Greetings to all of you who’ve followed along with Passio. Whether you just recently tuned in, or you’ve been following us for a good while, we really appreciate you giving a little bit of your precious time and attention to our quirky and somewhat esoteric project!

Our new year announcement, which may be surprising, is this: the Passio Project is coming to an end. If you’ve been a paid supporter, we’ll stop those payments, but we can’t thank you enough for trusting and supporting us in that way. It’s been hugely encouraging, even as we’ve often felt we’re flailing around in the dark 😄

Times change, priorities change — Substack has changed! — none of which is any drastic reason to stop, but this is a season of life where we want to do less things, and do them better. We also could have left things open-ended, but we’ve talked about it a while and we agreed to call a definite stop to this particular project, with the hope of doing a better job at willing the one thing.

And fear not! If you’ve been invested in any of the ongoing writing here, there are still ways to stay connected to it.

Perhaps most obviously: our ‘slow research project’, Ulterior Lives, will resurface at David Benjamin Blower’s own Substack — we’re also talking to publishers about other possibilities.. (you may remember we mentioned potential print projects in 2026, and this is still true, but it’ll be in a different guise). But if you’ve enjoyed David’s contributions do give him a follow.

Our popular guests Vanessa Chamberlin (The Tuning Fork), Sam Ewell (Desiring Life) and Elizabeth Oldfield (Fully Alive) of course have their own excellent Substack pages.

The Passionist Order who initiated and supported this project will also be dropping stories and reflections on their website over the coming months, so if you found that dimension of things interesting, then take a look!

Many blessings,

Chris, David + Paschal

I have been asked to join a panel next weekend, where young people from around the world get to ask whatever questions they like about the Bible.

I felt okay about it, until I was sent examples of the questions they might ask, most of which were, unsurprisingly I guess, around doctrine, rather than story or lived experience. And the first made me want to bolt: “What is the Gospel?”

I don’t have answers for these kinds of questions any more. And when faced with them, I’m as curious as anyone as to what words will fall out of my mouth. I’ve been told that’s why they’ve asked me to be on the panel. They know I’ll bring an embodied, experiential perspective that will likely open up, rather than answer, their questions.

But what does ‘The Gospel’ mean to me now? And how is it good news?

The last time I was asked about this, I shared this image. Van Gogh’s ‘Black Boots’ of 1886 (it’s actually been given the title Shoes, but I prefer my title).

Before sharing its relevance (for me) to the gospel, I asked the young people to tell me what they saw. “A pair of old, worn black boots.” “They belong to someone doing manual labour I think, or working in the fields.” “They are a symbol of poverty and labour… they only have this one pair of boots.” “This is totally random Vanessa… why are you showing us this?”

“Look at the beautiful light. It gives them such dignity… like they are radiant.” “They make me think of the mess and the pain of life and that somehow all of it is held in beauty.” “They make me want to cry… look how carefully he has painted them.”

The Wink

In 2019 my life fell out of London and landed in East Sussex with a thud. I determined I was done with Christian culture and Christian communities. Bruise-ingly disillusioned, I was going to let myself admit that I had lost my faith and just get on with my weird life with my weird people and not do the God thing anymore. Life, however, had other plans. And within a year I was settled in a perfect art studio space, next to a kitchen garden, on land set aside as a Christian retreat centre.

There was no obligation for me to get involved in the community there, but a musician friend invited me to join them for a night of worship, and she was kind and sensitive so I said yes. I instantly knew that it was a mistake. I could only, with integrity, sing about 3 words of the hundreds that appeared on the screen over the space of 1.5 hours. And whilst most of those around me had their hands in the air with faces turned upwards, seemingly radiating joy, I was sitting on the floor against a wall in a dark corner, with my knees to my chest, weeping.

“I think I’ve lost You. And if I’ve lost You then none of the decisions I’ve made in the last twenty years make sense anymore. All I feel is pain.”

And I remember that, after saying the words above in my head, I stretched my arms out over my knees, turned my palms upwards, bent my head down, and said “help.”

And I was helped.

By a light-footed dancing figure that left the crowd and bent down to join me. My eyes were closed but I could sense their presence. See their movements. They took my upturned hands in theirs, pressed their thumbs on the centre of my palms, and looked directly at my face.

“I came to meet the pain of the world, Vanessa. You are learning to experience and stay with the pain. That’s where I am.”

It was Jesus.

And He seemed a little relieved to have a break from the leaping around-ness. And to be kneeling for a moment in the dark with me. Reminding me, by touching my own palms, of the wounds of His death. Fearless in His simple resolve that, rather than having lost Him, I was perhaps for the first time beginning to really know Him.

This was an exquisite insight, which had a gentle radiance that I hope will stay with me forever.

And then it happened.

This Jesus began to get up, with the intention of joining the happy people again. But, as I looked up, sad to see Him go, He turned and looked me direct in my now open eyes.

And He smiled.

And winked.

And moved on.

The Dignity of All Things

Fast forward to October 2025 and I am walking with great delight and curiosity through the small but perfectly formed Van Gogh/Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Kiefer is a big fan of Van Gogh’s and, though their work appears vastly different, was influenced by his palette, his sense of composition, his sensitivity to place and land, and his imbuing of every element of his drawings and paintings with poetry and meaning.

There were some sweet drawings in this show, but most of Kiefer’s work was vast. Expressive. Bombastic. Radiantly bleak. Evocative. Visceral. Messy. Monumental. In Venice a few years back I saw work that had been commissioned for a specific state room in the Doge’s Palace, and was told that one of his paintings was 70 ft high.

And there, in the midst of 3 epic land-dream-scapes, in the final room of the RA show, was Van Gogh’s little ‘wink’.

I wasn’t expecting it, so when I turned from admiring the expanse of Kiefer’s work to see the comparatively tiny black boots quietly radiating glory from the wall behind me, I gasped. Then burst out laughing.

It was hilarious. Here was Kiefer’s incredible mythically-earthy-existentially-heroic kind of exploration of the human condition and the pain we were projecting on to the natural world around us. And it was instantly upstaged by the simple economy of Van Gogh’s pair of worn black boots.

And when the bleakness of Kiefer’s landscapes encountered the radiance of Van Gogh’s boots… when those boots walked that land… the earth sang.

At that moment a random man came and stood next to me and said “when I go to Kiefer exhibitions I always take mushrooms.” He seemed pretty un-creepy, so I asked him why. “It’s how they want to be experienced. In an altered state. They want to take you elsewhere.” That made sense to me. But then I smiled and pointed to my beloved boots. “Those don’t need mushrooms. Go check them out.”

