Author: Trey Hall

Gratitude Lists – a BBC Pause for Thought

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

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Last Thursday in America was Thanksgiving Day, when families and friends travel great distances simply to eat together. I love Thanksgiving because it’s not super-commercialized. It’s like Christmas, but without the price of entry. You don’t have to buy anybody anything. The only gift expected is sitting down for a common meal.

Which doesn’t always feel like a gift ­­– family dynamics can play out, especially this year when families, like mine, are divided by their votes in the recent election.

But Americans have developed a remedy for that, at least a temporary one: the practice of counting our blessings. It’s Thanksgiving tradition to go around the table, naming something we’re thankful for. Everybody participates, from your cantankerous-great-uncle to your fringy-cringy-cousin.        And also you.      It’s a beautiful thing.

The first year we lived in the UK, me and my English husband hosted Thanksgiving for our British friends. Jonathan cooked a turkey, prepared my grandma’s homemade-stuffing, baked a pumpkin-pie.

My contribution was inviting guests to express their thankfulness. The Brits didn’t see it coming. I said: As we tuck in, can everybody share a gratitude?

Immediately there were eye-rolls, a silent-but-visceral resistance. My friend Ash, a brilliant theologian but also a-bit-of-a-clown, said: How very American.

I said: Ash, it’s my party, let’s start with you: what are you thankful for? He responded in a Jack-Whitehall-kind-of-way: I’m thankful for these mashed potatoes.

Hannah, Ash’s wife, said: Ash, come on! And then she shared a sincere gratitude. And to my astonishment, everyone followed suit, offering thanksgiving for unexpected love, a clear diagnosis, a second chance. By the time we made it round the table, there were even a few tears for all the gratitude. Ash even made a second-attempt.

Of course, giving-thanks transcends national boundaries. And it’s the heart of many spiritual communities.

Christian writer Frederick Buechner says gratitude is about acknowledging the things we “can only be given” – things “we can’t bring about ourselves any more than we can bring about our own birth.”

In Alcoholics Anonymous, some folks write a gratitude list in the mornings. We find naming concrete things to be helpful: thanks for the breath in my lungs, for sobriety, for the coffee in my cup. Gratitude doesn’t fix our problems, but it does increase our freedom to take each day as it comes.

So whatever your country-of-origin, your spirituality or none: Happy Thanksgiving. May we count our blessings and be truly grateful.

What’s your spirituality cocktail? – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 25 November 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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I’m a great bartender. Which may be surprising to hear from a recovering alcoholic like me. It’s definitely not a suggestion for anybody else, especially anyone in the early days of dealing with an addiction.

But one of the gifts of long-term sobriety for me is not only that I don’t drink anymore, it’s that I don’t even want to drink anymore. The desire has been removed, the compulsion has been relieved – for about 15 years now, which is a true miracle, given the relationship I used to have with alcohol and drugs. Thank you, God.

In sobriety, I once bartended at a friend’s Christmas party, and I was wearing my clergy dog-collar that night, which set the scene for all kinds of jokes. But also for a few honest confessions – and a load of amazing conversations.

People ordered drinks and while I poured them, if it felt right, I’d say: “So you’re drinking a Manhattan tonight, or a Martini or an Old Speckled Hen, but tell me about your favourite spirituality cocktail.”

“What do you mean?” they’d say.

“Well, for example, my spirituality cocktail is one part trail-running, one part Alcoholics-Anonymous, two parts Jesus, with a heavy splash of drum-and-bass music. What about you? How do you connect spiritually, however you understand or don’t understand God?”

And throughout the evening, people of different faiths and none gathered around the bar and astonished me with their answers – full of joy, hope, humour. So much fun.

On my spirituality podcast, I recently asked an agnostic guest what her spirituality cocktail was. She paused and said: “Gin and tonic”. Gin for the mystery and belonging and wonder in life. Tonic for the doubts and searching and bleakness. “But it’s all spiritual,” she said.

God, I love that. It’s all spiritual.

The festive season is here, y’all. Radio2 switches on the Christmas music this morning and I say: bring it on.

But alongside the parties and pantos, mince-pies and carol-sings, let’s consider our spirituality cocktails this season. Whether we’re lifting a glass or trying to put down the bottle, I believe God is nearer to every-single-one-of-us than we can imagine, closer even than our own breathing. God, the Sharer of our longing, and Source of our wonder. So pull up a chair to the bar, to the table, and let’s lean in together.

