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“Mother(s) of God!” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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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.

“Switching on Radio2 Christmas” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 1 December 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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A few years ago, I went to a concert. Not pop music or rock – but organ. Can I admit that on Radio2? I love Bruce Springsteen, Belinda Carlisle, but I also get giddy for some J.S. Bach.

The concert was at Christmastime in an old church. Candles, stained glass, and the first song was so beautiful I could actually feel it passing through my body, slowing my heart beat, relaxing my soul – one of those rare moments when all is calm, all is bright.

After the last chord from the organ, the sound was just echoing through us. We were holding our breath, savoring the reverb. And then, in that gorgeous stillness, we heard: ARRHH-ARRHH-ARRHH.

From the street outside, a car alarm – a blaring, old-school car alarm. The audience laughed and the organist played on, but in the quiet movements, you could still hear it. We sang a carol; there it was: it wasn’t stopping till it drained the car-battery. The music was glorious, but that alarm clashed hard.

For me, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. School nativities and human cheer, searching for stars in a midnight clear. So I’m thrilled that we’re switching on Radio2 Christmas today. Come on, Mariah! All I want for Christmas is you.

But amidst all that joy and cheer, alarms are still sounding: children in poverty, unending war. Grief, money trouble, mental health struggles. One Christmas, my own depression was so deep, I couldn’t sing a note.

And it’s tempting to drown out those alarms with festive noise, to numb ourselves and pretend we don’t hear them. But many Christmas carols invite us to do the exact opposite: to tune our ears to the suffering, to remember peace and kindness aren’t just feelings – they’re a way of life.

In the Bible, those alarms? They’re called prophets. They cry out for justice because none of us are okay until we all are.

At the end of that concert, the organist sat down for an encore. We waited, in silence—well, except for ARRHH-ARRHH-ARRHH. But the organist listened to that alarm – and then he wove it into something extraordinary. He improvised a whole new song around it, adding harmony and transforming it into something strangely-beautiful.

This season, Radio2 family, can we do the same? And try to hold the joy and pain together, the discord of the world and the harmony, so we can really hear that promised miracle song: O Holy Night, when every soul feels it worth – and all oppression shall cease.

“We are, all of us, pilgrims” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 24 November 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

Last year we moved to the Docklands – part of the East End of London, that from medieval times was the world’s largest port. Boats moved cargo in and out of vast docks along the Thames.

Today most of these harbors have been filled in to create parks and housing, but you can still sense the history in the names of things. We live on the old whaling dock, and our local pub? It’s called the Moby Dick — with some of the best fish-and-chips in-town.

I was exploring the neighborhood one day at low-tide and noticed a stretch of sand and pebble. And a memorial to a voyage that started there in 1620, when 65 people boarded a ship sailing for what Europeans then called the New World. Need a hint? The pub next-door – it’s called the Mayflower.

This week, at Thanksgiving celebrations across the US, Americans will tell this story: of the Pilgrim mothers and fathers braving the seas for a new life, for a new home. Half of them perishing the first winter; the others surviving only through the compassion of the indigenous Americans, of the Wampanoag Nation.

This story is so central to American lore that we often romanticize the Pilgrims as heroic pioneers – or we stereotype them as colonial oppressors. I confess I’ve done both in my life. It’s so easy, but so lazy, to turn people from centuries ago into cartoons or villains.

But standing there on Rotherhithe Beach, I could see them as humans — children clinging to their parents as anchors lifted, prayers being whispered: for a safer life, for economic stability, for freedom to practice their faith without social hostility or government interference. These prayers feel to me like deeply human desires, both 400 years ago, and today.

We like our stories neat: good-or-bad, all-or-nothing. But real humans aren’t that simple: we’re a mixture of motives. We move, we migrate. We don’t stay in one place emotionally, or spiritually, or geographically. We change. As I stood on the pilgrims’ wharf that day, I heard people speaking in at least four different languages, and only one of them was Cockney. And I thought: we humans, we are all of us pilgrims.

In the Bible, I believe God makes a promise: “Let no foreigner say, ‘I am not welcome.’” God says “I will give them a home and a name better than ‘daughters and sons’”.

It’s a promise of belonging that flows across generations and nations and borders. My prayer this Thanksgiving is that God’s vision will happen here: on earth as it already is in heaven. Because in the end, I believe we are, all of us, pilgrims searching for the belonging of home.

“The Sea in my veins” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 17 November 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

We’re recently back from a week in Norfolk, on a stretch of the coast so beautiful it could be a scene in a holiday snow-globe. Except instead of snow, stars and sunrises, seascapes and fields. And at this time of year, massive colonies of seals. Everything held together in an atmosphere of awe.

On the first morning, I ran along the dunes to see the grey seals, mottled and crooning on the sand, waiting for their babies to be born. That day I saw only one little white pup, maybe the first-fresh-born, held close by its mum.