If it is true that Van Gogh killed himself, it had to be because there was too much meaning, rather than too little. Like Kiefer, his fields stretch for miles and take the viewers eye out and beyond. But Van Gogh’s fields are bursting with discreet life and variety. Lone, lame workers limp their way home through trees that sing with golden evening light. Weary poets sweat colour and beauty through their tired pores. Dying sunflowers burst with seeds.

When Van Gogh stayed in London, he drew those he saw suffering their way through everyday life around him. And each — in their torn clothes, faces etched with pain — is given a dignity so confronting that it is hard to look at them for long.

The Winking Gospel

And so I return to his boots. Quiet. Worn. Tired. Labouring under injustice and hunger. Overlooked. Battered. Ugly. Pained. Alone.

And then they wink at me. And the light around them pierces my soul. Makes me weep.

Van Gogh’s good news. All things are rooted in, and can therefore radiate, beauty. Humans fighting to survive holds dignity. Pain is and will be held in hands that care. All things can be, are being, and will be, redeemed. Salvation. Saved. We are saved by Beauty.

In my vision of the winking Jesus, I glimpsed an eye that danced with joy and endless vitality. It said to me: “I promise this (the pain of the world) is only a moment… you’ll see Vanessa… I promise it will make sense.”

That glimpse was enough for a life time. I believed it. And it began to recover my faith. Without me needing to move an inch. No leaping. No forcing. Just arms extended, palms open, and a tear-stained face in the dark.

The bleakness of the world judged, as with Johnny Cash’s ‘Man in Black’, by a shimmeringly mournful pair of black boots.

Before leaving the exhibition I turned to see Mr. Mushroom still leaning in to experience those boots. Allowing them to alter his state. Experiencing their Gospel of Dignity.

Perhaps I should take some of his mushrooms before joining the panel next weekend.

Vanessa Chamberlin is an artist, writer, spiritual director and practical theologian. You’ll find her writing at The Tuning Fork on Substack, and can read about her spiritual direction and hosting practices at rockdove.org.uk

If you enjoyed this topic in particular, here’s a piece where Vanessa dives a bit more into thoughts around Van Gogh’s work.

FaithJustice, as you might imagine, brings together young adults of faith with a concern for justice, asking themselves how to live out those principles in practical ways. One of the projects under that banner is the FaithJustice Bible Podcast, which usually produces short reflections on lectionary readings, looking at these old scriptures through the lens of contemporary justice issues.

We’ll be featuring some of these reflections going forward, as the first of some new ‘Sections’ within our Passio Project diet.

But for now, something a bit different again — as the FaithJustice Podcast recently interviewed Baptist pastor David Mann, about working in East London and resisting the culture of the Arms Trade there. David has been dedicated to East Ham, and Bonny Downs Baptist Church, for many years: he’s renowned and respected in his community, and he pulled no punches in this spiritual, practical conversation. Listen above.

“It needs a complete and utter change of thinking, from that war-like, aggressive stance, to a healing, collaborative stance: a real repentance on our part. For the government, but also for ourselves.”

Can the ancient practice of pilgrimage help us to sow seeds of peace in the world?

In 2023, and in pursuit of that question, a group of wanderers set out from Oxford, arriving in London six days later in time to join a candlelit vigil outside the DSEi Arms Fair.

Some joined the pilgrimage for a day, some longer; some walked the whole six days. On the final day, as the group drew near the Arms Fair, they also paused for times of silence outside the head offices of a number of UK arms manufacturers. The following reflections are drawn from the Peace Pilgrimage Podcast—a 10-part series that was recorded en route—to explain in people’s own words why they felt drawn to make this journey.

Matthew Neville, event organiser

Why am I doing this? Why am I becoming a pilgrim? I think the first thing I would say is that the arms trade is a great evil, which underpins a lot of the destruction in our world.

By that, we could be talking about economic destruction, which leads to environmental destruction; we could also be talking about the destruction of people, particularly in the Global South—in other words, the people that make all the things that we consume, or over-consume.

The arms trade is what protects all of that. It is the ‘elite’ part of the world which over-consumes, and which is ultimately responsible for these forces of destruction we see. The elite—which I’m part of, by the way, and which many of us are part of—can only do that to the world because we’ve got weapons. Because we’ve got this force which allows us to do it. That underpins everything else.

When discussing this with people, we inevitably come up against questions about Ukraine and the like: how would you deal with Russia, with China, with whichever aggressor state is opposing us. I’m not saying those questions aren’t relevant. But for me there’s something much deeper at play. The weapons we manufacture don’t exist for those cases; they exist, primarily, to protect our privilege. I think that’s wrong.

Hand in hand with that is an acknowledgement that I, albeit in an indirect way, benefit from the arms trade. I benefit from being in a very privileged country.

So going on pilgrimage entails a certain amount of simplification, living on the road. And my hope is that it will involve some level of reflecting on that privilege. I’m hesitant to say atoning; I don’t think a walk like this atones for anything, not in a real way.

But there’s a ‘struggling with’, so to speak. A struggling with the reality of structural sin, and how my privilege, my position as a citizen of a Western society interacts with the fundamentals of what keeps that society going. That’s an intellectual task, but it’s also a spiritual task, with the possibility of deep change.

Lastly, another aspect of the pilgrimage is taking the space to ponder how the world could be. A vision that in my own mind is quite hazy, but perhaps in a greater mind—a divine mind—is clearer. What does a good life look like? What is the life that we should be living, and how do we get there? What are the spiritual disciplines, the mind practices, and above all the community practices we need to begin to embrace, to get us to that place?

Mark Keir

There’s an acceptance of violence and corruption in society as a whole. I think anybody who is going to stand up and say ‘we can’t accept this any more’ has to do it in a very gentle, peaceful way. So I can’t think of a better way to do it than in this pilgrimage.

This is also, I hope, going to be part of my journey towards understanding how peace can be a part of me and I can be a part of peace.

Sam Donaldson

There’s a longing in me to see a more peaceful world emerge. There’s part of me that wants to make some kind of stand in solidarity with those who suffer because of the arms fair, and shine a bit of a light on what’s going on at DSEI arms fair—all the devastation that’s caused by the sale of arms, and the greed and corruption that happens as a part of that trade.

I’m also here as a bit of an adventure; there’s a sense of the unknown ahead of me; I’m sure I’m going to discover some things about myself, and meet new people along the way, as well as seeing new places.

Jim Strickland

I am a Deacon at a Metropolitan community church in North London; an all-inclusive, social justice-led, queer church. I actually served 16 years in the Royal Navy; and then spent 16 years as a nurse in the NHS.