Spiritual six-pack? – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 18 November 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I went to a physiotherapist recently. The week after my 49th-birthday. Somehow, on a 5K-run, I’d hurt my back. Hello, middle-age!

The physio said: You wanna keep running? You gotta build core strength. And the best way to do that, apparently, is lifting these ridiculous things called weights.

So, for the first time in my life, I have joined a gym. Y’all, it hasn’t been pretty. I didn’t know how to use the machines. My limbs buckled like noodles under the tiniest weights. And I had no idea about gym culture.

The very first exercise I tried was on a bench that, unknown to me, was marked as someone else’s bench, even though he was across the gym. He yelled out, Oy! I said: Sorry, first time.

A friend said I should have responded: Step-off, queen, I don’t know your routine. But I didn’t have that much confidence.

After a month of feeling clueless at the gym, I asked my physio for help. She introduced me to a personal trainer, Ricky, who asked what I wanted to achieve. I said: I’m not looking for bulging-biceps or a six-pack, I just wanna build stability, prevent injury, and keep running.

I am a control-freak. In recovery, yes – but I still like figuring things out by myself. My default stance is: leave me alone, I’ll sort it. At the gym, though, I couldn’t sort it. I had no idea what to do. So Ricky, in his kind-and-gentle way, is teaching me the basics. The right posture, how to hold the bar, how to safely add weight. I try his suggestions, I don’t get it perfect, but step-by-step I get a-little-better. My back feels good, I’m running again, and I have more body-confidence.

The good things in life require training. The Bible says: Physical training has some value, but spiritual training is useful for everything. It has promise for life now and – as Jesus says ­– for life to the fullest.

Whether we’re learning weights, or meditation and prayer – which part of my spiritual training ­– it’s awkward at first. Most of us need help. Welcome to being human.

I co-host the podcast Spill the Spirituality. Each episode I talk with diverse folks about what helps their spiritual training – from Bake-Off-winner Peter Sawkins to stand-up-comedian Helen Lederer to Radio2-presenter Owain Wyn Evans.

Whoever we are, we need each other. No six-packs promised, physical or spiritual. But step-by-step, life to the fullest.

“You have an amazing aura!” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 23 September 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

A woman I didn’t know took my hand and said: “You have an amazing aura”.

It wasn’t a pick-up line at the pub or a mind-body-festival. It happened after a worship-service at the door of the church where I was the minister. The woman said she’d seen a purply-golden river flowing around me.

I said: “Was this during my sermon?” No,” she said. “No. Definitely not then”.

“It was when you prayed at the altar for the Spirit to pour out on us ­– and on the bread and wine – I saw currents of light flowing through everything.”   That prayer is from a ritual when Christians eat and drink together to experience, we believe, the real-life presence of Jesus.

Let’s just say I was skeptical of the woman’s vision. It seemed a bit woo-woo, but I sensed she wasn’t making it up. And to be honest, I was also jealous. I wanted to be able see unseen energy-fields, too.

I’ve always been a spiritually-curious kid. Enchanted by the idea of an invisible realm of infinite goodness overlapping our reality – with accessible portals into a grander life. As a child I would squint and try to see it. And through the fuzzy-filter of my eyelashes I could transform falling leaves into angels, stars-into-swirling-spiritual-kaleidoscopes. Everything connected by trace-lines-of-light.

I became a Christian as a teenager. When I opened the Bible, I read of people describing what I’d imagined. They called it different things: the unseen-Eternal, the Kingdom of Heaven, the glorious riches of the fullness of God. Not a haunted-realm, but an atmosphere of peace available to us now.

Something like this past summer, when the Northern Lights turned the skies into a miracle, something we can glimpse but those glimpses are just doorways into Something-Else so unimaginably radiant and good we can’t comprehend it.

But I believe we can spot it – not only at altars, but in the world as well. In the mornings, walking through the wood with my dog Iris, I feel it. A raven or a fox sees us, they hold our gaze, and I know there are hidden-trace-lines of light connecting us.

Or crowded onto the train in rush-hour, I sense it flowing through us. I wake up to the Hidden Beauty, the Real-Life-Truth that – whether we call it an aura or Nature or the Kingdom-of-Heaven, whether we feel it everyday or not – as one writer says: we are all walking around shining like sun.