But every day after that, there was growing crèche of cottony seal-babies. 125 by week’s end, with 3000 expected by January. I’d stop and gaze at the sheer exuberance of nature. So bold and, at the same time, so fragile: 40% of those babies won’t make it through winter. So terrible, so beautiful, so compelling that you half-expect David Attenborough to show up with a camera crew.

And Norfolk absorbed me in another way, too. Amidst all this new animal life were quiet reminders of human life and mortality. Walking the coastal path, stopping in seaside villages, I saw memorials everywhere. Names carved into monuments: young men, women, a generation, we will remember them. And simple plaques at beachfronts, on benches tied with flowers, giving thanks for loved ones who’ve crossed to the other shore.

For Nigel, who loved it here.

In memory of Mum, we miss you so much.

For Aisha, we’ll love you forever.

One of my favourite Bible passages is Psalm 148, which describes all Creation praising God—not just humans, but sun and moon, children and elders, sea creatures and ocean depths. All week-long in Norfolk, I felt drawn into this tidal movement of praise. I felt baptized again in the currents of the living and the dead. As the poet Thomas Traherne put it, I “felt the Sea itself flowing in [my] veins”.

For me, as a Christian, the reason for all this praise isn’t that everything is amazing all the time – it’s definitely not. For me, the reason for the praise is that God can be trusted to hold us together through terrible things and beautiful things. To hold everything together, actually: eons and generations, and me and you, and colonies of seal-pups, too. God somehow makes sure everything belongs.

In this cosmic sphere, we will live and we will die, and, I believe, we will be okay. All shall be well, everything held forever by the one God and Mother of us all.

“God is infinitely knowable” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 29 September 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

My friend Kimberly is one of my best mates in the whole world. But we didn’t start out that way. We met 30 years ago in theology college — also known as ‘vicar school’ — and immediately got off to a rocky start. We were both committed Christians, of course, but I was a lefty, she was a righty, and ‘never the twain shall meet’.

We also had serious personality differences. She was a sorority girl: popular, fiercely-intelligent, super-confident. I was confident too (also known as egotistical) but saw myself as more “cutting-edge”. I had long hair. I wore earrings, a big wooden cross around my neck, and t-shirts with messages like “No one knew I was a lesbian until now”.

Our competition and mutual-suspicion were thinly-veiled. Classic rival stuff, which came to a head one day when I told Kimberly I was one of two final candidates for a youth-worker job at a local church. She grimaced and said: “What do you know? I’m the other candidate.”

And then came the twist – the church hired us both, asked us to share the job. At first, we didn’t love it. But over the next two years, something unexpected happened. Our disagreements and resentments slowly melted into respect. And then into true, abiding friendship.

Thirty years later, we’ve never lived in the same city again and we now live in different countries. But emotionally we’re so near: we talk and text, we holiday together, we’ve written the other’s dating profiles in the past, officiated at each other’s weddings. Her boys are our God-children. We’ve been friends for so long that Kimberly knows the depths of me as well as (maybe better than) my husband.

Because of our friendship, our philosophies and theologies have grown – they’re less reactive, healthier, more mature. But more importantly we’ve realised that one of most beautiful things that faith makes possible is deep friendship in which we’re loved well and known in detail, across difference.

That feels so important – especially these days, when it’s easy to get locked-up in echo-chambers and view the other as an eternal opponent or enemy.

For me, though, it’s not only about friendship with each other, with other human-beings: it’s also about friendship with God.

Someone in my 12-step-recovery-meeting recently said: “It’s not that God is unknowable: it’s that God is infinitely knowable. Like a friend.”

I love that. In my opinion, God’s mystery isn’t about being distant or unknowable.

God’s mystery is simply that there is so much of God to know.

Not far-off, but endlessly-discoverable – like Kimberly, like a dear, unexpected friend.

“Bicycle Race” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 22 September 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

Earlier this month in London, there was a near-total Tube strike for an entire week. One of the results of that was that everybody who owns a bike in greater London decided – understandably – to cycle to work, even if they hadn’t ridden their bike in years and had to dig it out from behind the stacks of boxes in the very-back-corner of the garage.

Picture it: It’s 7:15 in the morning, and the generously-sized bike lanes into central London are already rammed with commuters.

We are a heaving movement of humans, metal, and lycra that feels wild to be part of – and also slightly precarious. People who’ve never commuted on their bikes, people who look like they’ve never been on a bike: there they all are, God bless them, huffing-and-puffing and trying to get to work with nearly-flat tyres, rattling-rusty-chains. People pedaling in stiletto heels, three-piece-suits. It’s a Great Migration, radically diverse.

But there’s one thing that all these folks have in common. They’ve all discovered or remembered their bike-bells. They haven’t ridden a bike in ten-or-twenty years, but oh their thumbs are still strong. And they know how to use those bells. They ring at every pedestrian who steps within a meter of the cycle path, jangle at falling leaves or slight curves in the road, clang at any infraction they perceive in their fellow cyclists. Don’t you love a new convert?