I’m walking for solidarity, walking for peace, walking to make it known that there are people who care about peace; there are people who want to bring the realm of God from the distance into the here and now. I want it to be known that people—that I—care about the dignity, the quality of all humanity. I’m walking because I believe that people should be able to live in peace, with full equal rights, in any place in this world.

Join the Pilgrimage

Peace Pilgrimage is at it again: you can join this year’s pilgrimage from Oxford to the Excel Centre between Monday 1st and Monday 8th September. Walking for peace, in protest against the DSEi arms fair, and against our government's complicity in the arms trade.

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"

Matthew discusses the theme of fire, and what this symbol means for Jesus' mission and our discipleship.

Jesus digs into the root of the problem, fear; and we reflect on the challenges of slaves and masters in biblical texts.

Matthew explores how fear leads us into blindness to the poverty of those around us, while building bigger barns to store our wealth.

Luke's Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer, a call to Jubilee.

I am fascinated by the way that the activity of planting is intimately related to what we might call a “gift economy” — by which I mean all the ways that we receive and share gifts that do not come with a price tag (eg., food, clothing, shelter, artefacts, time, music, experience, presence), and therefore, in which money is not the measure of value.

Whether it’s saving or sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings into a raised bed or exchanging them at our neighbourhood plant/seed swaps, I have come to see that the way I access and handle plants and seeds disposes me to perceive their giftedness — a kind a treasure that is received in order to be shared, not made by human hands, nor earned to be hoarded.

This pattern of gift that permeates the garden has much to teach about the patterns of receiving and giving in our social relationships, as well. My friend Dougald Hine asked it this way: What seeds are you carrying with you? He posed this question in the context of a learning journey called Regrowing a Living Culture. As he guided us on this journey, he shared stories, wisdom, questions, and experiences that he had received as gifts that had seeded his own imagination. As he sowed them throughout the course, he also invited us to consider what seeds had been sown into our own lives.

In calling them seeds, Dougald was nudging us first to notice, and then to have the courage to share, the gifts that we had received. After all, history shows that—both in the fields of ideas, and in the gardens we tend—humans are the consummate seed-spreaders. At our best, we have learned that seeds are only saved and stored in order to be sown.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it in Braiding Sweetgrass, “[g]ifts from the earth, or from each other, establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.” In fact, in Braiding Sweetgrass I hear a contemporary echo of ancient biblical wisdom passed down by St. Paul: What do you have that you have not received? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? (1 Cor. 4:7)

What seeds are you carrying with you? When I first heard it, that question really landed with me. It gave me permission to pause and take stock of my ‘seed library.’ It also gave me permission to cultivate the desire to sow these seeds as generously as they had been sown into my life. So, here are a few garden-related seeds that I would like to share with you.

Back in 2007, I encountered a friend in Brazil who was turning his balcony into a productive vertical garden. His solution was as simple as it was profound — instead of throwing away his food waste, he composted them in a wormery to make soil, and grow food. While I was fascinated by his description of how his fifth-floor garden worked, what impressed me most were the reasons he was doing this. Claudio explained that his little balcony garden was an experiment in finding ways to treat creation as creation, and not as rubbish; for honoring the Creator as Creator, and for offering signs of hope and life amid so much urban waste.

When I mentioned wanting to do this from my fourth-floor balcony, instead of giving me a pep talk, he gave me a warning instead:

“Sam, of course, you can compost your food scraps from your balcony, and you should. But I have to warn you that if you do, it may be the most subversive thing that you can do inside your home.”

I must have look perplexed, so he did a little show-and-tell exercise by picking up a decomposing banana peel out of his wormery to make the point:

“In our tradition, we are told by our ancestors that in the beginning, God created and said, ‘It is good.’ This banana peel that I am holding is good. When God sees it, God says , ‘It is good.’ And if God says, ‘It is good,’ then who gave us the right to call it rubbish [or lixo, in Portuguese]. By whose authority do we get to call this banana peel lixo and treat it like lixo?”

Of course, I had no direct answer for that question, and I am still haunted by it nearly 20 years later.

To break the awkward silence, Claudio began to answer his own question : “The truth is we are not authorized to treat it like lixo. And if you begin to handle your own food scraps—like this banana peel—as creation, then it will never be lixo again. You will see it as creation, and you will rethink what lixo is and what we are called to do with creation.”

Claudio’s parting shot: “Então, mano… composting food scraps is subversive because it is about learning to repent and rethink how we treat God’s good creation.”

That was the “coin drop” moment for me. It was a kind of unveiling that exploded my previous conception of ecological activism; no longer was activism fundamentally about doing to or even for the environment, but about working with the divine patterns woven into creation.

When Claudio held up that banana peel and spoke his testimony, that banana peel became a microcosm of the whole creation. Somehow, I saw the whole world in that banana peel. At this point I had already studied biology at university, and then gone to a graduate degree in theology. I had acquired a lot of info and “book knowledge” about both topics. And I probably recycled as best I could. What changed and converted me in that moment was not more information or killer stats, but the presence of the truth that God does not do waste.

One seed of wisdom that I find myself sharing frequently is a word that was spoken by community food activist, Pam Warhurst. Pam is most widely known as one of the founders of Incredible Edible, a network whose vision is “to create kind, confident and connected communities through the power of food.”

Pam spoke at our annual neighbourhood summer festival and told the story of how Incredible Edible began when residents in the market town of Todmorden came together to care for a derelict green patch of a public square. Technically, they “guerrilla-gardened” it, which means that they cultivated it without formal permission. Turns out the gamble paid off, as more guerrilla-gardening and formally permitted planting ended up spreading like a rumour.

At the time that Pam gave her talk back in 2022, there were around 150 Incredible Edible projects scattered across the UK and beyond. (And those are just the officially registered ones). When she finished here whistle-stop tour of Incredible Edible-land and the Q & A began, the first question was:

“Pam, this is so inspiring, but the scale of the problems with the broken global food system is so vast, how do we scale up the alternatives that you describe?”

You could hear a pin drop, and without missing a beat, Pam responded:

“You don’t. You don’t scale community-led food initiatives, you spread them. And you spread by doing them.”

Pam is the best kind of evangelist with a contagiously inspiring energy about her. Listening to Pam get ‘evangelical’ about the power of food, there was a felt-sense that you were listening to someone who had spent time learning from plants about the power of spreading what is good, true, and beautiful.

I remember thinking if there had been an “altar call” that day, I would have gone forward to rededicate my life to the work of sowing seeds like that one we received that day from Pam.

