Month: June 2025

Beyond relentless positivity – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 30 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I’m embarrassed to confess that I’m a sucker for those twee internet personality quizzes. From  “Harry Potter’s Hogwarts-House-Sorter” to “Which Friends Character Are You?” to “Discover Your Inner Canine” – it’s fun to consider, from a playful angle, how we show up in the world.

Apparently, I am Gryffindor for my determination, Ross for my studiousness, and a crossbreed dog for my adaptability and enigmatic mystery. Sure.

These quizzes – and more serious personality tests – usually offer a list of our strengths: empathy, for example, creativity, focus, intelligence. It’s nothing new, really. The Bible has its own ancient list of virtues: joy, peace, patience, gentleness.

I believe we human beings are miracles. But sometimes I get weary of the relentless positivity through which we see ourselves. Americans are famous for this – “you’re awesome, you’re amazing!” But Brits do it, too: “Darling, you’re perfect.” This endless affirmation… it’s exhausting.

I mean, it’s great to celebrate our strengths, but in my opinion, that’s not the whole truth of us.

I went to a funeral once where someone I knew as loving but very difficult was eulogized as a flawless saint. I whispered to my husband: “At my funeral, please tell the preacher to say: ‘Trey was a lovely guy, and he could be a control freak and jackass sometimes. Can I get an Amen?’” And the people who love me would laugh out-loud and shout: “Amen, preacher!”

Christianity, in addition to its list of virtues, also has a list of deadly sins: arrogance, for example, envy, wrath, greed. This list has sometimes been misused to shame people, but I’ve come to experience it as a way into freedom. It helps me look honestly at myself – to admit: “yeah, I really struggle with arrogance; God I find envy really tricky”. When I name that, with the help of friends, and a God who loves me through and through, I feel an inner acceptance. The joy not of being perfect, but of being human. And I feel an invitation to see others that way, too.

That process – fpr me, in Church and in Alcoholics Anonymous – continues to be a transforming gift.

My friend Kimberly says life would be better, families would be healthier, global politics would be more peaceful, if we could all admit, in detail, what we actually struggle with. To tell the fuller truth about ourselves – the beautiful parts, and the busted ones, too — in search of a life together that’s not perfect but vulnerably free and lovingly real.

Take me to the river – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 23 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

When I visit a place that’s new to me, I like to explore it by walking ­– or running ­– along its water: the lochs of the Scottish Highlands, the reservoirs of the Elan Valley, Birmingham’s canals, the dykes of the Fens.

There’s something about the flow of water that tells the story of the land – what’s come before, what’s on the horizon. And it helps me get my bearings.

Maybe that’s why rivers show up in so many songs – Springsteen’s “The River”; Joni Mitchell’s, too; Tina Turner “rolling on the river”; Al Green asking to be taken to it. Water moves us – literally and spiritually.

I remember walking along the Thames in London once, near Blackfriars Bridge. A friend pointed out some bubbles rising in the currents near a metal grate. “That,” he said, “is the end of the River Fleet.”

The Fleet? I’d never heard of it. But it turns out that the Thames isn’t the only river in town. London is laced with hidden rivers – the Tyburn, the Walbrook, the Effra – all flowing underground, culverted into tunnels and pipes as the city has grown. You can’t see them, but they’re still there, moving quietly beneath the surface.

My spiritual searching as a Christian has helped me discover the hidden rivers in my own life. Buried beneath the noise of my anxiety, the concrete of my to-do list, the performance of my social-media feeds, there is a deeper stream. Something truer that I’ve forgotten, or concealed, or been told to hide. But still there, still flowing.

The nature writer Robert Macfarlane says a river is alive – “a gathering that seeks the sea”.

And the Gospel of Jesus says: “Out of human hearts will flow rivers of living water.” Real, spiritual rivers that, I believe, run through every single human being. Elemental currents that are in us – sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden – but never contained by us. We don’t own them so much as we partake of them. They flow through us. Their source and their destination is Something-More-Than-Us, Whom I call “God”.