Searching the rubble for life – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 16 September 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

In our thirties, my friend Kimberly and I went on a Costa-Rican-holiday – beaches, rainforests, volcanos. Absolutely-stunning. A few days into our trip, though, Kimberly’s mom called and said: “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this: your house burned down last night. Can you get home?”

Kimberly was in-shock, but somehow we packed, drove the jungle roads, and caught the only flight back that day. Around midnight we got to her house, which didn’t seem that damaged. The front-porch, the windows … covered-in-soot but intact. But then, we realised, the back-half of the house was almost-completely-gone. Like a volcano had erupted in the kitchen and consumed everything.

The next morning, friends and family gathered. We hugged, cried, and crawled through the rubble – searching for anything salvageable. Not much was. I remember her grandfather’s pottery collection in a heap of ruined shards.

We did find some valuables that Kimberly had desperately hoped to hold onto: her journals, picture-albums, and I’ll never forget when she opened a charred cupboard and yelled: “Yes! It’s a miracle! My Sex in the City DVDs are saved!”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Later we had a worship-service, in the garden: we moved bricks from the collapsed walls to build an altar. And people of different faiths and none crowded around it to pray and sing. Behind us, the burnt-out-shell of the house.

There’s a picture of some of us on that heart-breaking day, and in the picture we’re mostly smiling. Which seems ridiculous, but I remember it, and our smiles were real. We weren’t happy, of course, but we did feel an atmosphere of the goodness of friends – and the nearness of God. Which didn’t make the tragedy easy, especially for Kimberly. But that goodness, that nearness, that grace, did help her go into-the-pain-and-through-it instead of trying to shortcut-around-it.

A old Christian hymn says: O God, O Joy that seeks me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee.

I don’t believe God sends us suffering. Some say “everything happens for a reason”. And I’m like: Yeah, but the reason’s not always God – sometimes it’s shoddy-wiring, a war-loving-dictator, or simply the fact that human-beings can be total muppets. Including me.

God doesn’t send tragedies, but God meets us in them, actually experiences our pain, and searches the heart-broken rubble with us for the life worth holding onto.

God’s great lineage of love – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 9 September 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

Ten years ago I was living in Chicago and travelled to Memphis, my hometown, to visit my Grandma, who was dying. We sat on her sofa with a box of old photos ­– and picture by picture, we gossiped about our family tree.

There was an old-fashioned, sepia-toned photograph of a man, in a natty suit, on a street-corner. I asked: “Now who’s this handsome guy?” She said: “Well, that’s my grandfather, Frederick Schulz – so your great-great-grandfather, who immigrated from Germany in the 1800s.”

The photographer’s address was stamped on the picture-frame: it said 111 North Lasalle Street, Chicago, 1894. I said: “Grandma! That’s like a block from my flat – I walk by there every day! But I thought our family came from Kentucky, not Illinois?” “Eventually Kentucky,” she said, “but fresh off the boat, Frederick lived in Chicago.”

I honestly I hadn’t thought much about my great-great-grandpa until then, but that picture stoked a connection with him. Because of a common city: Chicago. And because of our common lineage: he’s been dead for more than a century now, but something of his blood ­­– his story, his life – makes me who I am.

I also feel connected to him because I’m a migrant, too. I’ve moved from Memphis to Chicago for work, and then across the ocean, to Britain, for love.

I saw a church banner once that said: The sign of God is that you’ll be led, where you did not expect to go. True for Frederick Schulz, and true for me.

The Bible contains some lengthy genealogies. So-and-so-begat-so-and-so-and-on-and-on-and-on. In my opinion, sort of boring … but when I think of my great-great-grandpa ­– or when I look at a picture of me and my beloved grandma, who’s been dead more than a decade now – those biblical family trees hit different.

I feel included in this great lineage of love. Included in generations of life-beyond-death. From God to Adam and Eve, as the story goes. To Isaac and Ishmael, to Mary, Joseph and Jesus – all the way to now, including ancestors whose names I’ll never know but who make me who I am.

For me, that ancient ancestry proclaims that before we human-beings had different religions and surnames and national borders, it was just us and God. I forget that sometimes – disconnected from modern migrants, people today, like Grandpa Schulz in 1894, boarding boats in search of a different life. But when I forget, the Bible reminds me: God has made us all one family, and will lead us, together, where we didn’t expect to go.