Perhaps the reason that Pam’s wisdom about spreading landed with me was because it gave language to the pattern that I was experiencing through gardens in our neighbourhood.

In 2020, I had been involved in setting up a share library in B16. We launched the share library on a Saturday in March, and COVID restrictions came into effect on the following Monday. All that community momentum that had been stored up in the run-up to the opening the share library had to go somewhere, and we improvised by moving outside of the share library and doing some “socially distanced” gardening.

Full disclosure: We took a page out of Pam Warhurst’s playbook and decided to do some “guerrilla gardening” with a series of neglected brick planters that had been installed decades ago by the council and were in serious need of some TLC.

By tending those planters on St. Vincent Street, we began to experience the flow of receiving and giving in and around the garden, and how it spreads when humans show up to plant. I can hardly summarise what happened around plants in our neighbourhood during COVID lockdowns, but amongst it all, surprising friendships happened (like the lockdown “bromance” between Abba, a priest from Ethiopia, and Ray—born and bred in Ladywood, B16). Plants, seeds and even recipes got swapped. Cooked meals and snacks were provided for volunteers who were happy to give their time in exchange for “getting paid” with food. We set up a “plant pipeline” in a vacant polytunnel and offered “home grow” kits to keep the movement spreading.

The planters even got the attention of the primary school across the street, and there was an invitation to reboot a garden space that had fizzled out. When we arrived, one of the staff gave us a tour through a patch of rotting raised beds, empty except for grass and weeds. She said jokingly, “These are our coffins in what looks more like a cemetery than a garden, but perhaps you can bring them back to life?”

With the support of neighbourhood networks and organisations like Civic Square, Eat Make Play, and Companions for Hope, we did just that. By 2022, we had established a Mother Garden in the front of the school on St. Vincent Street.

We got the concept of Mother Gardens from fellow gardener/activist, Felipe Molina. He coined the concept (or at least he introduced me to it) as a way of imagining a distributive, mycelial-inspired network of gardens that mimic the garden’s capacity to share resources and to spread its gifts.

Put simply: a Mother Garden could be any garden that “gives birth” to another garden.

In becoming Mother Gardeners, we found ourselves becoming stewards of the garden, as well as its students. One lesson, which became a seed of imagination that I still carry and share, was the experience of observing Marianna lead a workshop on how to propagate strawberries. She showed us how to identify the “runner” from the mother plant and how to root the “runner” into a pot.

From that day on, when I would introduce newcomers to our gardening sessions and explain why we call this a Mother Garden, I would take them to the bed of strawberries where Marianna had led her workshop. I would then riff on Marianna’s show-and-tell pedagogy, saying something like:

In the same way that strawberry plant gives birth to another plant by sending a “runner” this Mother Garden on St. Vincent Street exists to give birth to other gardens. We share seeds, seedlings, soil and skills in order for “runners” to become mother plants, and “volunteers” to become Mother Gardeners.

Yes, Pam Warhurst was right. Felipe was right. And Marianna was right. What they had in common was that they learned from plants.

Planting is work that is meant to spread, and you spread it by doing it.

Strawberries do it just by being strawberries. We, humans, need lessons, and learn by imitation how to become Mother Gardeners —how to become as generous as the strawberry “mother plant” is with the gifts it receives and passes on.

Last year, during the Season of Creation, our parish priest Fr. John gave a brilliant and simple homily. He brought in one of his favourite medical house plants as his prop to introduce the theme of healing. Then, in retelling the gospel story in Luke 6 of Jesus’ healing of the blind man, Fr. John portrayed the particularity of that encounter between Jesus and blind man as a sign of the cosmic story of God’s intention to bless and heal all of creation. He showed us how that medicinal plant also offers us a sign of the tree of life planted by God, retelling the scene from the final chapter of Scripture about that tree, and the promise that “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Rev. 22:2ff).

He ended the homily by extending God’s invitation to us: How will you receive what plants have to share as gifts in God’s good creation? And in doing so: How might you learn from the plants how to become a generous and healing presence to bless and heal others?

Samuel Ewell is a theologian, community gardener, and part of the Aston University Chaplaincy team in Birmingham.

☝️ Get the last few print edition copies of Passio in our shop.

An extended version of the second reading for the 16th Sunday of ordinary time, year C.

Hosted by Sr. Katrina Alton

with Joanna Frew, Aisling Griffin and Matthew Neville.

Katrina Alton is a Sister of St Joseph of Peace, a Catholic religious order. She is a peace activist, and currently National Chaplain to Pax Christi England and Wales. She has a particular focus on the Spirituality and praxis of nonviolence as well as the formation of young peacemakers.

Joanna Frew is the Outreach Coordinator for the Rethinking Security network. She is an activist & researcher who has been involved in global economic justice, climate justice and anti-militarism work for 20 years. She is also a community gardener, historian of the British empire and lives in community with refugees and asylum seekers in north London.

Aisling Griffin works for Pax Christi England and Wales as their Schools and Youth Education Worker. A former secondary school teacher, she is particularly concerned about militarism of young people.

Matthew Neville is the coordinator of the FaithJustice Network for young adults, and the lead organiser of this year’s Peace Pilgrimage, walking from Oxford to London in September in witness against the DSEI arms fair. He is based in Birmingham, and involved in a range of Peace and faith based activism there.

15th Sunday of ordinary time, year C.

The parable of the Good Samaritan.

14th Week of ordinary time, year C.

Jesus sends out the seventy-two to preach a message of peace.

“You Westerners all have bird energy,” my Tibetan ex-monk friend told me, making a line with the side of his right hand along his chest and then twitching it upwards to give the impression of fast moving, shallow thoughts.

“You need to learn live from here” — he grasped his belly firmly with that same open hand.

It was September 2001, and I had recently arrived in McLeod Ganj, an Indian-Tibetan town that drapes itself along a high ridge in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s where the Dalai Lama and his government still live, in exile, and I had arrived with the intention of teaching English for four months.

I did that. And it was a huge privilege. But it was in the context of something even deeper happening for me. As if my encountering the quiet strangeness of Tibetan culture, in the context of the kaleidoscopic beauty and seeming chaos of wider Indian life, allowed the God that I myself had grown up with to sneak back in to my life, like a draft of wildly fresh water from the local mountain spring.

India, just by being India, was giving us bird-like westerners permission to unfold and admit our spiritual hunger. And, to my amazement, I found myself wanting to talk with and ask people about Jesus, simply because, for the first time in my life really, no-one else was doing so.