So when I feel stuck or dry, lifeless or anxious, I meditate. I pray. I take a walk or a run. Or better yet, a swim. And I try to trace the river’s path through me, to feel its flow of freedom beneath my surface. And to trust, even when I can’t feel it or see it, that God is still moving. Alive, flowing, sacred in me and in everything.

Part of the Same Radiance – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 16 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

This spring I watched the London Marathon, which courses through my neighborhood and brings a thrill to the air. First the wheelchair racers like a shock of lightning, then the elite runners like gazelles, then 55,000 other folks, covering 26.2 miles at different paces, with different gaits, and it’s a beautiful sight.

My friend Ali ran this year, and I’d promised him a water bottle as he came down my street. I was following his progress on an app, but suddenly my phone died and would not be resurrected. And so instead of focusing on my screen as I had for the first hour, I looked up. I scanned the shimmering crowds for Ali’s face, and I got lost in a trance at all those beautiful human beings.

Some joyous, some grimacing, some stopping to rest, some just to pet my dog. Some running in memory of a loved-one, some running just because, some as a rite of passage to mark a life-event.

I ran my first marathon in Chicago in 2010 to celebrate one year sober. The course took us past a bar where I’d routinely gotten bladdered – and as we ran by, I felt so different from the years before. No longer hungover, isolated, or numbed-out – but instead grateful, connected, and so-much-more free.

Thomas Merton, a Christian monk, found himself one day unexpectedly in the swell of city-centre crowds. He wrote: “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation I loved all these people: they were mine and I was theirs … such a relief and joy, I almost laughed out loud. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race. If only everybody could realize this! But it can’t be explained. There’s no way of telling people they’re all walking around shining like the sun”.

I love that. I felt that enchantment, too, watching the race. Someone held up a sign that read: “Hey, random stranger – you’ve got this!”

We are random strangers, yes. And – as a Christian, I believe – somehow, deep-down, we’re all connected; we’re true kin; we’re part of the same radiance.

I forget that sometimes: I get stuck on myself. But then I look up, and all those gorgeous human beings. And suddenly there’s Ali, appearing out of nowhere, a huge smile on his face, a drink of water, a high-five, and off he goes. Off we all go, into the human race: every single one of us shining like the sun.

A Time for Every Purpose – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 9 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I was at a baseball game one summer evening in 2006 when I got the call that my sister had given birth. My then-boyfriend and I were watching the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field, alongside his parents, who were visiting from England.

I answered my mobile, and my dad yelled down the phone-line: Trey, you’ve got a niece and her name is Kenley!

I then yelled to my boyfriend, his parents, and all the folks around us we didn’t even know: I’ve got a niece! Her name is Kenley!

My boyfriend’s mom cried out: You’re an uncle!

And everybody cheered. The Cubs lost that night, but there was joy in the stands for a new life.

That baby niece is now 18-years-old. Kenley graduated high-school in May, she’s off to uni this autumn, and this week, she’s visiting me and my then-boyfriend-and-now-husband in London, before we travel to Rome for her graduation present. Kenley’s life is at the beginning, full of promise.

My then-boyfriend’s-mom who declared me an uncle at the Cubs game: she became my mother-in-law, Joy. And sadly, on Easter Sunday this year she received the unexpected diagnosis of advanced cancer. And last Bank Holiday, she died.

Kenley’s life is on the brink of opening into adulthood; Joy’s mortal life has ended, and opened, I believe, into the mystery of eternity.

There’s a line from the Bible, which was made into a famous song by the Byrds:

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:

a time to be born, a time to die,

a time to weep, a time to laugh,

a time to mourn, a time to dance.

What’s weird about this season for our family is that so many of those times and purposes are jumbled together in this moment: we’re packing holiday suitcases at same time as we’re ordering flowers for a funeral. We’re launching Kenley’s young adult life into the world now, at the same time as we’re offering Joy’s life to the world to come.

It’s really hard, and really bewildering. But also there’s so much beauty in this rise and fall of living and dying. Because I trust, as a Christian, that God somehow holds it all together – our young selves and old selves, our births and deaths, and everything in between.

I believe God knows us and loves us forever – and none of my seasons, or Joy’s or Kenley’s,  or yours, Scott – none of our seasons will ever be forgotten by God,