To me, it feels like a few herds of buffalo have joined the antelopes, alongside a parade of elephants, giraffes, and the occasional flamingo — and we’ve all been crushed together onto the goat path. For several miles. It’s cumbersome, hilarious, and even joyous: and as I surrender to this unwieldy commuting congregation, I realise I’m being converted, too.

One Christian author says: the spiritual journey is “always personal but never private”. It’s more “us” than me. I feel that so keenly in this pack – we’re held together as we amble along the narrow path, and then there’s the turn onto London Bridge and for a blessèd 300 meters, we race and expand into width and length, height and depth: love surpassing understanding, before we come back together in freedom with all the people on the other side of the river.

And all of it is the journey. Not so much towards God, because, whether buffalo or flamingo, I believe we’re already in God: in whom we live and move and have our being.

“The Best Definition of Heaven” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 15 September 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I am a shameless eavesdropper. Partly because I’ve got good hearing. Partly because I’m just plain nosey. But mostly because I’m genuinely interested in human beings. We are fascinating creatures.

And you can learn so much about us just by listening to what’s happening around you.

For example, I ran by a woman in Greenwich the other day, and I heard her say into her phone: “Why, Linda, why? Why did we let that happen, Linda?” (I thought, Lord, we’ve all been Linda).

Another day last week, two guys were getting off the train, and one said to the other: “They’re all being idiots! Every last one of them. And that’s exactly what I explained to Helen in one of my many emails”. God bless Helen. We’ve all been there, too.

Listening to people isn’t just a hobby of mine, it’s a calling. It’s what makes me a decent evangelist. Now I know – “evangelist” is a weird word with a complicated history. I remember walking in a Gay Pride parade in uni and being yelled at by so-called evangelists with Bible-verse placards, screeching that we would burn in hell.

For me, being an evangelist is the exact opposite of that kind of spiritual abuse. It’s listening for the good in the world, the kindness in people, the light shimmering through. When I notice those things and speak about those things, I can feel God moving.

In August I was at the Edinburgh Fringe interviewing stand-up-comics for my podcast, and I joined a group of Methodist evangelists at the Festival. Together we rolled a sofa-on-wheels up and down the Royal Mile and invited strangers to sit down and share a time when they were lost in wonder.

I thought we’d get a few extraverted-takers, but all week long, hundreds of people queued-up to be listened to, to sit down and tell stories – of falling in love, hearing music, losing a child or parent, seeing stars and signs and sensing the spirituality running through everything.

It was a sofa of miracles and I could have stayed there forever.

At one point, an elderly woman walked by. She was clearly caught up in the energy of the crowds, the thousands of Festival pilgrims. And I heard her whisper to herself: “My God! Everyone’s here.” I’m so glad I was eavesdropping, because honestly, that might be the best definition of heaven I’ve ever heard.

“My God! Everyone’s here!” In my opinion, that old woman was a true evangelist: listening for and speaking out the joy of human life and the goodness of God.

“Watch the horizon” – a BBC Pause for Thought

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

School’s back in, which got me thinking about the only time I ever did organised sport. Aged fourteen, I joined the high-school cross-country team. And I discovered a love of running — even if I didn’t love our coach, who stood on the sidelines and bellowed at us like a drill sergeant. Despite his mansplaining, though, I still remember one thing he taught me. “Hall!” he’d squawk — he only ever used our surnames. “Hall! Stop watching your feet! Look up and watch the horizon!”

Thirty-six years later, I still practise that advice. Lift up your eyes from your socks to the skies: it opens up your body, and helps your spirit rise.

I heard someone say: in London, it’s only tourists who look up. The rest of us locals keep our eyes glued to the pavement. That’s me: head down, rushing to a meeting, running for the bus. And I forget that the best stuff often is not at street level, but a storey or two up — architectural beauty, faded adverts for old shops, peregrine falcons nesting atop the Houses of Parliament.

And you don’t have to be in a city to know that “up” is interesting. Ask any kid lying on their back under a tree, watching autumn leaves fall.

In Christian worship, there’s an ancient ritual called Holy Communion — we eat bread and drink wine together to remember that Jesus did the same thing 2000 years ago with his friends. But it’s not just a memory. When we share Holy Communion we believe Jesus is actually present at the table now, coming to us as a friend now.

One of the first lines of the ritual is “sursum corda”. Sounds like a Harry Potter spell, but it’s Latin from a second-century Christian prayer. “Sursum corda” is translated “Lift up your hearts” – but the Latin literally means: Up, hearts! Or Hearts up!

I love that. I need that. Because I get stalled out sometimes — my outlook stuck on the pavement, my attitude stuck in my anxious head.

But Up hearts! It breaks me out of the gridlock. Not to ignore the challenges of life, but to catch sight of a different dimension of life filtering through those challenges.

Up hearts! Thanks to the advice of my high-school running coach, and the wisdom of Jesus, my life coach, I’m learning to to lift my self, my soul, my wholehearted life to the horizon — and to trust that God, the divine friend, is on the way.

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.