family

“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.

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,

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.