Coffee Theology

  The Skies I'm Under is a wonderfully honest memoir by a mother whose much-loved eldest child is severely disabled.  I had the privilege of staying with the family a few years ago and hearing a little of their journey.  Rachel has been blogging for a couple of years now and has taken the brave step of telling much more of her story in this fascinating book, which I devoured in a couple of days.   Rachel describes the frightening time when her first, uneventful pregnancy ended with Sammy being born in distress and spending the first few days of his life in intensive care.  Then Rachel and Tim brought him home and enjoyed the first couple of months of cuddles, nappies and sleepless nights, only to be told when Sammy was two months old that he had suffered severe brain damage and would be profoundly disabled.  It is a harrowing read and Rachel details her family's grief with poignancy and honesty.  The reader is unable to hold on to the c...

A few months ago I had my first panic attack.  At least, I think that's what it was.  I used to think that mental health was precise and orderly; that when there was something out of kilter it could be categorised, labelled and dealt with.  Now I realise that it's all a bit less defined than that.  People are complicated. I was on the Tube in London.  Lots of people dislike the Tube, I guess: it's crowded, hot and stuffy, a bit claustrophobic.  But I went to school in London from the age of eleven and rode the Tube every day.  I spent my teenage years on the Central and Piccadilly lines, going to meet my friends in Soho, enjoying child price tickets to the cinema and three courses for £5 at Dome (anyone remember Dome?).  I have taken the journey from Liverpool Street to Notting Hill Gate literally hundreds of times.  I have never been stuck underground.  I have always made it to the end of my journey completely unscathed.  So wh...

It's that magical time of year again - that one night when my small neighbours knock on my door asking for sweeties.  This year, I'm properly prepared: I have two pumpkins (I wanted five, but decided to be thrifty), a big tub of sweets and a tube of 100 glow sticks.  The sweets are my concession to popular demand; the glow sticks are an attempt to represent light in darkness (a symbolism which will doubtless be lost on the kids).  I'm seeing the pumpkin as my main opportunity to communicate something of my Christian faith to my neighbours. One year, while I was at theological college, Halloween fell on a Sunday.  The new housing estate church I was assigned to met in a church hall on Sunday afternoons and many of the congregation were unaccompanied children.  I googled 'Christian pumpkin carvings' and guess what - there are a lot of ideas out there, America being a country which is big on Halloween and big on Christianity too.  I decided to carve a simple f...

I got hooked on the five-part BBC drama Doctor Foster within minutes.  It's beautifully shot and acted; Suranne Jones is mesmerising as GP Gemma Foster, who discovers that her husband of 14 years has been cheating on her.  With a 23-year-old.  For two years.  It's a very simple story which in many ways is banal, but the quality of the acting, and especially the central character, sets it apart. On Wednesday the final episode aired and I found myself indulging all my least sophisticated knee-jerk emotional reactions, shouting very rude things at all the various characters who have hurt Gemma: her husband, Simon, who has cheated, lied, and shows no remorse when he is found out; Simon's girlfriend, Kate, whose disgust for Gemma makes her easy to hate; Gemma's so-called friends who had known about the affair for months and even socialised with the adulterous pair, saying nothing to Gemma.   It is only in the final episode that Gemma lets on that she knows about Sim...

Recently I came to realise that my psychological makeup, specifically my OCD, had probably influenced my theology and indeed my vocation quite profoundly. I'm an evangelist, which is a word which means different things to different people, so I'll tell you what it means to me.  Being an evangelist means that my principal concern as a Christian minister is for people who don't follow Jesus, and that communicating the gospel or 'good news' to people who haven't heard it a thousand times already is the most important thing I do.  My faith has been nurtured in evangelical churches, and it's probably fair to say that evangelicals place a greater emphasis on evangelism than other Christian traditions.  That's partly because we emphasise conversion and making a personal decision to follow Christ.  In Baptist churches we practise believer's baptism, which means that we only baptise people who have made that personal decision for themselves (which is why ...

When preparing to go on holiday earlier this month, I decided to check out some reviews of the best books of 2015 to help me choose my holiday reading.   So you've been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson was one of Mark Lawson's recommendations.  I don't usually read nonfiction for fun, but this book was so engaging I actually finished it before my holiday started.   Ronson explores the recent phenomenon of public shaming, particularly online shaming.  He considers several people's stories.  One of the most well known stories he investigates involves a tasteless racist joke about AIDS, which was apparently intended to be ironic, tweeted by a young unknown PR executive shortly before she boarded an international flight.  I won't mention her name here as I don't want to contribute further to her Google results.  In the course of her eleven-hour flight, during which her phone was switched off, her poorly judged joke was retweeted and retweeted, mostly by peopl...