What am I living for? – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 24 June 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

Earlier this month I visited my family in Tennessee, and I was reminded yet again ­– what a load of chatterboxes we are. Zoe, you think I’m a yappy Yank? You should meet my kinfolk. If you run into my dad or my sister or my aunt at the supermarket, buckle up, y’all – they can talk for America. I’m pretty extroverted myself, but compared to them, I’m a monk.

Something I learned very early on from my family was how to communicate in a way that draws people in and makes ‘em feel comfortable. How to read a room and warm it up with charm. This can be a good thing. Friendliness, story-telling, a genuine clap on the back – it all goes a long way.

But here’s a confession: there can be a shadow side to that chatty charm. In our mission to influence and impress, it’s easy to become chameleons. To change roles or switch styles just to get noticed, to get likes, or to persuade – which is just another word for “manipulate”!

I co-host the podcast Hope & Anchor. We recently chatted with Amanda Lovett, one of the stars from series 1 of The Traitors. You might remember: she’s the “Welsh Dragon” whose wonderfully-deceptive scheming took her almost all-the-way to the final.

It turns out that playing-to-the-room is super-helpful for reality telly. But not-so-helpful for becoming a real human being.

At least for me.

For a long-time in my life, I was desperately trying to keep up appearances. Juggling so many scripts and identities that I didn’t know who I actually was. All those alter-egos hollowed me right out.

Thomas Merton, a 20th-century monk, says: If you want to identify me, don’t ask me where I live, what food I like, how I wear my hair, but ask me what I’m living for – and then ask me what’s keeping me from living that way.

As a Christian and also a member of the 12-step recovery community, my journey is different from a monk’s. I’m not called to celibacy or a monastery. But like a monk, I am called to be one person, to be a true person.

Not a chameleon or a changing cast of characters, but the same person, the same Trey – wherever I am, whoever I’m with.

For me, that’s what integrity is. That’s what spirituality means. And that’s what I’m trying to living for. As Jesus says, to know the truth – about yourself, about what’s real – and to let that truth set you free.

An Act of Freedom – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 17 June 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

A few Augusts ago, on holiday in Chicago, I joined an early-morning ritual on Lake Michigan called Friday Swim Club. It had started unintentionally earlier that summer when a few friends dived into the water after a bike-ride. The next Friday they invited others to join, those friends invited others, and three months later, when I arrived to the harbor, more than 1000 people had gathered to jump in.

At 6:30 am.

Zoe, some were ready for a fashion shoot. Swanky-swimsuits, six-pack-abs, make-up, manscaping. Loads of cocky-parading.

Others, though, hid behind their towels ­– insecure, perhaps – covering-up scars or stretch-marks, curves or lack-thereof. Anxious about having too much of something, or not-enough of something else.

I’ve got mixed feelings about my body. Especially in summertime, when social-media fills with images of so-called-beach-bodies. On one level, it’s enticing: I’m a sexual being, I get it. But mostly it’s exhausting: how these images train us to compare ourselves and declare our bodies inadequate. To watch ourselves so judgmentally that we grab for fad-products, diets, compulsive-exercise. More like addiction than wellness.

I believe God is universal love but ALSO was born with a physical body, as a real human-being called Jesus. The Bible says “In Jesus, all the fullness of God was embodied”. But the Bible DOESN’T say what Jesus’s body looks like. We make assumptions, but no-one knows. Is he plain, spotty, hairy, disabled, a Vogue model? His stereotypical attractiveness – or unattractiveness ­– doesn’t matter: it’s his courage and love that liberate.

I recently interviewed Radio2’s own Reverend Kate Bottley ­– about how body-positivity is fab, but body-neutrality is even better. How accepting our bog-standard bodies can be an act of freedom.

My favorite part of Friday Swim Club wasn’t the swimsuit-parade ­– it was jumping into the water. There were too many people to go in all-at-once, so we queued up, 100 at a time, the cocky and insecure altogether. We yelled 3-2-1 and flung ourselves in — which was amazing, but the best part was seeing others jump.

Wave after wave, people leapt from the pier, with screams of relief, like kids again, freed from the posing and self-consciousness.

For a miraculous moment, into the air, into the water, we weren’t watching ourselves for a change. We’d forgotten ourselves. And it felt like freedom. And embodied joy.

