The Bibby Stockholm Barge AKA tackling Bibby Stockholm syndrome. It may have passed you by, but this week is the UK Government’s Small Boat Week! I know! It seems to come around quicker every year doesn’t it? I hope you remembered to leave a pork pie and small glass of ale under the tree for Nigel Farage. “He’s been! He’s been!” This week’s “festivities” saw 15 people loaded on to the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, before being taken off again due to the presence of legionnaires disease.  The “plague barge”, owned by Bibby Maritime, who’s founder John Bibby has well documente ..read more

What if we just told the truth? What would that be like? What if we told the truth to ourselves, and what if we told the truth to others? What if, in doing so, we dared to speak in a way that others could understand because we dared to speak transparently, using common points of reference; a common vocabulary, a common and intelligible grammar.  And more - what if we dared to see ourselves in a way that was common with and comparable to the way others see us? What if were just honest about what we can know, and what we can’t know, and started the conversation from a shared understanding o ..read more

Aka “The Talmud says it, that settles it” An equality rainbow sticker on a lamp post Cramming 13.8 billion years into 6 days… I’ve never been someone who thought that Genesis was an actual historic account of how we came into existence.  It’s a beautiful poem, sure – the vision of our Creator forming the cosmos and delighting in its goodness stands in contrast to the other dominant creation stories at the time that claimed that our creation was a bi-product of some violent struggle between gods (e.g. the Enuma Elish) In Christian circles you will often hear the words of Genesis 1:27 quot ..read more

A placard on the street that says “to be silent is to be complicit” You picked and shaped those words, until they made a perfect circle around your capitalism, your individualism, your binaries, your nationalism, your whiteness, your maleness, your holiness, your prejudice, your ideas of what or who fit. And then you pulled and pulled, tighter, like a lasso, (or a noose) until only those who look like you can breathe in this space. When you do that, you are a leader. Yet, when we shape those words with freedom, with meaning, looking for beauty, pointing out dignity, airing out injustice and ..read more

“Dude, Breathe” sticker on a lampost in Texas somewhere So in Exodus 3 God visits a shepherd called Moses (I’m assuming we’ve all heard of him). God visits Moses and asks him to liberate God’s people from slavery in Egypt. It’s fair to say Moses is pretty reluctant at first, questioning why the Pharoah would listen to him… lets pick the story up at Verse 11… 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the peop ..read more