One of my favourite films growing up was Parenthood , a Ron Howard comedy which follows a few months in the lives of the Buckman family.  Steve Martin is Gil Buckman, a stressed father who is trying to hold it all together.  Towards the end of the film he is having an argument with his wife about yet another crisis: she's pregnant, he's just quit his job, and they're both scared about the future.  At this point Grandma wanders in and tells an apparently unconnected story about going to a theme park as a young woman, while the Buckmans smile with polite exasperation.  She describes the experience of going on the roller coaster, which was unpredictable, unnerving, terrifying, thrilling and exciting all at once.  Some people preferred the merry-go-round, she explains, but that just goes up and down.  She preferred the roller coaster - you get more out of it.  As she wanders off, Karen Buckman exclaims that she's a smart lady.  Gil is less impressed: ...

I described anxiety before as a many-headed beast.  For a long time I was virtually free of symptoms, but then they came back in a totally unexpected way. I've always been someone who was confident in situations that made other people nervous - it's just the way I am.  I've been doing public speaking since I was 11; I always rather enjoyed things like exams and interviews; I'm not intimidated by walking into a room full of people I don't know.  But in my final year of ministerial formation, when I was going through the unsettling process whereby ministers are matched with churches, I started to find that things which had been easy for me before began to be very, very difficult. I remember sitting in a Christmas service at my sending church in Chelmsford waiting to do a Bible reading.  This was a church full of people who knew and loved me, and I'd been asked to do one simple reading in a Christmas service - not a tall order for a trainee minister.  But I was fre...

Many of us talking about 'being a bit OCD' when we like things a certain way - pens lined up on a desk, bottles lined up on a shelf etc.  I imagine all of us at times go home to check if we've left the gas on or the back door unlocked.  I suppose all of us can have OCD moments.  But people who suffer with the disorder take it to a new level. I can literally stand there looking at our cooker, which has a gas hob, and I can see that all the knobs are turned to zero, and while I'm looking at them I'm still wondering if they're really off.  There's a thought: "what if I left the cooker on?" and that thought brings with it anxiety: "it's really dangerous to leave the cooker on - it could start a fire."  The thought is an obsessive one - it won't go away - it just goes round and round and round your head.  So then comes the compulsion - to go downstairs and check the cooker is off.  Which you do... but it only brings temporary relief.  ...

One of my all-time favourite films is As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.  Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, a talented and famous novelist who suffers from severe obsessive compulsive disorder and hates leaving his apartment.  He also has a highly unpleasant personality and is extremely rude (and hence very funny to watch).  Helen Hunt plays Carol, the waitress who patiently serves Melvin exactly the same breakfast every morning at the same table in the same restaurant, which he eats with a plastic knife and fork he brings himself, carefully sealed in a plastic pocket.  Melvin is terrified of germs, which means he hates being touched or touching anything outside his apartment, and has to wash his hands with very hot water and many bars of soap.  Because, of course, once you've touched the soap, it's dirty, right?  He also has routines around locking his front door; turning light switches on and off a certain number of times; touching th...

Rise, like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you: Ye are many - they are few! Extract from Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy Last week I saw Amir Amirani's documentary We Are Many,  which tells the story of the global resistance to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by British and American forces.  It charts the unfolding reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US in 2001 and the decision by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to take their countries to war, purportedly to find the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein could deploy within 45 minutes.   The high point of the film is the global anti-war demonstration on 15th February 2003, when marches against the Iraq war took place in over 600 countries across the world, and London saw the biggest demonstration in British history, with an estimated 2 million people on the streets of the capital.  The documentary features in...

Some of my friends have been inspired by the recent general election (and surprise outcome) to join a political party.  I've been thinking about it too, but I have a dilemma. There are two large parties which are the only two real contenders for forming a government in our first past the post system.  I naturally lean toward one of them and that is probably the party I would join.  It doesn't entirely represent my political views and has done things in government which I have violently disagreed with.  But what's the alternative?  Joining a party which has no hope of forming a government, or even a coalition, given the tiny number of seats currently held by the smaller parties. And then I pause, and I ask myself, why do you have to join a powerful party?  Why join a party which has to develop policies to win votes rather than because they're the right policies for the country?  I sound naive even to myself when I ask that question.  It's not about...

