Monthly Archives: September 2025

How do you know who is safe

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I recently bumped into an old friend and student who I hadn’t seen for 20 years. He asked “was I still as radical in my theology and thinking as ever?” I said yes probably even more so. He then preceded to tell me about how his church had become fully inclusive a while back and how they lost people. I wonder if in part if he was checking if I was still a safe person to this news with? The encounter made me wonder how in an  age of virtue signalling that can be nefarious, do people who need to share things know you are safe?
So I thought I would ask my friend Jo Dolby a few questions. She is the Community Director of The Oasis Hub Bath.

1) What practices and attitudes can an individual adopt to make it visible and known that they are a safe person for others?

The bottom line for me is about being someone that is committed to self awareness, and who has a desire for learning and growth. The safest people to me are people I know have ‘done the work’ on themselves, whatever that means for them. They know their weaknesses, own their mistakes, apologise when they get it wrong, and see all others as teachers who can help them work out their blind spots and do better when they know better. An obvious process that helps with this is something like therapy, but also anything like spiritual direction, supervision, appraisals (360 feedback is great!) reflective practice etc. Even smaller daily practices can be amazing – like the examen, journalling, meditation or prayer where you leave space for silence and stillness and actively reflect on what you’re experiencing, and what you’re noticing about yourself, others and the world around you. So much of being safe for others is about awareness, so do what you can to increase your own awareness, and tell others about these practices!

I’d also add that it’s impossible to be a totally safe person, and that’s ok! I love Brené Brown’s discussion of the difference between safe spaces and brave spaces, where she argues that to promise safety for someone is to make guarantees about other people (and I would argue yourself) that you just cannot make. We are all human, and we will make mistakes and hurt people, so we cannot always guarantee to be safe, or to provide a totally safe space. A brave space is one where difficulties and differences still happen, but we have the bravery to have the tough conversations, express how we truly feel, and deeply listen to others so we learn and are changed and challenged as a result. I would say try to be safe but mostly be brave – listen as much as you can and ask questions to deepen your understanding (I have a rule of trying to ask two questions before giving an opinion or statement in response to someone!), be open to being wrong, be kind to yourself, be honest and expect others to educate you. If you don’t know the right words to use, just ask!

Finally, don’t underestimate the little things. Small signs often go a long way. When you are wearing a rainbow lanyard, when you include your pronouns in your email footer, when your display a Black Lives Matter badge on your rucksack, when you mark Pride month as a manager with your team in some way, these things communicate to others that you ‘get it’, that you care about this stuff, that you understand and value difference and therefore you will understand and value their difference. This advert for Oslo Pride is incredibly powerful, and demonstrates what a big impact these small acts can have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVepoXddTW4

2) How do you create and hold a space where people feel safe enough to share their real stories and identities, especially when they may have been hurt by church before?

I would echo my thoughts above on creating a brave space, rather than promising a safe one. If you want to dig a bit deeper into what this looks like, the definition of a brave space from the Oxford Review is helpful;

‘Brave space is a concept that goes beyond the traditional safe space ideology. While safe spaces aim to provide refuge from discrimination and harm, Brave Spaces encourage individuals to engage in courageous conversations, confront biases, and challenge perspectives constructively. It acknowledges that discomfort and growth often go hand in hand, and by stepping out of comfort zones, meaningful progress towards inclusivity can be achieved.’

People may feel safe to share their own stories and identities when they see this kind of behaviour modelled – when they know people are not afraid to have tough conversations, challenge perspectives (but from a place of kindness and respect), and when they feel they are seen as someone to learn from, not someone to ‘correct’ or change to become like the group or socially dominant culture of that setting. It’s the difference between inclusion and affirmation – where people are celebrated and seen as a gift, rather than tolerated or included and seen as an inconvenience.

Victoria Stubbs from the University of Maryland, wrote a paper on brave spaces defining six pillars of a brave space, which I also think are helpful. Perhaps you could think about what this might look like in your context or role?