But it wasn’t the Jesus I knew in the UK. The Jesus I found myself talking and asking and wondering about in those foothills — whilst walking through lines of coloured prayer flags in the depths of the forest, celebrating Chanukah with my new Jewish friends, listening to stories of people returning from months of meditation in mountain caves — that Jesus had His hand firmly on His belly. He was rooted in the earth.

Fast-forward 23 years, and I am asking a group of young adults that are standing in a circle, each holding a small stone in the hand of a raised arm: “where are you looking now?”

We are in the midst of a ‘somatic bible study’, where I invite people to place their bodies in particular roles in whatever story we are encountering. In this case it is the story of the ‘woman caught in adultery’, which we have chosen to call ‘the man and woman caught in adultery’, drawing attention to the absence of the man in the trial that ensues.

Before the woman was dragged in to the temple, the story tells us that Jesus was sitting teaching the people that had come to hear Him, so a group of the young people are sitting in front of the young woman that has volunteered to ‘be’ Jesus for this bible study.

Having read the passage together at the start of our session, the group demarcated the shape of the temple in the room, decided on the direction of the Mount of Olives (from which Jesus had walked earlier that morning) and the whereabouts of the adulterous affair (somewhere in the opposite direction).

This meant that, in accordance with their map, when the scribes and Pharisees drag the woman to the temple, they have to walk three sides of the outline of the building they have created in order to get to the entrance. And this gives us time to ask questions about the situation.

“What is the woman wearing?” They pause in their walking and look at the woman that three or four of them have their hands on at that moment. They look up at the text that is projected on the wall. “Well… perhaps she’s wearing nothing. If we’ve caught them in the act, then we may not have allowed her time to get dressed. And if our point is to make this as dramatic a situation as possible, it may be that, for the sake of our own dignity, we’ve allowed her to put on some underwear, but other than that she just has the blanket that was on the bed wrapped around her.”

“So you mean you men are leading a virtually naked woman through the early morning streets of Jerusalem, towards the temple, with only a blanket to cover herself, whilst you pull and yank her on? That’s pretty distressing right? To witness. And to experience.” One of the young people throws a blanket to the woman, who this time is being played by a young man, to wrap around herself, as a way to remind us of her nakedness at this point in the story – or rather in their telling of the story.

When I host these Bible studies, I invite whoever I’m working with — young people, older people, people of faith or none — to trust, for the time we are together, that every word in the story is intentional. We let those words hold us and become co-ordinates of our time together. But between the words, we let our imaginations roam.

The group continue walking around the temple and, once they appear through the entrance, presumably adjusting their eyes to the darker inside, the seated group that have been listening to Jesus look up towards the newcomers. And they witness a strange sight. Well-known religious leaders and law makers standing in (we imagine) their smart robes with a dishevelled looking woman trying to hold the blanket tight around her seemingly naked body.

The seated group instinctively move back to make space for the new arrivals, who begin to make a circle around Jesus, blocking the view of the original group, some of whom now stand up so they can see what’s happening.

Bodies. We notice it becomes very much about the positioning and the movements and the responses of bodies. Using our senses. Noticing our feelings and instincts. Becoming aware of our bellies.

“What’s happened now? Where do you want to position yourself? Do others in the temple notice this scene? What does it smell like in there? What kind of noises can you hear? Why are you even there?” The group that had been listening to Jesus have now become witness to the trial that is unfolding before them.

I ask them whether they have any questions for the new arrivals at this point. “Yes, I do, I want to ask the Pharisees why the man isn’t here.” A pause. Then one of the Pharisees speaks up. “Oh we know him. And we’ve known about his affair for ages. This isn’t really about them. It’s about catching Jesus out. So we’re just using the woman. There was no need to use him too. He’s our friend.”

Clearly this is made up. Some of the young people frown, wondering whether it’s ok to invent these details when handling a sacred text. I remind them that we are making things up all the time to fill the gaps, we just don’t realise it, and I encourage them to stay in the warm body of the story.

We look back to the text projected on the wall, at which point one of the Pharisees pushes the woman (gently of course — they are representing the bodies in the stories, not genuinely acting the scene) in to the centre of their circle, setting her ‘in the midst’.

I then ask the whole group, “where is your attention right now?”

Every single one of them, including Jesus, say they are looking at the woman, who is steadying herself so she doesn’t fall from the push, whilst trying to keep the blanket from exposing her naked flesh.

I ask the woman how she feels, with all eyes on her, and an increasing number of arms raised with stones in clenched fists, ready to throw them at her. Some of the original group have reached for stones being offered by the Pharisees and now stand with their arms raised too. They haven’t had much time to think about it, but are caught up in the drama.

Scared. Vulnerable. Exposed. Shamed. Violated. Shocked. Unsafe. Sad. Betrayed. Angry. Frozen. I want to cry but I can’t because that would make it worse. I’m looking for another woman but I can’t see any. That’s an amalgamation of the various responses I’ve heard from the ‘woman’ over the years that I’ve hosted this study.

And at just this moment of peak exposure, vulnerability and shame, ‘Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear’.

I ask them again, “where are you looking now?”

And a chorus of voices says “at Jesus.”

I was trained to embody Bible stories like this by my friends Bob & Gracie Ekblad,1 and have been adapting them for different kinds of groups since.

They have spent the majority of their adult lives reading the Bible with people on the margins of society around the world, most often with those we incarcerate.

This was the first story I enacted with them, back in 2010. And, as I stood with a stone in my hand, ready to throw it at the woman ‘in our midst’, feeling something of the power and social cohesion that comes from creating a scapegoat, Bob asked us “who do we tend to throw stones at today?”

“Child abusers. Bankers. The Police. Dictators. Rapists. Racists…” the list went on and then the group fell quiet.

When reading in jail, Bob shares that the inmates often assume that Jesus will be on the side of the law. The prison guards. The courts. The legal system. And again and again they are amazed to find that the warm body of Jesus stays close to ‘them’ in the story.

I love inviting people to engage their own bodies in these stories. To be the religious leader, Jairus, whose privileged life momentarily falls apart when Jesus turns his body away from him to tend to the needs of a socially outcast bleeding woman. To be a body in that crowd straining to see what’s going on. To be the Samaritan woman who arrives at a well in the heat of the day to collect water and finds Jesus there, alone and very inappropriately asking her for help. The towns folk who in the meantime have to decide whether to sell bread to His disciples… with whom they are not meant to associate.

But I am always most interested in what happens when we let the body of Jesus speak for itself in these enactments.

Jesus’s body bending down to write in the sand at this particular moment removes the glare of attention from the terrified woman. What skill. What tact. Care. Grace.