The dark days of Good Friday and Easter Saturday are over.  It all changes on Easter Sunday. Of course, the difficult situation you're dealing with may not have changed yet.  But on Easter Sunday we see a ray of hope - a promise of resurrection.  On Easter Sunday Christians celebrate the amazing fact that when the women went to the tomb two days after Jesus' death, they found it empty.  I'd like to share with you another great piece of art from the clever folks that brought us www.icons-on-sea.org.uk  .  This can be viewed in person at the end of Southend pier:   We see a bunch of flowers taped to a traffic sign, a poignant reminder that someone died there, perhaps not long ago.  They're taped to a 'dead end' sign, which seems to indicate the sad fact that the person commemorated by the flowers has reached a dead end.  But the empty tomb of Easter Sunday shows us that the grave is not ...

On Good Friday Christians remember the day Jesus died.  An innocent, holy man unjustly executed in a most painful way.  The immortal Son of God submitting himself to a shameful death.  On Good Friday, goodness and mercy and justice and peace are put to death.  Evil wins. And on Easter Saturday, nothing happens. Goodness has died, and life goes on. When something terrible happens to someone else, we may try to comfort them.  Or we may avoid them, because we don't know what to say.  If we do have a conversation with them, we may come out with statements which attempt to minimise the person's suffering or provide an explanation for it.  At least he didn't suffer.  You still have your health.  Worse things happen at sea.  Everything happens for a reason.  Your prayers were answered, just not in the way you wanted.  Never mind, life goes on. We find these painful times so uncomfortable.  What we absolutely hate to do is to sit ...

  http://www.icons-on-sea.blogspot.co.uk/ Some friends have created an Easter art installation in central Southend .  Pictures like this one can be found up and down the high street; in shops, attached to railings or, in this case, to a bike rack.  Each piece is creative, playful, provocative, sometimes downright offensive.  Like this 'magazine'.  The cover features Christ on the cross with headlines including: Easter Pin Up!   Body to die for! Give your nails full impact .  I love (loathe?) the juxtaposition of the inane celebrity and beauty topics magazines like this push on young women and the horror of the cross of Good Friday.  On the one hand, a sculpted, hairless, (for most women) unobtainable body with perfectly manicured nails; on the other, a broken, pierced, hairy and bloody naked body racked with pain.  It certainly puts things in perspective. This magazine cover i...

An enormous mural of George Orwell appeared on the pier in Southwold some time last year.  Orwell spent a few years living in Southwold and his nom de plume was apparently inspired by the river than runs close by.  It was only on this trip to Southwold that I discovered the name of the artist who created the mural, however - Pure Evil, aka Charles Uzzell-Edwards.  I realised I'd seen his work featured on TV . Pure Evil creates, among other things, pop art style portraits with strong eye makeup which drips down their faces, creating a sinister clown-like appearance.  In a 2013 interview in the Telegraph , he explains, referring to his street art: I'm not really interested in being subtle.  I want to make people look; I welcome the conflict. He tells the story of his youthful fascination with guns; of borrowing his cousins' shotgun, going out and shooting a rabbit, and then sincerely regretting this act.  The graffiti rabbits in the Southwold mural are a recu...

I was recently watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon gets very upset because Amy points out the massive plot issue with Raiders of the Lost Ark.   She remarks that nothing Indy does actually affects the outcome of events.  Apologies to anyone who hadn't already heard this criticism of the film and has now had one of their childhood favourites ruined.  I watched the whole fim from start to finish tonight just to check and she's right.  There's still so much to like about the film though: weird Aztec booby traps, ancient treasure, scary Nazis, a cute monkey and lots of great visual jokes.   The real reason I was watching Raiders tonight, though, was in order to decide whether I could get away with showing the scary Nazi death scene at the youth weekend away.  We're going to consider some stories from the life of King David, including the bit where David brings the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem, does some scantily clad dancing and ...