1)    Vulnerability (making yourself vulnerable and at risk of harm)

2)    Perspective taking (owning our own biased perspective and being curious about other’s perspectives)

3)    Leaning into fear (doing the thing we’re afraid of)

4)    Critical thinking (questioning and being open to being questioned)

5)    Examining intentions (“Is what I am about to share for the purpose of advancing dialogue or merely self-serving? Am I oversharing? Is what I am saying operating from a place of personal integrity? Examining our intentions also enables us to hold ourselves accountable for our words and actions thus promoting a deeper level of self-awareness.”)

6)    Mindfulness (Being fully here, in this moment)

When I think specifically about how to make something or somewhere safe (or brave!) for those who have been hurt by church, I also think applying a trauma informed approach is so important. That’s a whole blog post in itself, but across most disciplines there’s agreement that being trauma informed means embedding and applying principles such as trustworthiness, safety (physical and psychological), choice, collaboration, empowerment and cultural consideration.

I’ve chucked some big words and theory out there and you’ll need to work out the application and examples for your context, but there’s as much to be said about doing the right and little things consistently. Asking about pronouns, challenging the sexist joke someone makes, apologising for the mistake you made – all those things are also the application of those bigger principles.

3) In a culture where inclusion can sometimes be used as virtue-signalling, how do you discern authenticity in others and how can I demonstrate authenticity as a leader?

Authenticity to me, particularly in leadership, is so often the difference between words and actions, and whether those things line up. So many people in the past have told me how they’re personally affirming theologically and are totally with and for me, but continue to stay silent about those beliefs. Or others will attend churches that discriminate against people like me and cause great harm with the non-affirming theology they teach and model, but hey, at least “the kids work is great”. Not only do they attend these churches but they resource, support and enable them through the giving of their money, time and energy. They’re part of the problem! I will believe you are authentic when your actions start to match your words, and when you show up in solidarity and sacrifice, speaking out about the things that matter even if it costs you (and your family) something in the process.

I would also challenge us to go beyond inclusion. We don’t talk enough about the problems of inclusion, that actually, it doesn’t go far enough! There is a huge difference between including someone, allowing someone in your space that’s comfortable for you, where you hold the power etc, and affirmation – where difference and diversity are celebrated and seen as essential for the flourishing of a community, and where it’s understood that a community without difference is a community that is lacking and impoverished. You need me and I need you, and when that’s recognised, we can all flourish.

Be more Pete

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Whilst on holiday I watched Timothee Chamalat’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in A complete unknown. My favourite scenes were around the Newport folk festival and contrast between when Dylan played the song “The Times They Are a-Changin” and the crowd loved it because the style was acceptable and then a couple years later the crowd rejected his new electric music even though in few years the album would be widely acclaimed.  Change is the one constant, a reality captured through the film and so powerfully in the lyrics of: “The times they are a-changin’. In that song Dylan calls all the elders, from leaders to mothers and fathers to recognize the shifting landscape, to refuse to block the halls or stand in the doorways of renewal, because “the wheel’s still in spin” and there’s “no tellin’ who that it’s namin’.” Those who hesitate, he warns, “will sink like a stone” in waters that have already risen around us.

The current rising waters are echoing this, calling us to move from gatekeeping beliefs to cultivating new ways of being, that those who have eyes, see this new water springing up like wells all around. This rising tide is nurturing abundant, adaptive life, and to be rooted in Christ is to bear witness to the fruit that whispers of a Kingdom not yet fully seen. Our true telos is not in relentless self-preservation, but in flowing, loving participation in the waters of change.

Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” laments the slow recognition of what’s right (“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?”) and poses the questions. While “The Times They Are A-Changin’” suggests the answers lie in adapting and warns a failure to so will result in being “drenched to the bone” by the coming tide of change thats happening now, and everyone must decide whether to move with it or be left behind.

Perhaps the key to not being left behind lies in Pete Seeger’s portrayal, even though at one stage he wanted to stop Dylan’s electric music, he relented and made space. I love the hope that Pete holds throughout the film and how the folk scene led to the love revolution. The final scene sees Pete’s hope in action through his servant leadership which shows him putting away the chairs after the festival. Hope as I’ve said before isn’t fragile or passive. It’s a muscle, “sinew and tendon that flexes beneath the skin with every reimagined dream of a better world.” And practically we build hope every time we give space to others to sing and dream, where as elders we refuse to block the halls or stand in the doorways and instead we serve others, put a chair away and wash the dishes.

