d rather be walking.

And yet, one of my sons said it again this week: “You just have to push through, Mum—you’ll feel it.” I don’t doubt his experience. I just can’t manufacture it for myself.

It makes me think of how we talk, as Christians, about the presence of God. There’s a similar language sometimes – of joy, fire, fullness. We long for others to experience it, to “catch it,” to know what we know. But that feeling doesn’t come on cue, and certainly not just because we want it for them.

Surely there are times when faith feels more like endurance than exhilaration, if we’re honest? “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Not feel, but know.

Finding peace in the everyday is worth sharing, too. Not every step with God feels like flying; sometimes it feels like simply continuing. People may be searching for something other than a new high or a feeling of fullness. For many, peace and a sense of being loved and cared for are the goals.

Whether running or believing, not every journey is marked by a high. Some are marked by faithfulness. And that kind of quiet glory is less exhilarating, less dramatic, but no less real.

Many Fathers

Someone once said that when we become preoccupied with simply knowing things about God, our spiritual lives begin to resemble trying to view the galaxies through a pair of $5 binoculars—everything vast reduced to something small and manageable. We gravitate toward teaching that shows us what to look for instead of how to look—methods that fill our ears rather than train them to hear, and screens that show us finished stories instead of handing us a camera and inviting us to create our own.

The modern church structure is often content to feed us this way. The motives are good, shaped by a hierarchical instinct to pass on knowledge and experience—something like the father/son model. And most of us are comfortable with it. There is a certain safety in having someone in leadership provide the answers. It steadies us. It simplifies things. We are drawn to the clarity of good versus evil, to black-and-white theology, to the sense of controlled order.

Yet the Gospels tell a different story. Jesus seemed remarkably at ease with disruption—his mission untidy, unpredictable, and often unsettling. And then comes the Holy Spirit, and whatever sense of control we were clinging to begins to slip. The prophetic opens up futures that don’t always appear ordered, or even sensible. And yet—there is something alive in it, something strangely compelling. It’s unsettling, yes—but also, somehow, deeply enjoyable.

“For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 1 Cor 4:15 ESV”

Fathers, then, hold a vital place in this landscape—not merely to instruct and direct, but to encourage, to listen, and to call things out of others. Scripture suggests this kind of father is rare. It takes an unusual father to step back and allow a son to leave the well-worn path, to push into the unknown and carve out something new.

A good father doesn’t stand at the edge shouting directions; he walks nearby—encouraging, steadying, wiping the sweat from a weary brow. He knows when to celebrate, throwing a party when the harvest comes, and when to quietly prepare a place of return, making up the spare room for the day his son needs to come home

Lord make us mothers and fathers like that.  Not holding on to our pride or possessions but giving all generations the green light to be pioneers of the new.

 

Superman Serves

As I reconfigure the words of the Great Commission in my head, I wonder what kind of service Jesus had in mind when he issued us our final job description. He begins the deposition with the words, “All authority has been given unto me.” So in that name—the one with all the power—we go. Our crummy little broken selves are somehow decked out with that same authority.

Like Clark Kent slipping into a phone booth, we pull on the blue lycra saviour suit—in our case with a big red “J” stitched across the chest. Not exactly the Man of Steel, perhaps, but deputised all the same. We get to carry that power into the world: changing lives, making disciples, and teaching them what Jesus taught us. Magnificent. And yet, sometimes the heroics look less like capes and more like a warm meal, a listening ear, or simply showing up—hospitality as a subtle kind of superpower.

The latter part—“I am with you”—takes the emphasis off the “dress for success” requirements and places it instead on simply being with him. He is with us.

The full instructions are:

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” — Matthew 28:18–20

When we get curious about evangelism, hospitality deserves a mention, for it quietly plays a supporting role by truly noticing and caring for the needs of others. And honestly, that kind of simple kindness can create space for something deeper: a real connection, spirit to spirit. It’s a softer kind of evangelism, the kind that happens naturally over dinner and conversation.

But there are reasons we sometimes resist a more natural, relational approach to evangelism. We like programmes. We like step-by-step plans and clear outcomes. There’s comfort in having a formula. Somewhere along the way, getting someone “over the line” began to feel like a goal to achieve—just another item on the checklist—rather than something that flows out of genuine connection. My prayer for me is that I can be that kind of missionary—one who loves, cares, and connects.

