Miracles: What are they and do they happen?

I have been sharing a number of theological papers that I have written. This is a copy of my notes for a discussion that I took part in recently on the award-winning BBC radio programme ‘All Things Considered’.

What is a miracle?

The real difficulty in considering the possibility of miracles occurring is the difficulty of defining precisely what they are. The philosopher David Hume famously defined miracles as an event that breaks the laws of nature. But more things are possible and more things occur than our present understanding of the regularities of nature allows. After all, our experience of the laws of nature are regularly being revised. Developments in quantum physics, for example, have brought this sharply to mind. Quantum physics is showing scientists a world that is more unusual, indeterminate, and organic. It has even been argued that quantum physics is revealing a world that is more spiritual than we previously realised.

So, instead of breaking the laws of nature, perhaps we could define a miracle as something remarkable or spectacular. Some liberal theologians, such as Marcus Borg, actually refuse to use the word miracles and simply talk about “the spectacular”. Borg rejects supernatural interventions by God who is “out there” and instead talks about the God at the heart of spectacular in the world. The problem with that, though, is that there are many occurrences that we wouldn’t define as miracles, but they are still remarkable and spectacular – the birth of a child, medical procedures (like radiotherapy), and the sun rising up each morning.

So, defining what is a miracle is not as simple as it may first appear, and philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars have long recognised the complexity of that seemingly basic question.

What about the miracles in the Bible?

The biblical world was a time when accounts of the remarkable and miraculous were far more common than they are today and many things that would have been considered miracles in the past may no longer seen that way today. But we certainly can’t dismiss or explain away the numerous miracles in the Bible by asserting that fact.

A number of the Old Testament miracles hold their own particular problems and difficulties in that they call into question God’s own character. For example, in the book of Exodus the great miracle known as the parting of the Red Sea– why would God perform a miracle that meant the drowning hundreds of Egyptian people? In response to such miracles, some theologians talk about “divine consistency”, a phrase made famous by Jean Dominic Crossan. Divine consistency affirms that we can only accept miracles if it is consistent with God’s loving nature.

In the New Testament, the gospels record 37 miracles of Jesus. Of these, 28 of them are miracles of healing, with God making people whole in mind and body. These miracles flow from Jesus’s compassion and love. Many theologians, whether liberal or more traditional, have little problem accepting that Jesus performed paranormal healings. He was certainly known as a great healer and exorcist, and so his healing cannot simply be explained in psychosomatic terms. But nine miracles involved Jesus has power over nature. So, what about walking on the water? Or silencing the storm? Or multiplying loaves and fish? Or changing water into the wine? It is not as easy to decide on the historicity of these miracles.

Some theologians would suggest that the miracle stories are metaphorical or symbolic. Even Jesus himself, of course, would have recognised that his miraculous deeds were symbolic – John’s gospel even refers to miracles as “signs”. In other words, there is deep meaning in the stories of Jesus’s miracles. So, the water into wine at the beginning of his ministry is symbolic of the new life he brings, while the calming of the storm is symbolic of God’s power over the waters of chaos and how he can calm the storms of our lives. The reality is, though, that we don’t know whether the nature miracles are literal or purely symbolic – or indeed a combination of both. What we do know, though, is that God’s power was recognised as present in Jesus in remarkable ways and God’s presence was identified in both his words and actions.

What about the miracles of St David, the Patron Saint of Wales?

St David lived in the sixth century, but most of the stories of his life or taken from Buchedd Dewi, written by Rhygafarch in the 11th century. So, that’s over 500 years after David’s death. It would be as if I was writing a history of Henry VIII with nothing but word-of-mouth and a few dusty documents found in a Cathedral archive. Many modern historians believe Rhygafarch exaggerated many of his stories, as he was trying to argue for some independence for the Welsh church.

The best known miracle of St David was when he was preaching in the middle of a crowd in the village of Llandewi Brefi. The ground beneath his feet rose up as he preached, allowing everyone to hear him, and a white dove flew down onto his shoulder. Perhaps this may have happened exactly as it was recorded, but perhaps people 1500 years ago simply had a very different way of describing things. Perhaps they were so inspired by this saintly man’s words that those present were saying things like “and it was as if the ground rose up beneath him and his words touched my soul and it was as if God settled on this man like a white dove”. Over the centuries that may have become “the ground did rise up beneath him and a white dove did land on his shoulder”. Either way, such descriptions are actually saying are that David was an inspirational and spiritual man, whether the miracle happened literally or not, and so our belief in the historicity of the miracle shouldn’t take away from what this remarkable man represents to us as Christians today or, indeed, as a nation.

Do miracles still occur?

The question of whether miracles still occur today brings us back to the question of what a miracle actually is. The theologian Keith Ward offers a useful definition of a miracle: “an extraordinary manifestation of spiritual power”. The reality is that unusual and extraordinary occurrences do happen in our world and there are sometimes no scientific explanation for those. If, as Christians, we believe in the Holy Spirit, then it follows that the Spirit can exert some influence on the world. After all, God is a personal reality to Christians and so he manifests himself in unique and distinctly personal ways.

