faith

Spiritual Mudlarkers – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 7 April 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I’m lucky to live just a few steps from the Thames Path – which for me, as a runner, is absolute heaven. Most days I unwind by covering some mileage between Tower Bridge and Greenwich.  

My favourite runs are when the tide’s out: when the edges of the riverbed are uncovered. I love watching people search the shore for treasure.  

It reminds me of childhood beach holidays, when I’d watch ordinary-explorers scanning their metal-detectors over the sand. I’d wonder what they expected to find – old pirate’s gold finally washed ashore? I’d only ever dug up bottle-tops and beer-cans. 

But on the shore of the Thames, a stone-turned-over could reveal actual treasure: a Victorian fork, a medieval ring, a rooftile from the Great Fire, maybe even a Roman jewel. Scavenging remnants from this river even has a special name. Mudlarking: scouring the debris and dirt for a glint of glory. 

I believe human-beings are spiritual mudlarkers. Religious or not, we’re on an elemental search: for hope in the midst of despair, rest in weariness, guidance in uncertainty. Maybe we still haven’t found what we’re looking for; maybe we’re not even sure what we’re looking for.  

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone finds – and then sells everything to buy that field. 

I get that, because I’m a mudlarker: scanning my spiritual-metal-detector over the ground of life, in search of that invaluable Something More. I feel like St Augustine, who prayed “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless ‘til they find their rest in you.” His prayer’s been a treasure for me since I found it in dusty book, 1600 years old.

My husband and I just finished a wonderful BBC series called Detectorists. Written and directed by MacKenzie Crook, who stars alongside Toby Jones, it’s television gold. Each episode opens with a lyric sung by Johnny Flynn: “Will you search the loamy earth for me, climb through the briar and bramble? I will be your treasure: I’m waiting for you”. 

Sometimes, I think, we’re in spiritual-search-mode: we’re actively looking for wisdom, for God, for treasure, and that’s important. But when I hear Jesus and Johnny Flynn – I remember that we’re not only searchers; in my opinion we’re also the treasure being searched for.

And I believe God, the Great Mudlarker, has already found us. And has sold everything God has so we can feel the earthly, heavenly joy of being found. 

Conversations About a Dog Collar – a BBC Pause for Thought

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Here’s the text for the 31 March 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

St. Patrick’s Day was a fortnight ago, but I still have memories of childhood warnings: “if you don’t wear green, leprechauns will sneak up and pinch you!”

I’ve not had any leprechaun-issues lately, but I sometimes wear a piece-of-clothing that does attract attention. My clergy dog-collar – the white-strip-of-plastic around my neck that announces: “I’m a minister; come talk to me!”

And people do. I can’t tell you the number of women and men who’ve sidled up to me, with suggestive grins, and whispered: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I guess we all have our types.

What I don’t love about wearing my collar is how people tidy themselves up around me, in false ways. Someone will cuss, for example, then apologise. I’m like, “Please. It doesn’t bother me. Jesus cusses in the Bible, so just talk like you talk”.

What I do love about wearing my collar is how strangers sometimes trust me with what-they’re-going-through. Their big questions about love, tragedy, life’s purpose. On the train recently someone asked me: does everything happen for a reason? I said: I think so, but the reason’s not always God: sometimes it’s a war-mongering dictator or the simple-fact that we humans can occasionally be muppets.

In addition to being a Christian minister, I love being a member of the 12-step-addiction-recovery-community. Together we wrestle with life’s challenges. As people of many faiths and none, we search for a sober spirituality. In Alcoholics-Anonymous, I don’t wear my dog-collar. I’m there as an addict-among-addicts, in need of help as much as I offer it.

The wisdom of 12-step-community says that our problem isn’t merely the stuff we’re addicted to – be it alcohol, edibles, porn, sex, shopping, our social-media-feed. Our problem is actually much deeper: it’s a spiritual problem, we believe, and to be healed, we need a spiritual solution: God, a Higher-Power.

But the genius of 12-step-community is that no specific-higher-power is mandated. We’re invited to discover the God-of-our-own-understanding, who might be found in Church or Sea-Swimming or Science or Solitude – or all of the above.

The only strong suggestion I’d offer for that divine treasure hunt, whether we’re addicts or not, is to choose a higher-power who isn’t an Old-Jackass, or a Violent-Tyrant, or a Sneaky-Leprechaun – because Lord knows those kinds of false-gods never helped anybody get free.

And if you’re searching for a loving, freeing God – but haven’t found them yet – don’t worry, you’re very welcome to borrow mine, for as long as you need.

New Every Morning – a BBC Pause for Thought

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

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Last Christmas I visited my family in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. My sister Brooke said: “Trey, my Christmas present for you this year is: we’re going on a pilgrimage together ­­– to the tattoo parlor.”

Brooke is a tattoo veteran: it was her fifth time getting inked. I, however, was a virgin: under-the-needle for my very first time – though I hear once you start, you can’t stop.

I almost got tattoed at uni. Over the course of one term, I came out as gay, had a beautifully-weird God-encounter, and ­– despite my parents’ protests­ – I swerved from reading medicine to reading theology. I wanted to celebrate all that ­– but I couldn’t figure out a tattoo that’d do the trick. I thought maybe a cross, and a man-breaking-free-from-chains, and a rainbow flag, and a bible verse.

But that all felt a bit much, so I didn’t go through with it. Not then nor during any of the other rites of passage over the next three decades: kissing a boy for the first time, getting ordained, getting married (not to the first boy I kissed), getting sober, moving to Britain, and on and on.

I turn fifty this year. And Brooke said, “it’s time for your tattoo, and we’re going together”.

She celebrated 12 years cancer-free by getting a lyric inked on her arm ­– “measure in love” ­ from the musical RENT.

I decided on three different words, now permanent on my wrist:

new every morning

It’s a mantra I started praying when I got sober. A clue that the best life is in the present moment. “One day at a time” we say in 12-step-recovery. New every morning, new every minute, new every single breath.

It’s also part of a Bible verse that reads: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end: they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O God.”

That is a statement of trust … and especially radical because it’s in the biblical book of Lamentations, this long-list of personal suffering, global injustice, the break-down of integrity. Lamentations was inked 2600 years ago but still rings true today. Basically: Things are royally messed up, God, but new every morning is your love.

Given my personal tendency to mess up, I need that assurance. I wake up, I clean my teeth, I see my tattoo and I remember – not only that I am new every morning, but, more importantly, I believe, God’s love is. Permanent, eternal, tattooed onto my skin, into my heart. Inscribed forever into the life of every single thing.

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.

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.