WAR AND HOPEFUL IMAGINATIONS

Imagination is a danger; thus, every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.
— Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (1985)

WAR AND HOPEFUL IMAGINATIONS

My father regularly took me and my siblings to the local tip. He was an avid gardener. He would connect his small, rusty trailer to the car, and we would help him haul greenery from the garden until the trailer was filled with cuttings—eucalyptus trimmings or grassy weeds—tied down with ropes. Then we would head off on an adventure that ended with the faint smell of compost on our jeans and our mouths feeling grimy as that unmistakable garbage-dump smell clung to our skin.

We were allowed to wander and pick through the piles of other people’s junk. We found dolls and suitcases and furniture and would beg my father to let us take things home. It seems a ridiculous adventure now, considering the risk of germs and sharp objects. Still, in simpler times it was just a treasure trove. We learned to salvage, rescue, and save. We learnt that one man’s trash could be another man’s treasure. Those grimy things can be cleaned. Almost everything can be redeemed.

In this century we are on course to see better use of resources globally and a more respectful relationship with our shocking waste buildup. At the same time, we are dealing with deep piles of justice fallout that have been rotting in the global tip for decades. We are picking through the garbage of the past.

It is worth noting that we are trying to solve two global problems at once: the physical (ecological) and the spiritual (human). Both fit within the story of our reconciliation with God. In Genesis we read that God breathed life into the earth and then into humankind. He longs to see reconciliation in both—our earth and all humanity. He came to earth himself, our second Adam, to demonstrate how serious he is about helping us escape our mess.

If the natural speaks of the spiritual in any way, our efforts to right ecological wrongs might mirror or foreshadow the redeeming of the soul of humanity: creating a people intent on treasuring all life—humanity, animals, and the planet. A humanity that owns up to the injustices of the past. A society moving away from a clinical, frightened separateness and the glorification of the individual.

As we comb through the piles of garbage—the trash of wars, apartheid, racism, and tribal brutality—I remain hopeful. It is messy work, and the risks are high. But perhaps this is what redemption looks like: people willing to sift through the ruins of the past, believing that something worth saving might still be found.

Perhaps this, too, is part of the prophetic imagination: refusing to believe that the story buried in the rubble is the only one we will ever have.

Faith Mosaic

God doesn’t change—yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the same God. But we? We change constantly. We reinvent ourselves, our bodies, our minds, and our spiritual practices again and again. Isn’t it natural, then, that our faith would shift and reshape along the way?

This is the human story—a messy, multi-layered, wonderfully unpredictable path through life. Every fragment of your spiritual journey, every stumble and triumph, is useful and redeemable. Own it. Don’t get stuck in spiritual regret, and don’t settle for spiritual stagnation. Keep growing. Keep exploring. And most of all, be proud of the crazy mosaic of your faith that you walk upon.

In Joni Mitchell’s iconic song “Big Yellow Taxi", she laments, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” capturing the careless destruction of nature in favour of ugly urban development. We often bury our personal histories—ashamed of the mess and mistakes. They are covered over with layers of shame and regret? I look back at my childhood innocence as unimportant, sweet perhaps, and my young adult fervour as slightly cringeworthy, but all parts of the walk make up the spiritual man. We have little locked safes that house the various iterations of our faith journey. We don't often open them up and gaze upon the footsteps.

From a spiritual perspective, embracing and learning from the past can reshape our journey into a kind of “paved paradise". Each brick, each stone, becomes part of our inner growth.

In recent decades, a spiritual deconstruction “industry” has emerged—one that markets the ugliness of our past like a bonfire of self-consciousness. Too often, the ashes are then used to stoke revenge and remorse rather than healing.

We just dress ourselves in the faith of the now. People lack curiosity and desire to explore beyond their past. Or, just as often, we discard faith altogether and spend our lives complaining about its failures and disappointments – never truly owning our part in the dismantling. 

Then there are the blinkered ones. When we stand at the hotel window, refusing to look down – never noticing the parking-lot rubble and the human mess all around. Their eyes are dutifully bolted heavenward, entranced by the noble sway of palm trees. This was me for a good few years. 

Scripture consistently encourages believers to reflect on their actions and grow from them. Repentance, derived from the Greek word "metanoia", signifies a transformative change of heart and mind. This transformation isn’t about erasing the past but redeeming it. Repentance, actually by its very nature, ensures that we look backwards. 

Apostle Paul could have been embarrassed about his LinkedIn profile; instead, he doesn’t shy away from recalling his past. He uses it to demonstrate the boundless grace of God: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect."

