Lessons for the CofE. I never understood how the church could monopolise on the power of blessing. Even before the formal commissioning of PLF, God has and continues to bless all forms of faithful, committed and loving relationship. It’s in his very gracious nature so to do.
How can the CPAS be a resource to the Church of England when it openly endorses homophobia? This is not an affirmation of human sexuality. If anything it is a strategic attempt to condemn, regulate and suppress LGBTQI+ desire.
Blessed to have presided at midday mass this morning under the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral! Love and light to all who gathered today to witness such an opportunity ❤️🔥🙏🏽🙌🏽
Wish that bishops had the same level of commitment for LGBTQI+ inclusion as they do for the work of racial justice. Oh how I long for the day when we treat every person holistically without reifying, and focusing exclusively on a particular aspect of human identity.
Blessed feast day of Julian of Norwich
‘The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love’
- Revelations of Divine Love
❤️🔥
The recent developments in LLF makes it painfully clear that the house of bishops is more a cult of respectability than a place of honesty and integrity. We are not pawns in some political game. We are people of flesh and blood, heart and soul.
I will never stop making the case that queerness is not Anti-black. No group or community exists as a monolith hence it is presumptuous to assume oneself as the sole spokesperson. LGBTQI+ persons have and will continue to exist not just in the global south but everywhere.
What I find absolutely staggering is the claim that to advocate for the rights and dignities of LGTBQI+ persons is a result of “western elitism” and an affront to those in the Global South. Presupposes their own bigoted and colonialist logic. As if queerness is a western import…
Schism.
A total and complete disgrace. Homophobia dressed in theology - hate splattered with the lipstick of love and all made up in the uniform of unity.
Shame on you, building your identity on the backs of LGBTQIA people.
Shame on you.
Celebrated at St Martin-in-the-fields midday choral Mass for the first time. Nice to be back since being pastoral assistant in 2019. Giving thanks to God for all the rich opportunities I am given in my ministry ❤️🙏🏽🙌🏽
Let us be bold in unveiling the malpractice, corruption and hubris of the CEEC and all those who pretend to act with missional integrity while fostering disunity and reaping financial benefit.
“Rather than waiting for disgruntled churches to contact the CEEC and enquire about the financial and oversight arrangements now being developed separately from normal C of E practice, there is a proactive campaign seeking to recruit churches to this split. A proactive campaign
‘We cannot understand [Fascism], but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard...because what happened can happen again...For this reason, it is everyone's duty to reflect on what happened’- Primo Levi ❤️🔥
Ended my day hearing my first two confessions. A profoundly humbling experience.
Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in you. ❤️🔥🙏🏽🙌🏽
A beautiful weekend in France celebrating the civil marriage of Clement and Pierre!
“La raison parle, mais l’amour chante”
Reason talks but love sings…(Alfred De Vigny)
🇫🇷⚜️❤️🔥
This comes as no surprise that the recent backtracking on LLF is a result of appeasing CEEC, HTB and other staunch conservatives voices over and against the lament and hurt of LGBTQI+ Christians. Yet again resources and financing trump the genuine needs of the flock
The most telling takeaway in all of this is the model of ‘doing’ church that SDF presupposes.
To narrowly invest in fresh expressions and HTB planting reveals that as always numerical growth trumps the long and searching work of discipleship, and a deep cultivation of faith.
An estimated 27,000 people have become regular attenders at church services and gatherings supported by the Church of England’s Strategic Development Funding.
Read more at .
Today marks the 76th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Windrush to Britain.
Here is a photo of my grandad who with countless others came from the Jamaica and the Caribbean countries after WWII.
Giving thanks for their lives of perseverance, hope and resilience.❤️🔥🙏🏽🙌🏽
A Blessed Feast of the Transfiguration
🙏🏽❤️🔥🙌🏽
The love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope..
- Malcolm Guite
An absolute joy to be a part of yesterday’s service. Onto day three of context placement at St Paul’s and joining the 10th anniversary of Invictus Games Service later on! 🙏🏽🙌🏽❤️
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the 369th Festival Service! 👏
Hundreds of you braved the train strikes, and we were delighted that St Paul’s Cathedral was almost full to the brim.
The 370th Festival Service will return on Tuesday 13th May 2025.
It is very rare these days to see a bishop act with such integrity and honesty. If anything LLF has shown that what is left wanting in the synodal process is synodality itself, instead of operating along the lines of secrecy and deceit.
My second and final week of placement at St Paul’s Cathedral. Blessed also to preside at 8am Mass this morning in Middlesex Chapel. Looking forward to joining Hackney schools choral programme this afternoon 🙏🏽🙌🏽❤️
‘Where there is black, there is oppression; but blacks can be assured that where there is blackness, there is Christ who has taken on blackness so that what is evil in men's eyes might become good’ James Cone (Black Theology and Black Power)
Feast of Corpus Christi
"I adore and venerate you as much as ever I can, though my love is so cold, my devotion so poor. Thank you for the good gift of this your holy Body and Blood, which I desire to receive...," - St Anselm
Malcolm Guite- Sonnet to Mother Julian
Show me, O anchoress, your anchor-hold
Deep in the love of God, and hold me fast.
Show me again in whose hands we are held,
Speak to me from your window in the past,
Tell me again the tale of Love’s compassion
As we make the first step into the "bright sadness" of Lent, we see—far, far away—the destination. It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the Kingdom……
A Blessed Feast of Pentecost
“Veni, Sancte Spiritus, et emitte caelitus lucis tuae radium”
Come, Holy Spirit, send forth the heavenly radiance of your light. ❤️🔥🙏🏽🙌🏽
That’s not to mention the suggested ‘need to be transformed and live in accordance with biblical revelation and orthodox church teaching’……
What needs to be transformed is your own personal neuroses and misconceptions of same sex love. We are not your projecting screen.