The road rises

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As a youth worker for so many years it always feels like September is a start point of the work year. Although I rarely stuck to the path this September for the first time in maybe over 35 years I don’t have a clear work path for the year ahead. So it seems apt to post this thought I shared via Facebook when I decided it was time to move on.

There’s a line in an old Celtic blessing that lingers in the mind  “May the road rise to meet you.” It’s the kind of phrase you might find on a bookmark pressed between the pages of a book, or spoken at the end of service. It’s gentle, but to let it hum with its real quiet, persistent power demands we recognise that the road rises, you meet it as you step forward. Its solidity is made manifest with each step.
This road is Not the tarmac artery that thrums with the pulse of traffic, but the quieter ones: the footpaths that snake through fields, the cobbles slick with rain, the tracks that vanish into the hush of a morning mist. These are roads that don’t announce themselves. They invite you in, and then, step by step, they reveal themselves as you go.

The trouble with writing is it’s too head oriented, indulge me and stand up and lift your foot to step forward, and imagine as you go to place your foot there is shift and road has physically risen to meet you. I like the embodiment of this exercise, the feeling somehow we step and everything changes, the road is not where you expect it to be, each step feels a little odd but there’s a new oneness to the step.

Most of the time, we don’t really know the road we’re on. The blessing doesn’t say, “May you always know where you’re going.” It doesn’t promise a smooth journey, or even a clear signpost. It simply hopes that the road, whatever road it is will rise to meet you.

So the act of being human is that I will keep walking, and trust that the ground will appear beneath my feet. Sometimes, it’s only in looking back that we see the shape of the road at all. But here’s what I’ve learned: taking each step, especially the ones that lead us away from the familiar, is how we move from what is known into what is possible. The roads we know, the well-trodden lanes of habit and orthodoxy, can be comforting, but they can also become ruts, grooves that keep us circling the same old certainties. There’s a subtle courage in stepping off those paths, in letting go of what we think we know, and trusting that something greater than us is changing the laws of the cosmos so the road can rise to meet me. .

Every journey away from the settled and the safe is a journey towards new practice, new knowledge. It’s how we shed the false skins of received wisdom and find something truer, something deeper, something more alive. The road that rises to meet us is not always the one we expected, but it is always the one that teaches us. It asks us to loosen our grip on the old maps, to trust the compass of curiosity, to let experience be our teacher.
Maybe that’s the gift of the blessing. Not certainty, but discovery. Not a guarantee, but a gentle encouragement to keep moving, even when the way ahead is hidden. It’s a reminder that the road like a mountain is not something we conquer or control, but something we meet, one step, one breath, one heartbeat at a time.

So let’s make a toast to the roads that rise, to the journeys that surprise us, and to the quiet courage it takes to keep walking into the unknown.

Resisting Resolution: Living the Questions of the Way and Along the Way

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I bang on a lot about dualism but how do we practically try and live this out, this post try’s to explore that using the idea of resistance and the need to ask questions OF the way and questions ALONG the way.

Theology, at its most vital, resists the seduction of resolution. It thrives in the fertile soil of paradox, where dualisms dissolve and the sacred reveals itself not as a fixed destination but as a dynamic tension between presence and absence, immanence and transcendence. I’ve played around the edges of some radical theology and wondered what would it look like to reframe theological inquiry through two interwoven strands:

– Questions of the Way, drawing on Peter Rollins’ Church of the Contradiction, Alfred North Whitehead’s process thought, and Thomas Altizer’s death-of-God theology,

– Questions Along the Way, informed by Tripp Fuller’s relational openness, Sophie Strand’s ecological mysticism, and Thomas Jay Oord’s theology of love.