Instead of tossing our mistakes in the bin, what if we saw them as paving stones on the spiritual road? Every twist, every wrong turn, every misstep—it all gets built into a faith that can actually hold up when the storms roll in. Recycling those faith experiences turns our path into something walkable and interesting for others too, not just another pile of ashes.

Church

St. John the Evangelist, Albany Western Australia

I’ve always thought of church as a perilous place. Anything can happen. They don’t call us Bible bashers for nothing. Church feels a bit like a giant football pitch where anyone gets to play—even if you’ve skipped training and have no clue how to handle the ball. I’m a big fan of letting everyone have a go—speak, serve, get involved in the life of the community. But that kind of wide-open liberty does come with a few pitfalls. Even Jesus, if you read the Gospels, was surrounded by plenty of rookies. So the trick is to stay both watchful and gracious—and maybe wear some padding while you’re at it.

Most of us sense the tension in church life—the constant pull between “heaven now” and the hard truth of our brokenness, our ongoing need for a saviour. I’ve often felt the unease of being part of a church that, as theologian Gordon Fee once put it, lived in “heavenly overdrive”—claiming too much of heaven’s reality too soon. He pointed to Corinth as the classic example: a church trying to grab hold of it all at once, what he called “over-realized eschatology.” On the flip side, others build their entire faith around the fallenness of the world. So which is it? Do we strap on the Superman cape—or settle into Clark Kent mode for now?

I’ve drifted between both extremes: congregations where worship looked like laughter in the Spirit and full-on laps around the auditorium, and others where it was the hushed, liturgical rhythm of the Catholic mass. Small wonder so many people wonder what “church” really is meant to be.

You don't have to yell

In Letters to Young Radicals, political science professor Aurelian Craiutu makes a case for the overlooked virtue of moderation. In our current climate, moderation doesn’t sound appealing. We’re told to “pick a side,” to plant our flag firmly on one end of the spectrum—right or left. Yet Craiutu argues that moderation is not weakness but strength: more courageous, more hopeful, and ultimately more constructive than polarization.

By its very nature, moderation stays open—to nuance, to complexity, to the interests of all parties. A moderate doesn’t have far to walk toward those on either side. Isn’t this where Jesus stood? Accessible to all, unafraid to meet people where they were.

And yet, we gravitate toward the loud and the radical. We admire leaders who sound unshakable, who present their faith in stark, uncompromising terms. We often equate radical faith with deeper faith. But perhaps we need honesty here: maybe the church would do better to seek humility and holiness, rather than pure boldness, in its leaders.

Moderation does not mean blandness, nor does it lack courage. Refusing to yell may feel risky in our all-or-nothing world, but it creates the space for genuine, meaningful conversations.

Ref. Craiutu, Aurelian. Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-1108848855

Being presence

Philosopher Jacques Maritain, who came to visit Merton at the monastery once, said, “If there’s a place where Christ isn’t present, you go there. Christ will be present this way.” I think it is this transformative place of living from presence that allows us to resonate with others—meeting them in their presence, rather than through our ideas about them or their ideas of us.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations, Learning from Thomas Merton August 25, 2025

 

The Exhibition

Christ wanted his followers to throw out any Pharisaic-style public exhibitions and replace them with an authentic self—something that could be permanently nailed to the wall, reflecting Him as the artist in residence.

Beware the curated life. All seems well until the wind blows the easels down.

If we choose to offer up our real selves—our messy and surrendered selves—Christ collaborates with us to turn it into true art. Something eternal. Immovable. Attractive.

The Communion Act

Sometimes, when I fold a towel,
or smooth a napkin's crease,
or guide the nose of an iron along a cotton sleeve,
I imagine I am a Catholic priest—
folding white linen at the communion table.

I have one napkin,
used only to line the bread basket.
It’s nothing special—except to me.
And every time I fold it,
I think of the ritual.
Always.
No exaggeration.

Communion dazzles me.
Not with spectacle—
but with stillness,
with repetition.

The priest moves through his ceremony
as he has so many times before.
He swirls the water, the wine—
a quiet bartender at a holy bar.
A fast-food worker assembling another Big Mac.
A lab tech preparing another sample.
Always the same.
Always different.
Always holy.

He is housekeeper, host,
servant, celebrant.
Altar boys by his side.
People cupping hands,
tongues extended,
eyes closed.
Some sip the wine.
Some pass.
Some come with crossed arms,
asking only for a blessing.

We come forward like birds—
reaching for a scrap of bread.
It is enough.