Malcolm Guite: A Sonnet for Candlemas
They came, as called, according to the Law.
Though they were poor and had to keep things simple,
They moved in grace, in quietness, in awe,
For God was coming with them to His temple
‘We part from the Alleluia as from a beloved friend, whom we embrace many times and kiss on mouth, head and hand, before we leave him’- Bishop William Duranti
A message to all LGBTQI+ Christians
In all of this let us be reminded
it is not righteousness
nor holiness we lack
For on God’s grace we always lean
And for that we give heartfelt thanks 🙏🏽🙌🏽❤️
On this feast day of Blessed St Charles de Foucauld let us join in his prayer:
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures
Amidst feelings of despondency and disillusion over the state and affairs of the institutional church I keep coming back to these words from Origen of Alexandria:
“If Jesus had good reason to weep over Jerusalem, he will have much better reason to weep over the church…”
“O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness;
bow down before him, his glory proclaim;
with gold of obedience, and incense of lowliness,
kneel and adore him: the Lord is his name”
❤️🔥
Couldn’t agree more. The claim of orthodoxy by some conservative evangelicals makes air tight their arguments, and stifles any possibility for genuine mutual dialogue.
In response to a recent Ad Clerum from the episcopal team in the Diocese of Lichfield concerning LGBT+ chaplaincies. I have written to the bishops concerning the use of the term 'orthodox' for the non affirming position in relation to Equal Marriage
@campaign_cofe
Blessed Feast of St Matthias
O God, who assigned Saint Matthias a place in the college of Apostles, grant us, through his intercession, that, rejoicing at how your love has been allotted to us, we may merit to be numbered among the elect. Amen ❤️🔥
Here,' she said, 'in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard... Toni Morrison (Beloved)
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
Freedom- by Langston Hughes
Freedom will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.
Said Mass this morning in St Mary’s Convent, Chiswick. Joined by residents and the sisters of the Society of St Margaret. May we too be bearers of God’s grace and love in the world.
‘In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.’- Madeleine L’ Engle
Buckfast Abbey Silent Retreat: Day Two
After Lauds and breakfast with Benedictine brothers a morning walk through physic gardens and the chance to take in some stunning stained glass windows.
Rest eternal Benjamin Zephaniah. Poet, prophet and luminary of our time:
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep
Malcolm Guite- Sonnet for Mothering Sunday
At last, in spite of all, a recognition,
For those who loved and laboured for so long,
Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition
To flourish in the place where we belong.
A Blessed feast of the Conversion of St Paul:
‘But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you’ Acts 26:16
Fitting words on the fourth day of my context placement at St Paul’s Cathedral
Ascension- John Donne
Salute the last, and everlasting day,
Joy at the uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash'd, or burnt your drossy clay.
Like Mary and the other disciples we too must revisit the tomb of our griefs and losses, and leave not in emptiness, but with invigorated hope and trust in Christ crucified, died and risen.
We unite ourselves
with Christ's redemptive work
when we reflect
to our brothers and sisters
God's healing,
God's forgiveness,
God's unconditional love”
- Sister Thea Bowman ❤️🔥🙌🏽🙏🏽
Let us not in our silence be complicit in the suffering of others. What we are witnessing daily on a national scale is the deleterious effects of Islamophobia, Racism and xenophobic speech. The sheer “caucasity” to minimise such or suggest otherwise…… 🙄
A great joy it was to preside at my first midnight mass since being priested. Through the body and blood of Christ may we come to in-breaking of God’s Kingdom among us.
📸 Look at this post on Facebook
Advent Meditation from Rubem Alves
In the silence of the night a little
child cries
“I think she is hungry” says
her mother.
And takes her own body,
the woman,
her breast
and offers it to that little body
which knows nothing of this world,
nothing but
hunger.
Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord -- a little prayer I make
Oh please do keep thy loving eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sundown
I ask a blessing on the town
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure as always -- touch and go
Benjamin Zephaniah- Dis Poetry
Dis poetry stays wid me when I run or walk
An when I am talking to meself in poetry I talk,
Dis poetry is wid me,
Below me an above,
Dis poetry's from inside me
It goes to yu
WID LUV.
Every morning, when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy loving eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no I'm sure is always touch-and-go
Fill in the blanks
I am convinced that neither_________, nor _________, neither __________, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
Wonderful news for my hometown of Hackney and for Islington respectively. May the fruits of such endeavours be tangibly felt by the communities they are called to serve 🙏🏽❤️🔥🙌🏽
The Diocese of London has been awarded a £9.4 million grant from the
@churchofengland
's ‘Diocesan Investment Programme’ to catalyse church mission in Hackney and Islington over the next six years.
Receive this cross of ash upon your brow,
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross.
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands
The very stones themselves would shout and sing
We're Working On It is probably one of my saddest cartoon prints. Yet people and churches have it hanging where people can see. It exposes the cruelty of non-suffering people making suffering people wait for what the non-suffering people already enjoy and take for granted. I drew
@Crowe_JE
That is the absence of a robust theology of human desire. We must begin from the premise that LGBTQI+ persons are not naturally disordered or corrupted as a result of depravity of sin. Rather their yearning and longing for love is a fundamental part of what it means to be created
O Oriens
O Dayspring,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death 🙏🏽🙌🏽❤️