Someone asked me to blog on the point of prayer.  Actually, she might have been joking, but as I have been failing pretty dismally at my Lent discipline of blogging daily, I'll do my penance and have a go. There are lots of different reasons to pray.   1. To thank and praise God.  These are really two types of prayer but there is some crossover.  When you praise God for a beautiful day you're also thanking him for making it.  When I'm asked to do a children's talk as part of a service I often use interactive prayer and I usually break it down into praise, thanks, sorry and please.  But I'm not sure my 'praise you fors' and my 'thank you fors' are that distinct. I guess prayers of praise are telling God how great he is without reference to anything he has actually done for you.  I'm reminded of the phrase 'cupboard love' used by my cynical parents when I was growing up.  I love you because I want something out of your cupboard (or because ...

I have a bit of a problem with this blog post.  Commenting on The Casual Vacancy , which ended last night on BBC1, will inevitably involve spoilers and yet I strongly encourage anyone reading this to read the book for themselves.  So I will try VERY hard not to give away anything important. Fans have apparently been taking to Twitter to complain about the changes to the story, and these are legion, although J.K. herself is apparently very happy with the adaptation.  Certainly the main message of the story, the responsibility of all people to seek each other's welfare, comes across very strongly.  Like when the bully Mr Price chucks his stolen TV in the river, with tragic consequences.  Or when the parish council, in Barry Fairbrother's absence, manages to get approval for the local clinic to be turned into a luxury hotel, so that recovering addict Terri Weedon has to take the bus into Yarvil for her methadone and meets her drug dealer on the way.  Or w...

This sermon, which I gave this morning, has haunted me all week.  Initially I was excited about it and had tons of ideas where to go with it.  As the week drew on, I became more and more worried.  Talking about feminism doesn't usually meet with a particularly positive reaction.  Men often find it aggressive; women often choose to distance themselves from it.  Many people, men and women alike, feel that it just isn't necessary to talk about it any more.  We've come a long way since the 1970s. We have maternity leave, the pill, access to jobs at the very highest level in pretty much all fields and anti-discrimination legislation - what more do we want? As I was preparing this week, I found myself thinking about women who are not middle class, white and western, and asking myself what arguments over the biblical teaching on the place of women have to say to their situations.  I found myself drawn to Jesus' 'Nazareth manifesto' in Luke 4: “ The Spirit of ...

Well done to those who survived Café Theology last night, which involved clips from Bridget Jones , Bridesmaids , Skyfall and The Bourne Ultimatum .  The clips were long and the questions posed were many.  One of the books of the Bible I felt myself drawn to when preparing for the service, and which we considered briefly last night, was the Book of Ruth.  It occurred to me a few months ago that Ruth is a book (and possibly the only one - but I would love to be proved wrong) that actually passes the Bechdel test.  A reminder: to pass the Bechdel test, a film (or play, or book, or whatever) has to have two or more female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.  It's an interesting test to apply to films in particular in order to consider how women are portrayed. The Book of Ruth is just four chapters long.  It concerns an Israelite, Naomi, and her daughter-in-law, Ruth.  Naomi's husband and two sons have tragically di...

It's been an interesting few days preparing for our Cafe Theology service on Sunday evening.  I'm due to preach on the topic of gender on Sunday week, with the title: 'A woman's place'.  As this is a somewhat enormous topic, embracing as it does the relationship of one half of humanity to the other, I thought it might be helpful to get people thinking about the issues in advance (and possibly give me some pointers as to where on earth to start in preparing the sermon).   We'll be considering clips from four fairly recent films - including Skyfall , which I've blogged on before - asking ourselves what view of women these films convey and then considering some texts from the Bible, asking what happens when the Bible collides with these offerings from contemporary culture.  I'm not expecting any easy answers, but it should be an interesting conversation. Some people complain, with some justification, that the Bible is a sexist book.  It was certainly writte...

Today my colleague and I took advantage of it being half term, and a quieter week in the church office, to attend the Active Church conference put on by Oasis Church Waterloo.  The grey-haired bloke in the background is Steve Chalke, who it turns out is far more radical than I thought.  A very interesting day with a lot to reflect on.   My most embarrassing moment of the day came when a perfectly nice Anglican priest asked me if I had a paid role in the church or was a volunteer.  I've blogged before, I think, about the fact that people tend to assume I'm not a minister (or not a proper one) because I'm young-ish and female.  So I decided to put my new resolution into effect - to throw these questions back at people when they ask them - and said something along the lines of: "Why do you ask that?  Why are you wondering if I'm paid?"  It turns out he hadn't heard me say I was a minister because of the traffic noise, so I immediately felt guilty for bein...