Here’s the text for the 29 January 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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A few springs ago my husband and I took a hiking holiday to Mt. Snowdon, also known by its ancient Welsh name, Yr Wyddfa. The first day we climbed to the summit was so warm and bright, we needed suncream.

But a few days later, the temperature dropped and a snowstorm churned in. Heavy clouds cloaked the mountain. We still hiked up, but with ice on the path, it took us twice as long.

Dramatic weather changes aren’t unusual, of course, in these islands, but encountering spring-sunshine and winter-snowstorm so close together on the same mountain – it caught me off-guard.

Last summer, a couple years after our Snowdonia trip, I was caught off-guard by another journey, when a dense depression descended on me, like an unforeseen weather-system. The week before I’d felt okay, but suddenly I was hit by a squall of negative thoughts, deep sadness, and a fatigue so oppressive I needed time-off-work and medical help. The depression waxed and waned but stayed around in some form for the entire summer. And then, as mysteriously as it had descended, it lifted. Where I’d felt foggy before, it was clear again.

People experience depression and anxiety in vastly different ways. And I’d never want to suggest my experience is just like others’. But what helped me through that painful terrain ­– alongside friends, church, and the good-old-NHS ­– was an ancient Christian image.

The Bible is filled with weird-sounding mountains: Sinai, Gilead, Beth-El, Olivet. Slopes where people meet unexpectedly with God. So sometimes Christians compare the spiritual journey to hiking a mountain.

And theologian Martin Laird says that an important part of that journey is learning to recognize how changeable our thoughts and feelings are. The emotional weather-systems around us are always in flux. And no matter how much we work-out or eat-right or meditate or declutter, we cannot control the weather.

What helped me in the maelstrom of depression was that insight: that I’m actually not the weather around me. I’m the mountain. Or better-put: God’s the mountain and when I’m fixed upon it, I’m secure, however I’m feeling, whatever the weather. When it’s rainy and miserable in my head, I remember: the weather will change. And when it’s blissfully sunny, I also need to remember, the weather will probably change.

I believe what’s most real about me is not my fleeting thoughts and feelings but the truth that I can never be separated from the everlasting love and elemental strength of God, who can be trusted in every forecast.

Here’s the text for the 22 January 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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Zoe, when I was on your show the first time, I was sooooo nervous. I worried: would I mess up? Would you like me? What would people think of my weirdly-pitched American accent?

As I climbed the stairs to your studio that day, my heart was in my throat. But in the stairwell there’s a picture of Dolly Parton from a time she was here. And when I saw her smiling that smile, I felt God speak to my anxious heart, in the voice of Dolly herself: Honey, I created you. So you be you, and I’ll shine though, and you’ll be – just fine. And I was.

I thought of that experience last Friday because Dolly turned 78 yo. Dolly, honey, if you’re listening, Happy Birthday!

Dolly has always captivated me. Maybe ‘cause we’re both Tennesseans. Or because my parents played her records when I was young and her music’s been running through my veins ever since. Or maybe it’s because I think Dolly is the same person wherever she is – she’s simply being who she was created to be.

But mostly I love how Dolly Parton helps people feel the goodness flowing through life – the goodness in ourselves, the goodness way beyond ourselves. Her Glastonbury set in 2014 was a revival. People of different spiritualities and none, hands up in the air praising, or searching for something beyond themselves, because Dolly was pointing the way.

And Lord in heaven she. Is. funny. Parkinson asked her once where she got her signature look. And she talked about walking as a child with her mother in their poor mountain town, and they saw a fabulously-dressed woman with high-heels, red lipstick, peroxide-blonde hair piled-up high.  Dolly hadn’t known it was the town prostitute, a sex-worker in the village.  And she said: “Mama, who’s that? She’s beautiful.” Her mother snapped back: “Honey, she ain’t nothing but trash!” And Dolly said: “Oh Mama, that’s what I wanna be: I wanna be trash!”

I love that story. Dolly saw that woman in a way that others didn’t: as a human being – not trash, but treasure.

So Dolly’s been called the Queen of Country, but I think a better title for her is “saint”.

In the Christian faith, saints aren’t just dead people churches are named after. A saint is anybody, really, who sees like God sees, who loves like Jesus loves, who helps others see and love in a bigger way. Saints point fingers – but not to judge, instead to reveal hidden treasure.

Now, I have no influence in the official process of canonizing saints. I’ll leave that to the Pope. But whether we identify as sinners or saints or both, let’s raise our cups today to the unofficial Saint Dolly Parton and let’s also raise our cups to the goodness flowing through everything.