Together I think questions of and along the way, sketch a spirituality that embraces uncertainty as sacred, reimagining wholeness not as a static ideal but as a participatory dance between becoming and letting go.
5 Questions of the Way: Unsettling Dualism Through Paradox
1. What if faith is sustained by doubt, not dissolved by it?
Rollins’ Church of the Contradiction rejects the dualism of belief/unbelief, arguing that faith flourishes when we relinquish certainty. His liturgy of the “Kinder Surprise” (a hollow egg) invites worshippers to confront the absence at Christianity’s core, a God who, in Lacanian terms, is “barred” from full presence. This mirrors Altizer’s claim that the death of God is the event of faith: transcendence collapses into immanence, and the divine is reborn in the act of letting go. Here, faith becomes a practice of holding, not resolving, the tension between God’s absence and presence.
2. Can process theology redeem God from perfection?
Whitehead’s God is not omnipotent but a “fellow sufferer who understands,” evolving through time. This undermines the dualism of Creator/creation, reframing divinity as a persuasive force within, not above, the world’s unfolding. If God is “dipolar”, both eternal and temporal, how does this reshape our vision of holiness? Holiness becomes a collaborative pursuit, not a fixed state.
3. Is divine self-annihilation the heart of Christian love?
Altizer’s radical kenosis, (God’s self-emptying into the world) collapses the transcendent/immanent binary. The cross becomes the ultimate icon of this inversion: God’s death births a sacred world. This provokes a startling question: Does atheism, in its rejection of a detached deity, become Christianity’s fullest expression?
4. How do liturgies of absence heal our addiction to answers?
Rollins’ “pyrotheology” designs rituals to expose the void beneath religious symbols, Such practices disrupt the dualism of sacred/profane, inviting communities to dwell in the anxiety of unresolved questions. Could embracing liturgical instability train us to resist ideological certitude in politics and ethics?
5. Does beauty demand imperfection?
Whitehead’s God lures the world toward harmony, but beauty arises from contrast, order and chaos, novelty and tradition. If God is not a cosmic dictator but a poet coaxing cadence from chaos, how do we reconcile suffering with divine persuasion? The answer lies in releasing the dualism of control/chaos, seeing creativity in constraint.

5 Questions Along the Way: Weaving Immanence and Transcendence
1. Is prayer a collaboration, not a petition?
Tripp Fuller’s open theology reimagines prayer as co-creative dialogue. God, as the “living body of the world,” does not dictate outcomes but participates in the messy improvisation of existence. This erodes the dualism of divine/human agency, framing prayer as a dance of mutual influence.
2. What if decay is sacred?
Sophie Strand’s eco-mysticism finds divinity in decomposition, the mycelium breaking down fallen logs, the carbon cycles of life and death. If God is entangled with ecological processes, how do we ritualize grief for a warming planet? Strand suggests composting despair into activism, seeing rot as resurrection in slow motion.
3. Can love exist without coercion?
Thomas Jay Oord’s kenotic love insists God cannot override free will. This rejects the dualism of power/weakness, proposing that divine strength lies in vulnerability. If love is inherently non-coercive, how does this transform our approach to justice? Perhaps justice becomes less about imposing order and more about nurturing conditions for flourishing.
4. Is uncertainty a spiritual gift?
Fuller and Rollins both frame doubt as a generative force. If the future is truly open, faith becomes a commitment to curiosity. What spiritual practices, silence, communal discernment, paradox meditation might help us embrace “holy not-knowing”?
5. Are churches crucibles for collective becoming?
Rollins’ insurrectionary communities and Fuller’s “Homebrewed Christianity” reimagine church as a lab for experimentation. This resists the dualism of institution/individual, suggesting that spiritual growth happens in the friction of diverse perspectives. How might congregations structure themselves to prioritize questions over answers?

Perhaps the conclusion is that  Wholeness is found in Dynamic Tension, To resist resolution is to participate in the pulsing heart of Christian faith, a tradition rooted in the scandal of a God who is both transcendent and immanent, crucified and risen, fully divine and fully human. The Incarnation, Trinity, and Eucharist all encode this nondual logic: wholeness emerges not from erasing tension but from holding it reverently.
Julian of Norwich’s “All shall be well” is not a naively optimistic slogan but a radical affirmation that wellness resides in the struggle itself. When we release the dualistic urge to resolve the questions of the Way and along the Way, we encounter a God who is neither “up there” nor “down here” but in the relational flow between. This is the dynamic fullness Paul described as “Christ in you, the hope of glory” a hope that thrives precisely where certainty ends.
In the end, resisting resolution is an act of trust: that the tension between transcendence and immanence is not a problem to solve but a mystery to inhabit. As Whitehead wrote, “The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” To live the questions, then, is to participate in the divine art of weaving wholeness from paradox.