Then, he clears the table.
Folds the cloth.
Wipes the rim of the chalice.
Sits, just for a moment.

And then he rises.
And sends us out—

"Go in peace,
to love and serve the Lord."

Forgiveness - making room for mercy

As Paul writes, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

The right to be right is enjoying its moment—and perhaps understandably so. In a world reckoning with centuries of injustice—racial, gendered, colonial, religious—being right has become a kind of moral currency. We demand apologies from prime ministers and popes, from cardinals and authors, not just for personal wrongs but for collective wounds that have festered through generations. In this climate, forgiveness becomes even more radical—not as a denial of justice, but as a surrender to God. It calls us not to forget the past, but to yield our need to win. True forgiveness, like Christ’s own, costs us something. It’s not cheap grace. We lay down our right to be right to make room for mercy, which heals. It’s the mercy in the face of pain that heals.

Menashe

The word Menashe is an interesting Hebrew word. It offers a  kind of redemption through holy forgetting — a spiritual amnesia. The word, means “causing to forget” or “one who makes forget,” and speaks to the grace of God that soothes old wounds and frees us from past traumas. Its root is the Hebrew verb nashah (נָשָׁה), "to forget," but the forgetting it describes is sacred — a help that lifts the weight of what once was.

Through the process of Menashe, God has gently covered my pain, not to erase it, but to redeem it. I have not been left bitter or broken: It invites all to move on. It echoes the voice of the Lord in Isaiah 43: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Menashe is that way in the wilderness — the grace to leave behind what held you, so you can walk freely into what God is making new.

Holy Smoke

They said, ‘Now don’t go missing out on what God has got for you’.

It made  me sort of desperate and frantic. I exchanged my pilgrim slippers for the neon lights of the ‘Price is Right’ and moved away from mystery. It’s just in my nature to gravitate toward where things are happening.

Now, decades later, I sit by dim candlelight barely able to make out the river or the sky. Just faithfully boiling the kettle over the smouldering ashes. Warmed by holy smoke.

It is by the goodness of God that He realized I would need a lot of help, and, so he sent Jesus. He bent down in grace to give me something to grip onto, a handle on himself, so that maybe I could relate to the mystery that is God.

The Head Office

Jesus asked a lot of questions—even though He already knew all the answers. Instead of just giving information, he challenges people to reflect on what they truly love and desire. What do you want? Are you hungry or thirsty? What drives you?

As Christians, we ought to shape our discipleship around asking questions rather than just handing people a set of beliefs. Or at least find a balance. It is usually better to set aside the catechism books and actually listen to people. That’s what makes the Alpha program, which started years ago at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, so effective—it begins with honest conversation. Like any meaningful project or legal process, it starts with a discovery phase before jumping to conclusions.

This morning, I read a passage where Paul speaks to the Church at Philippi:

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to test and prove what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. Phil 1:9-10.

Many therapists, particularly those who use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, operate on the principle that you are what you think—change your thinking, and your life will improve. But Paul’s prayer suggests a different perspective: you are what you love. Jesus challenges the assumption that humans are primarily thinking beings, proposing instead that we are first and foremost seekers of love and acceptance. What if, rather than defining humans by what they know or do, we defined them by what they desire?

How would this change how we approach Christianity, and particularly how we promote our faith? Determining 'What do you love?'—not what you are buying, how you are spending your time, and what you are addicted to—these are the lowest-hanging fruits of our cultural dance. Distractions. Instead, we eyeball and drill down to questions of first loves and desires. Think about love as the starting menu, with knowledge only as a vitamin supplement.

The ballooning levels of anxiety and depression are a result of expectations that often have no bearing on what we truly want. This amnesia towards our natural, deep desires causes grief inside. Social change, gender issues, sexual expectations, success models, and the like have made mental pathways very complex, thereby clouding our real desires.

Knowledge doesn't teach us how to love. Everyday distractions grind away at destroying or at least distorting our love meter.

Love is built in by God—just covered in worldly lard. Love gets lost in life's fat roll and our Instagram feed.

Before you say it, I know this gets very loosey-goosey and feeds right into the 'do what feels good' mentality of the day, but maybe heart feelings are a better starting point than a desk and a bible and a concordance. I should have followed my heart more during the 30 or so years that precede this narrative. Instead, I bought way too many shares in the Head Office concept of faith. i.e., Christianity as a successful ‘business’ model and life choice. Now I want to deploy a more Augustine way of love: 'You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.'