Poynton Baptist Church
We are a church that loves and accepts everyone, no matter what your background or experience. If you are exploring faith or looking for a
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These blogs, writings and podcasts explore Human Being in its fluid, multidimensional, rainbow-hued variations. You’ll see the seasons change and lock-downs come-and-go through these blogs, and hear different voices and questions rise up. We invite you into our journey of wondering, and hope our writing kindles fires of curiosity or dissent! Either way, slow down and feel it all…..
We are a church that loves and accepts everyone, no matter what your background or experience. If you are exploring faith or looking for a
Church is committed to teaching people the good news about Jesus Christ and to sharing that news with the local community and wider world.
There are certain words and phrases I hope will have become outdated and died by the time my daughter and step-daughter reach womanhood. Obvious misogyny
Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen We are currently, according to the Jewish calendar, in the month of Adar. It is known to be a month of Joy,
Amongst the dearest friends and teachers on my journey have been various animal companions, each bringing a different energy and wisdom to twine around my
Words, noise, opinion, self-promotion, echo-chambers, ‘did-it-really-happen-if-I-don’t-tell-the-world-about-it?’ We begin and end each day submerged in bubbling pools of wordy-water. Words spill, burst, gush, trickle, tweet and
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Richard Rohr
Oh yes, I do agree with this!
Too many times has something glinted with promise, beckoning with a ‘new you!’ sales-pitch (no matter how well-intended) assuring that this [book/programme/practice] is the one – that a new, more balanced, more ‘well’ and somehow better way of living lies ahead. That with work, thinking, reading or just following the right steps this new way of living is within reach.
The reality is that living – full colour, getting-it-wrong-most-days, gloriously imperfect but keeping trucking-on-anyway – is a messy, fluid and multi-layered business and we can’t think ourselves to better versions of it.
I’ve learnt that my thinking must never be too set-apart, abstract, ‘venerated’ or idealistic that it steers me from the path of real-life. To live ourself into new mindsets we need to stay open to being wrong, to challenge and to change – to looking through the little door in our souls that leads to darkness and owning that those shadowy corners have a home in us too.
Living is done day-by-day, moment-by-moment, and it’s only through consciously cultivating our awareness of this that we might reach new, more peaceful, all-encompassing ways of thinking that may restore wholeness to us as individuals, to our communities, our world and our Mother Earth.
Writing to the early Christian community in Rome, an early church leader called Paul offered advice [you could substitute the name ‘God’ for another word for a higher, spiritual source if you find this helpful – or maybe just the deep wisdom within yourself]:
“So here’s what I want you to do…..Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering….. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.”
Romans 12: 1-2
So as we ‘truck along’, mucking-up, giving up daily and starting again, life calls to us for our attention. For us to be still for a moment – noticing the new paths that our feet are beating and the journey as it unfolds day by-day. Drawing deep energy from the reserves of Love within that connect us to ourselves and others, anchoring us moment-by-moment to both the mysterious reaches of the galaxies and the intricacies of our own human hearts. And as we live these very ordinary lives – fumbling, often painful, never straight-forward, but sometimes wonderful human lives – our Human Being is itself a gift of endless curiosity and encounter.
“Wanderer there is no road, the road is made by walking…”
Antonio Machado
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