Charmaine Clark – Songs of Fire
As a child growing up in a very conservative evangelical church, we sang with gusto “It only takes a spark”. We were the sparks, and we were to spread God’s love by passing it on to everyone we met. It was a happy kind of love. The fire it started would be warm and glowing […]
Adele Jarrett-Kerr – Expansive Faith and Shifting Communities
The church I grew up in set the bar high for what I feel able to long for in community. It was a tiny evangelical church in Trinidad and Tobago and one of a group of churches Canadian missionaries founded across the Caribbean region. My sense of God was grounded by expressions of togetherness that […]
Jenny Simpson – Through the Labyrinth
Two years ago, I went on a short trip to Venice with a friend to celebrate a big birthday. As well as seeing some famous landmarks, I also hoped we could use our famously bad sense of direction to enjoy getting lost in this city known for its labyrinth of narrow streets. I was right […]
Erica Bailey – Faith that Sustains
One of my earliest memories is of sitting by the fire on my grandmother’s lap, hearing about inviting Jesus into my heart. As I grew up, I always had a sense of God being with me. My grandmother had come from a non-churchgoing family but chose to become a Christian in her teens. She attended […]
Becky – Honestly Free
Raised in a Christian family, I was an earnest and passionate teenager, listening to Newsboys and ready to be God’s hands and feet. I threw myself into exotic and sacrificial adventures for the Lord. In my early twenties I was offered a job co-ordinating short term missions trips for young people – it would have […]
Brian Ralph – Lost in Space?
Soon after graduation from the academy, my family and a group of ten, took off from Cape Canaveral. We were part of ‘the new mission’; 25 vessels in all. We were all full of excitement. The overall mission coordinates were set by the academy; they determined the what; our ships determined the where and how. […]
John Dempster – Just One Journey
There is but one journey towards both the authentic God, and the authentic self. I was born in Central Scotland in 1952, and raised in fairly conservative Christian churches – Brethren (the ‘Open’ variety) and Baptist. As a child and teenager I felt strongly the pressure to be and to become the person my parents […]
Rachel – Trauma and Transformation
“All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain…If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” – Richard Rohr My spiritual journey has certainly been shaped by pain. The point from which we as a family tend to measure all time is 8am on November 16th 2003, when we […]
Kandace Burnhams – Searching for Signposts
“I have no idea where I am going,I do not see the road ahead of me,I cannot know for certain where it will end.”– Thomas Merton We were a group of malcontent teenagers. Think the churchy version of those hooded youths loitering outside of Sainsbury’s late on a Saturday night. Dissatisfied with the status quo, […]
Miche Spring – Whispering into Cracks
When I think of the word “Nomad” I think of how it can include the idea of being a misfit and I relate strongly, and fondly, with that idea. I experienced events early in my life that mean I shall forever feel like a misfit. As a child, my internal life was crushed, pulled part, and […]
Liza Cucco – How to Survive in a Desert Place
How do you feel about almonds? Personally, I love them in every single form, from the marzipan that covered the wedding cake my husband shockingly made us to the milk in my cereal this morning. The thing about almonds is that they come from very thirsty trees. The thirsty nature of these delicious, life-giving nuts […]
Catherine Gale – The Box
In the beginning, I had a box. It started out small, in black and white with hard edges. As I grew and experienced new things, my box grew too. I decorated it with colour, and as I pressed against the walls, they moved outward. There was room to breathe, to expand. I grew to be […]
Chris Peters – A Place Worth Staying In
I’ve always lived more inside my head. Things just felt safer and looked more hopeful in my imagination. I grew up in the Christian tradition, with those stories of hope, yet it became harder and harder to reconcile them with the world I knew. Spirituality became an escape from the world rather than a way […]
Alice Huntley – Beyond Words
I like words. I rarely find myself stuck for them. Words have been my friends all my life. I like to talk, to say what I think, to express how I feel through them. I lose myself in books, I love learning languages, to wield new vocabulary like a weapon, testing the heft and the hew […]
Joscelyn Cole – Navigating the Space Between
I have a confession: I find it infinitely easier to find God in fiction than I do in church. It may sound obvious, but a book doesn’t have to be by a Christian author to be able to strike at heart of what Love is. One of the most compelling stories of relationship I’ve read […]