His body then holds that attention… absorbs it… transforms it… as He stands and tells those accusing her “he who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”

And then, instead of shaming the stone-throwers by allowing the gaze of the room to fall on them, as would be expected in such a moment, we are told that He “stooped down and wrote on the ground” again, drawing the eyes of the room with him, allowing the accusers to slip away, convicted, but not shamed.

This is exquisite behaviour.

Masterful. Gracious. Wise. Spacious. Redemptive. Authoritative. Infuriating (it offends our need for vengeance). Strange.

And, if read without an awareness of bodies, it is behaviour that can easily be missed.

Jesus is kind. Even when He is fierce. He is empathetic. To friends and enemies. Accused and accusers. This is good news. It makes Him strong, not weak. His strategy here is more efficient than one who would lecture, bully, accuse, or shame.

His instincts allow Him to become host of this space in a way that allows Him to model an entirely different way of being in the world. As I’ve said in other places, Jesus is a walking apocalypse, and His body reveals that to be the case, not just when it is literally cracked open on the Cross, but in its every day movement through His world.

It gives me hope that there may be value in those of us with ‘bird-energy’ placing our open hands on our bellies and practicing engaging with scripture from there. Letting the Bible teach us tactful, embodied strategies for how to relate across difference and treat our enemies and accusers with dignity, whoever they are, and whatever they’ve done.

Vanessa Chamberlin is an artist, writer, spiritual director and practical theologian. You’ll find her writing at The Tuning Fork on Substack, and can read about her spiritual direction and hosting practices at rockdove.org.uk

This week we're collaborating with our friends at SCM, Peace Pilgrimage and Just Money; for a discussion about the arms trade, pilgrimage and our personal finances.

SCM Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5K5WY43VsMDucQPJftwZVA?si=4f5e788c77954eeb

Peace Pilgrimage Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6HpcPSX9vRXoXBmohkrZvV?si=1ffe164d3ba74a50

12th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year C.

Matthew reflects on Luke : Jesus questions the twelve about his identity, predicts his death and resurrection, and explains the consequences of discipleship.

Lydia Hiorns is the Director of Shieldfield Art Works, an arts organisation based in Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne. SAW presents art exhibitions, events, workshops and publications throughout the year: from painting and craftivism to a hub for gardening knowledge.

SAW are grass-roots to the core, led by the residents, and open-handed with this space that they have in the community. Along with many other partner organisations, they have certainly played a part in a remarkable resurgence of community belonging in the last decade, despite the twin challenges of deprivation and gentrification.

Lydia is an artist in her own right, with a particular focus on the art and practice of hospitality—not just as a momentary act, but as a way of life. She draws heavily and explicitly on her Christian faith, although SAW works outside those boundaries. We spoke to Lydia about her approach and experience, and drew out our favourite parts of the conversation, below.

Hospitality isn’t just something theoretical. What inspires me is that Jesus came incarnate; he was embodied, he was flesh; he got messy with people, in a very real way. We’re very physical beings, and often we understand things better when we are physical, like the Lord’s Supper, or Baptism. I would say hospitality is the same; it needs to be lived out in an embodied way.

Hospitality is much broader than just ‘entertainment’. It’s more than inviting people into a home environment where you’re comfortable, or the power play of ‘I am the host, you are the guest.’ Hospitality comes from hospes, which means stranger. When inviting a stranger into your home, there is going to be cost involved. You’ve got to develop that relationship with trust almost instantaneously. Likewise, God’s hospitality—his vulnerability, in taking on flesh—was very costly, vulnerable to the point of death.

We have a God of interruptions; It’s important not to be so busy that we can’t notice the interruptions in the people God puts in front of us. Rosaria Butterfield asks: do you allow people to come in and rearrange the furniture in your home? Do I let people into my heart and allow them to rearrange the furniture? That grows a level of compassion into making room for others.

Even in going to church, I often fear I don’t have enough energy or charisma to be there; everytime I go, I pray to God to give me compassion for those in front of me.

People here often feel they have no power to make a change in their local area. Shieldfield is a small community of houses and high-rises, owned by the council; now completely surrounded by student accommodation. There’s a constant fear that the council will sell land or a community space for a quick quid. Many of the services are gentrified: there were 19 pubs, now gone. The social club’s been taken out. There’s fear around the doctor’s and the nursery disappearing.

How would you feel if that’s where you lived? They’ve held forums for local residents to give their opinions, but often things aren’t followed up. Under Section 106, developers are meant to give back money to the community for any negative effects they’ve had—but at least some of that money has been given to a nearby space, Heaton, which is a much more middle-class area.

Researchers often come into Shieldfield, and extract research, as it were. Residents never actually get to see it, so we are determined to do things differently. We work with an organisation called Dwellbeing Shieldfield who conduct ‘participatory action research’ — ie. research, education and action done with people, not on them; and it’s focused on the idea of social transformation.

All our work is super collaborative; we collaborate with residents and many other organisations in the area. Our exhibitions, too, are collaborative and based around local issues. People are the medium of the work; a panel of local residents developing briefs for artists, for example, or deciding what to do with the green space around the building.

Eight years ago, the rhetoric in the area was ‘we’ve been left behind, we can’t make change’. Any meetings I went to, I came away thinking that people feel there’s nothing here for them. I couldn’t tell you all the reasons that’s changed, but now there is so much vibrancy here; there are people proud to live here, and so much going on. I’ve seen friendships grow across cultures and across generations, which I think is less and less common. We’ve even seen neighbours of very different political standing becoming friends, and understanding one another. People know a bit more how to make their voices heard, and how to access people in power: or on the other hand, how to go for it and make change regardless.

Often the language of funding bids is to talk about the ‘needs’ of the area, on a very short-term basis. We’re trying to change our language to also talk about the assets and the skills that individuals in the area have.1 Rather than talking about people in a deprived way, talk about what’s already here and what we want to grow. And what would it look like to have a twenty, or fifty-year vision for how we, and local people, want the place to develop? One of our collaborators posed the question: what if the six-year-olds currently in our youth group can be leading that group in twenty years’ time?

I hope that the Biblical idea of Jubilee land is somewhat prophetic to what’s happening here. That principle was not just about letting the land rest [every 50 years], but also that the people get to reclaim the land that was taken from them. The idea of limitations on the market exists because place matters to God. I think it’s Walter Brueggemann who says that the sense of place is a primary concern of this God who refused a house—choosing a tent over a temple—and the crucified one who has nowhere to lay his head.

Some people are more natural at welcoming others. Mary is more natural at welcoming Jesus into her heart; Martha more natural at welcoming him into her home. For me, I’m quite a people pleaser; I want people to feel comfortable, but sometimes I don’t know what questions to ask.

