This Shrove Tuesday I’m gathering up the leftovers from three years in the spiritual wilderness and seeing what I can begin to make of them. To be honest, it was a strange feeling when my role as an Anglican priest…
Category: Creative Arts
Over the past few weeks a number of friends and colleagues have experienced the death of someone close to them. Whether the person is famous or a solitary unknown, whether the room is crowded at death or the person dies alone,…
No matter how hard I trydespite the theology I’ve doneI can’t separate God from the bloke in the skysomewhat disinterestedremoved and impenetrablein league with earthly patriarchy. If I say Goddeis it different?Sometimes, but not always. What I mean is thatat…
The thing is Godde when I speak to you I find that I’m pretty incoherent. No fancy phrases, or lucid lines as if I’m not even sure what I’m doing. It’s as though, without wanting to be rude that I’m…
Oh, Godde, whatever you are and I don’t know; my mum is dying. Maturity disappeared in one phone call when she said, I have something to tell you. No! I’m not ready. Too many memories of being held hurt soothed…
There’ll be no return to church, said The Analyst in reflective mode, ‘until they get rid of the homily.’ He was musing, not on the lapsed art of stylish rhetoric, but the tendency to use a pulpit to tell people…
A workshop at Common Ground Conference Progressive Christianity Aotearoa Saturday 8th September 2018 Abstract Blogging about spirituality drew sharp criticism from church authorities who determined my theology ‘not Christian’. I responded by destroying my website, home to myriad articles that…
The Illness The We Are: A Jungian Critique of Christianity by John P. Dourley A creative reading group for explorers Dates and times Thursday evenings, 7-8.30pm. 4, 11, 18, 25 Oct & 1, 8 November 2018. Venue A café in…
When I was at theological college I was fascinated by how it was perfectly acceptable to see the first chapters of Genesis as mythology but not necessarily the Gospel of Mark, an action-packed narrative that forms the bare bones of…
This prayer/poem was created out of a conversation I had with a seriously injured man in ICU. Can you close the curtain?Sure.We call them the blue soundproof ones.Yeah, nah, not, it’s an illusion.(He laughs) So, what does God look…