Here’s the text for the 8 December 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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When I got sober, I became friends with loads of people I had nothing in common with. Except we all shared the same addiction, and – though it seemed impossible to me at the time – we’d all found the same solution in the rooms of recovery.

One of those friends is someone I’ll call Mary. She was in her sixties at the time, worked a thankless job, but as a side-hustle she was trying to start a yoga studio. I don’t know your stereotype of a yoga teacher, but I’m certain Mary isn’t it. Cantankerous, uptight, a wonderfully-outrageous cusser – not a “namaste” on her lips – and a chain-smoker. So, unsurprisingly, her yoga studio was going nowhere. It felt impossible, and she was really down about it.

There’s another Mary I’m thinking about – who’s famous in Christianity for being the mother of Jesus. Nine months before this Mary starred in the first nativity, an angel flew through her window one day while she was doing Wordle and asked her to birth God into the world. That’s basically how the Bible tells it. Mary says: “that’s impossible, look at me: I’m no-one’s stereotype for the mother of God”. The angel says: “Nothing’s impossible with God”. And Mary says: “Well, then, let it be”.

The other Mary, after a year trying to birth her yoga studio, she gave up. Soon after her friend’s husband had a massive stroke that left him half-paralyzed and unable to speak. Mary visited them in hospital and her friend said: “Maybe you could try some yoga with him?” She was reluctant but helped him breathe deeply and stretch for the first time in months.

He was really quiet, and Mary was really self-conscious. After a while she said: “This must be so boring for you – you’d probably like to stop”. He shook his head, started to tear up, and lifted his hand to his heart in gratitude.

And that was the beginning of Mary’s unexpected yoga studio: wounded people, recovering people in rehabs and hospitals, experiencing the grace of their bodies – led by a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking alcoholic who didn’t look like a yoga teacher, but absolutely was one, because nothing is impossible with God.

The 13th-century theologian Meister Eckhart said: “We are all meant to be mothers of God, because God is always needing to be born”. Not just with the Marys — but in all of us. And I’ve come to believe that the people who think “that’s impossible — it can’t be me!” are the very ones God chooses to bring love into the world.