What I’m praying for is to grow more like Christ, to have compassion for the person in front of me, and curiosity for people. And I think anyone can develop that, whether you’re comfortable with ‘hosting’ or not. It’s not about being the best host on the outside; it’s about nurturing compassion, a welcome in our hearts towards God and others.

Hospitality can be about being a ‘guest’, too. Are you usually in the host role or the guest role? Might somebody be empowered to be put in the host role? That’s what Jesus did in the Zaccheus story - nobody would’ve wanted to eat with him, and being empowered to be a host brings about a heart change. So now I very much want to have a balance of host and guest roles.

All that we have is God’s. If we have an abundance mindset, we can give with what we have. Henri Nouwen said ‘We can only perceive a stranger as an enemy when we have something to defend’.

Hospitality is not just for the middle class: we’re all called to it. That will look different in different contexts, but we are called to use the resources that we have. Also, if you live hospitably within a community setting—as we should, in church—then different people’s skills and resources can enable it to be done communally.

Some of the most profound hospitality I’ve experienced, though, was within different cultures. There is a lady I know here in Shieldfield, who’s from Sudan: she’s a model of constant abundant giving, out of not very much. It always reminds me of the gospel story of a lady who gave all she had, despite having little in material terms.

Lydia Hiorns was speaking to Chris Donald.

Find out more about SAW here, and pick up a copy of Passio Magazine Issue 15 here while stocks last.

How does it feel to be young and seemingly powerless in a country whose future is being gambled on by distant superpowers, brawling over the oil beneath your feet? A country governed by corruption from bottom to top: from the petty actions of police right up to the 50-year-old dictatorship looming over everything?

It’s the plight of Syrian youth that Nadim Nassar, born and raised in Lattakia, had in mind when he founded the Awareness Foundation and its flagship programmes: Ambassadors for Peace, and Little Heroes. Nadim originally left Syria to study in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, before moving to the UK and becoming a priest in the Church of England.

When we speak, the overthrow of Assad’s regime in Syria is still fairly fresh news; we squeeze in our meeting before Nadim is due to travel home, to immerse himself in everything that’s going on.

The wall behind him showcases an array of iconography — he explains he has a love for the sacramental side of faith — and a bookcase beside us bulges with theology, history, languages, trinkets and instruments. We’re joined by Nadim’s sister, Huda Nassar: a scholar, polyglot and the Director of the Foundation; she also informs me that she’s learning the piano. It’s fair to say that both siblings are formidable figures, who would be intimidating if they didn’t wear it so lightly: rather, they make me welcome in the house, introduce me to their mother and insist that we stay to eat with them. It’s almost outmoded to say it, but the word that comes to mind is humility.

We’re in the suburban belt that purports to be London but isn’t really London any more; Nadim and Huda had maintained an office in the centre of the capital for a while, but cut loose after the pandemic and haven’t looked back. They work here, instead, in their house, a warm but innocuous enough space; you certainly wouldn’t guess at the deep network of roots that spread from this terraced house, out across Europe and deep into the Levant.

Now over 20 years strong, the Awareness Foundation is, at heart, a force for peace in the world, specifically in the Middle East. Its core programmes aim to teach skills, and give tools, to children in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon: spiritual and practical skills that help them to regain hope, and build better futures for both themselves and their families.

The centrepiece of that training, as Nadim explains it, is “the art of dialogue — because in Syria, that has been forbidden. Children, young people; they had to be obedient. No questioning. No opinion.”

We are talking about the “brutal” Assad regime, the backdrop to the Foundation’s birth in 2003: “We have, I don’t know, 30 different departments of secret police? The regime lived in a paranoia. They never worked out that maybe serving the people is the best way to stay… maybe to offer them a good life? It never occurred to them.”

The Foundation, then, was born on the back of a political tumult which cannot really be said to have died down in the two decades since: back then, Bashar al-Assad’s regime had just begun, and would soon take its shape as one of the most repressive regimes of modern times—even worse than his father’s reign before him. The seeds were being sown, too, of the horrific civil war that would engulf the country after the Arab Spring.

One way to put it is that Syria has suffered from the same curses that befall any nation that happens to be resource-rich. “Peace becomes difficult when a country has a lot of resources,” Nadim puts it. “Because the cake is very appealing to many foreign powers, and they want to divide the cake. For us, we have Russia, Iran, Turkey, US, UK, Europe — as long as there is no decision on how to divide the cake, there is no peace. It’s a proxy war. Assad sided with the Russians—but what now? We’re going to find out.”

On Assad’s fall, Nadim brings a wisened edge: this only happened because Putin abandoned the regime, he says frankly, but he is winsomely proud of the responsiveness and creativity of their young Ambassadors group in the wake of these huge events. The young people created a network on the ground, sharing information and helping each other to stay safe, while soldiers abandoned their posts and almost all assumptions were up in the air. Since the new transitional government has been in place, the Ambassadors have been igniting discussions on the future of Syria: showing an abundance of imagination and ideas in this remarkable, liminal moment.

Nadim’s cautious about where this all goes next. “It’s early. The provisional president is, ultimately, imposed on us,” he says cautiously. “What he is promising is very good: but there are a lot of question marks, and fears. An Islamic radical constitution doesn’t work in Syria; because Syria is a mosaic, and every piece of this mosaic is valuable. We have to understand that.

“But we live in a jungle now, in Syria,” he continues. “There is no police, no army. There is a government who are intoxicated with victory, and believe they have the power now. Some are already abusing the power; some of them are calling to stop it.” Amongst it all, his concern for, and his pride in, the Ambassadors for Peace is palpable: “Those young people are heroes—heroes to us,” he stresses.

When you get a glimpse of what young people in Syria have been living through, you understand the ardour and warmth in Nadim’s words.

“I don’t believe there’s a family in Syria that did not have a victim of the Assad regime,” he says. “We all had suffering. But the young people in Syria are going through hell. They need guidance, a compass.” The Foundation gives these young people the opportunity to find that direction through deepening their faith, discovering a real, individual connection with the divine that can give them strength. “It’s only when you find Christ as a compass inside you, that leads, points you always to God, that you start to find your inner peace.”

There’s an undeniable gravitas to the man as he speaks about inner peace. The quiet and warmth of this suburban house feels incongruous with his descriptions of war-torn cities, yet it’s not hard to recognise the embattled self-assurance in Nadim: clear-minded, plain spoken and possessed with a ready confidence. It’s not the forced confidence of a politician or executive, over-eager to assert themselves: it’s something very different.