Snailspotting – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 10 June 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

On a walk last summer, our four-year-old godson, Brecon, was excited to tell me about his recent discovery. He wanted to show me ­– as he put it – “where the snails live”. We weren’t in a garden or a farmer’s field but on the pavements of northwest-London. Brecon took my hand, and led me to a wall. “Look!” he said. He pointed to a crack in the bricks. I leaned over and saw the spiral-shells clustered there, and Brecon yelled out: “Wow!”

To be honest, I wasn’t feeling well at the time ­– I was in a cloud of depression that stuck around the whole summer. But Brecon’s glee in snail-spotting lifted my spirit. We got lost in laughter and a growing chorus of “Wows!”. And even though we fully expected to find more snails in each new crevice, we were somehow still surprised when we found them.

Brecon reminded me of Charles Darwin, famous for his 19th-century theory of evolution. Darwin kept a journal during his scientific expeditions, and in it he wrote: “I expected to discover a great deal”. But even he wasn’t prepared for what he described as the “hurricane of delight and astonishment” that swirled through him with each new discovery.

For example, he saw an unusually-shaped butterfly and, using the creature’s Latin name, he scribbled: “Tresses like hair – beautiful lepidoptera – Silence – Hosanna!”

I love that. First, Darwin is struck silent by the beauty. Then he cries out “Hosanna!”­– an ancient religious word that basically means “Wow!”

Hosannas are strewn-through Darwin’s journals ­– a growing chorus of “Wows” that for me as a Christian, points to the harmony between spirituality and nature, between true science and true religion.

Theologian Rowan Williams says: the harmony and “immensity of the universe” inspire us to wonder “what kind of concentrated, unlimited energy is holding everything together in being?”

We don’t have to be religious to ponder that. We might not call that unlimited energy “God”. We might be agnostic or atheist. But when we’re gobsmacked by the glory of the Northern Lights, or bats-like-holy-angels on summer-nights, or when we kneel down to save a snail from commuters racing by – maybe we get freed-up a little. Unstuck a bit from ourselves, perhaps, when we’re struck by that beauty­­ – that energy – that universal love we’re not even sure we believe in.

So, thank you, Charles Darwin and, personally speaking, thank you, Jesus, for getting me unstuck, for declaring that every inch of the universe is holy ground. And thanks especially to my godson Brecon: for teaching me to cry out: Wow!

Slowing Down to the Good Life – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 5 February 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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I’ve been running since my early-twenties. I started for the health benefits after my GP said I needed to lower my cholesterol. But I’ve stayed with it for the room it opens up in my brain, the peace it transfuses into my veins.

When I got sober, I joked that I’d traded alcohol for free drugs from God which running gave me access to.

For me, running’s not really about competing. In a parkrun or road-race, it’s more about the joy of being with others. Generally I’m not trying to beat anybody – except for that one guy in the Darth Vader costume who sprinted past me in the last leg of the London Marathon.

If I’m competing against anybody, it’s myself. This obsession intensified in my thirties when I bought a sports watch that tracks my mileage, heart-rate, and especially my speed – which an exercise app then graphs. As I pushed myself for a faster and faster time, I loved watching the graph’s trend-line rise.

But as I approach my fifties, that trend-line’s started sagging and lately it’s pretty much plummeted.

Part of me fights that. When a young runner-friend of mine, Ali, started a regime of exercises recently to increase his pace, I heard this voice in my head: “Trey, if you train just as hard, for your 50th birthday in 2025, you can defy the odds with your fastest-marathon-ever!”

I even consulted a coach who said he’d help me, but he also said: “When you started running 25 years ago, it was, you know … 25 years ago. You’re older now – that’s no bad thing. Is there anything wrong with slowing down?”

Underneath the ambitious part of me, another part of me felt relief.

We’re not all runners, of course, but probably we’ve all in some way felt the pressure of the world on our shoulders to get faster and grow stronger.

What I’m learning from Jesus, my real-life coach, is that sometimes it’s better to get slower and grow humbler. In the Bible, Jesus is always coaching people to come to him for rest, to slow down enough to look at the birds or talk to somebody.

In early sobriety, someone said “I wish you a slow recovery”. At first I didn’t understand what they meant but I’ve come to treasure that advice. I believe the good life isn’t about relentlessly pursuing better measurements, or being driven by the obsession of winning, but instead being freed to love the slow pace of living life as it actually comes.