I grew up on fire for God. I also grew up in a church where my parents didn’t really agree with the Vicar. Sunday lunches became a regular opportunity to unpick the service moment by moment, examine the theology, question the format and style of the service. It was perhaps a little over the top….
Ten years ago I arrived in a coastal Scottish town, a cobbled-street windswept place at the end of the road. It’s full of small cottages with low doors and soaring ancient ruins – all in the same deep grey rock. The wind sweeps across the sea from Norway and the golf-pilgrims arrive from America and…
I get my love of cathedrals from my dad. I can’t walk past one without feeling the tug within me to step inside, walk the cloister and the aisles, step down into the crypt. There’s something about the history held in those stone walls, the myriad individuals who have walked across the same flagstones before…
I started marking the seasonal changes a few years ago. It started out just as a mark in my diary, my own thoughts to keep me company on these little-remembered dates. I’d wash the windows for the Spring Equinox, to remind myself to clean back the cobwebs in my own life that were preventing the…
Recently I sat with a new friend, rain beating against the window outside, our hands warmed by cups of coffee, and I asked her to tell me her story. It took three hours. And I barely held back the tears multiple times as I listened and wondered how I would have endured half the things…
I was somewhat battle-weary in January this year. 2012 had been a roller-coaster ride, one where I was pretty sure I was going to come careening off at some point and land in a tangled mess. But I’d made it to the end, clinging for dear life to courage, and there was a sense of…