It’s a peace that, he tells me, he found the hard way, while studying in Beirut in the 1980s. “I lived there for 7 years during the height of the civil war. It was the craziest city in the world at that time: shelling, shooting, explosions everywhere. I could have died any minute: there were five or six times where I was just about to be killed. I couldn’t find any inner peace at first: the noise is too much. It’s not easy at all.”

As much as I push the question, I feel aware that discovering your inner peace in a warzone might not be the easiest process to describe to me—it is, I sense, deeply personal, and borne out of suffering that can’t be neatly packaged. “The more you encounter violence, bloodshed, corruption; the more your faith pushes you towards a mystical element, in order to derive power from it, to sustain you. In this chaos around you, you need an oasis of spirituality, of peace, from inside.” Without this, he adds emphatically, it’s impossible to create peace on the outside: “Unless you are in touch with your inner peace, you don’t have the tools to be a peacemaker.”

It’s that inner peace, then, that the Foundation are trying to give to their young people—starting with that art of dialogue. “We create a safe space; help them to be free in that space, free to speak, to discuss, to pray, to express their fears. Space to cry without shame, and to express their doubts about God. You train them to be themselves. And what they share is so profound.”

Often, the Foundation had to get creative with their terminology to escape the eyes of the regime. “We don’t talk about democracy: we introduced ‘the theology of opinion’. We trained young people to respect their own opinion. We taught them to respect their choices, no matter how limited they are.”

They may have avoided the term for political reasons, but I realise this actually goes deeper: “Our choices are not to be taken lightly, but not because of democracy,” Nadim enthuses. “Not because of human value. The image of God that we are created in, requires us to respect our opinion. Christ gave us the respect for how God has created us. That really resonated with the young people. They never believed their opinions mattered, or had any value.”

Creating space, for young people whose lives have been shaped by fear and political oppression, provides the first key to finding an inner peace, but is not the end of the process. “It’s the most difficult thing,” Nadim affirms. “The threats are enormous outside. It’s lawless. It’s war, so everything [bad] is available. We have to guide them away from that, and still help them to find meaning for their existence, inside the war. It’s difficult, but it’s the most profound exercise you can ever have. I’m stunned by the power of the Holy Spirit, transforming their lives and empowering them to become his peace agents in their broken communities.”

During his life in the West, Nadim has sometimes been made into a figurehead for the presence of Christianity in the Middle East. He has a well-worn anecdote on the way Westerners will assume he is a recent convert to Christianity, or that his parents were: and he has to remind his listeners that modern-day Syria is, in fact, the birthplace of the Christian movement—that the Middle East is “that region of the world that God chose to live in when he took human form”. Damascus, of course, is still sitting there: the oldest inhabited capital in the world.

“The Levant is the birthplace of all three Abrahamic faiths; the people are very passionate, driven by their hearts. People are religious; and over-religious,” he explains, but he’s equally convinced that the religiosity is often skin deep: a morass of religion-as-culture which is bearing bitter fruit. “I promise you, the most aggressive atheistic current in the world, at the moment, is in the Middle East. In Egypt, Iraq, Syria, even in Lebanon. Go inside Iran and see how the people live: they are obedient to Islam by force, not by love. And Iran is an ‘Islamic nation’—well, what does that mean?”

This is familiar territory for the West: the roots of the widespread disenchantment with religious institutions surely go deep into the many, many years where the church took people’s fealty for granted. “I always say to Syrians, learn from the history of Europe. Islam is acting now like the church acted in the Middle Ages: they just want the power. When the church did this, in the European religious wars, it was awful: some of their bloodiest chapters of history. The Kings and Princes were in bed with the clergy, and it was the political institution that abused the Christian institution. It led us where we are today.”

It reminds me of the way calls for a ‘Christian nation’ have become not much more than a right-wing dog-whistle, I say. “I don’t believe in a religious nation. Our relationship with God is not collective; it is individual. It is your relationship with God, and when we come together, we become the body of Christ. Imposing religion is not what God wants. Any so-called ‘religious nation’ can only be an abuse of religion for economic gain.” In those terms, where does he see the church in England now?

“The establishment church is still playing games for me. It is a flirting between the political institution and the religious institution. I don’t like it at all. There is no sustainable argument for us to still be in bed with politics. For the Prime Minister to be involved in the appointment of the Archbishop. Was this the position of Christ to power? How can you challenge power when you are expected to support it? The political power loves this entanglement; they say ‘it’s great that the church cannot challenge me! Keep close!’”

Nadim, for one, would’ve been likely to oppose the British Government’s action in Syria, in 2018. Instead, he had to watch his Archbishop sanctioning the bombing of his country, by invoking the controversial ‘Just War’ theory—which may have had the edges sanded off nowadays, but is also understood as the cornerstone of the Crusades and other atrocities. A BBC journalist, interviewing Nadim, was briefly blindsided by the revelation that Justin Welby had not, in fact, spoken to Nadim—the only Syrian priest in the Church of England—before this statement.

“I felt awful, of course,” he says now. “He invoked one of the most controversial theories in the church, in order to support the government. Is this the church we want? Where is the prophetic voice?”

It seems unlikely, I say, to expect the challenge to power to come from the ‘top’. Were the church to push the difficult questions—about the UK’s annual billions in arms sales, for example, the majority of which are sold to countries with poor human rights records—it seems likely that the government would finally cut them loose, no? “Well, that’s what I would like to see!” he smiles.

“The English hide behind something called tradition. Nobody respects tradition more than I do. But I do not accept the tradition to be a chain around my neck. I am only obedient to the tradition of Christ. Jesus was revolutionary; he broke barriers. When he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, he didn’t think ‘oh, the enmity goes back centuries, I have to abide by the tradition’.”

I think I can see that Nadim does, indeed, respect tradition, and the institution; probably more than I do, and I don’t say that pejoratively. Yet my conversation with him gives me the hopeful reminder that ‘the Church’ is far more than our institutions. The ‘system’ we see and critique is one small face of it, and perhaps one day the Anglican church will, in fact, be disbanded, whether for challenging power or for something less satisfying. But I want to believe that the Church has always really been individuals, sitting across from each other, bringing their immeasurably different cultures and experiences to one same table, because of the guidance of that inner compass.

Some individuals may have got there through the institution. Some individuals may have followed the compass without knowing the name on it. That’s how I want to think about the church: that it’s made of individuals like Nadim, and also the young people of incredible bravery and resolve that he meets and carries with him. We are each running from different things, but the face of Jesus, the glimmer of real peace, pulls us all, eventually, in the same direction.

You can support the work of Awareness Foundation here. Pick up a copy of Passio Magazine Issue 15 here while stocks last.