So, Keith Ward suggests that we don’t view the universe as a machine, but rather we view it more like a body. Bodies, after all, do have reliable regularities, but we can also make decisions to do things and thus bodies are subject to personal action. Following this reasoning, the universe also has rigid definite laws, but, for reasons often unknown to us, God’s personal actions break into our world in some way or other. In other words, spectacular and extraordinary events can occur and, when they do, there are times when we may have to revise our understanding of the laws of nature. Miracles, then, could be seen as redefinitions of the laws of nature, rather than transgressions of it.

Is it possible or desirable to prove miracles?

I’ve always loved mystery. As a child I was obsessed with a book I had which detailed great unsolved mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster, the Bermuda triangle, the yeti, and UFOs. When I was a child, I thought like a child, but when I grew up, I left the mystery of conspiracy theories behind. I’m now more interested in the general mystery and miracle of life. In the breath-taking world in which we live we understand some things so well, but other things completely elude us. I’m not talking about the God of the gaps, as Fredrich Nietzche put it, where God is inserted wherever we don’t understand things. I’m talking about something far more spectacular and mysterious than that – questions of existence, wonder, sacrifice, truth, beauty, and love. And, however we define miracles, it is here where the miraculous resides – the spectacular, the extraordinary, the spiritual. As such, proving miracles is less important than welcoming the great mystery of life and showing openness and gratitude for how God’s power works in the everyday and ultimately transforms lives.

How do you respond to those who doubt miracles?

From a theological point of view, Christians do not regard God as a controlling, dictatorial superbeing, who makes arbitrary decisions about when and where not to intervene in our affairs. But neither do we hold that he is detached from humankind or dispassionate about our suffering. Rather, he is involved with the world and is able to transform it powerfully.

How God transforms the world, though, is a question that theologians have discussed for many centuries. For me, God transforms the world subtly – he leads, coaxes, inspires, persuades, and cajoles. This means his miracles happen every day in all sorts of ways. It’s not always huge spectacular things – sometimes it’s simply a smile or a kind word that lifts someone’s heart and sometimes it’s that deep sense of hope and peace that breaks into our troubled lives. As Jewish theologian Harold Kushner put it: “God’s job is not to make sick people healthy – that’s the doctor’s job. God’s job is to make sick people brave”.

And so God is not some dictator or superman who imposes his will from outside the world, but God is already in the world, inhabiting every atom of the universe, interacting into mingling with the laws and patterns of nature.

What about when people pray for miracles that don’t occur?

In the film Lourdes [2009], a wheelchair-bound young woman experiences a magnificent healing at Lourdes, a place famous for its miracles. She worships God and celebrates with joy. The problem is that all the other people with disabilities who are on the same pilgrimage question why this happened to her and not them. This starts to cause all kinds of difficulties and arguments within the group. Why did my miracle not occur? Why did her miracle occur because she’s clearly less pious and devout than I am?

At the centre of the Christian response to this is the great unknown. When we face the great unknown, then we have to really think about what we do know. Do we know God is in a healing miracle? Not for certain, but with God all things are possible, so possibly. Do we know God is in the suffering? Absolutely. After all, miracles aren’t God’s superpower. Love is God’s superpower. God’s love is far more powerful for transformation than random supernatural interventions. I’ve seen evidence of God’s love completely transforming people, events, and circumstances. That, in itself, could be seen as miraculous.

And so I have an open mind about supernatural, unexplained events, and I have an open mind about God’s involvement in those happenings. But what I do know that I have seen the miraculous happen in people’s lives through love, compassion, care, justice, peace, and hope. God is fully immersed in this world and, because we know he knows what it’s like to suffer on the cross, he’s also fully immersed in our pains and suffering. He breathes hope, life, and light into the most awful and traumatic situations. As one of my favourite sayings puts it: “sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes God calms the sailor”.

Thought for the Day: Priorities and Ministry

This is a version of a sermon I gave at a conference for ministry in the Church in Wales, where we were looking forward with hope and creative vision to the future.

There is so much wonderful Christian ministry taking place in communities across Wales. Yet the workers in the field are few and resources are limited, so continuing to bring God’s light, life, and love to people and places across Wales requires difficult decisions – we have to ensure our prioritising is intentional, considered, and wise. The pandemic lockdowns led so many of us to realign previously-skewed priorities, as we zoomed isolated loved ones and embraced a new-found appreciation of the beauty of the outdoors. In a similar way, the rapidly-changing Wales of today is challenging us to realign our concerns and priorities and to reconsider what ministry and service entails.

According to business leader Stephen Covey, it is not hard work, good luck, or shrewd human relations that primarily leads to success. Rather, the one denominator that successful people share is prioritising well. As German philosopher Goethe put it: “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least”. But most clergy will tell you how living that out is no easy task – after all, it’s so difficult to decipher what matters most and what matters least. From my own recent parish experience, I know all too well that the stresses of service and the strains of selecting what needs to be prioritised can wear clerics down. Recently, I watched a video of the sermon by someone who was stepping down as vicar in his church because of the huge strain ministry was exerting on his, and his family’s, wellbeing. At the beginning of the sermon, as he stood in the pulpit, he rolled up the sleeves of his cassock and starts to juggle more and more apples to illustrate the difficulty of juggling duties and expectations. Once the apples had fallen and were rolling around the aisles, he related his sermon to the difficult decision he’d made to stop juggling all the demands of service and to prioritise wellbeing.

Prioritising is certainly at the heart of contemporary ministry and mission. We are facing challenges that exceed those of previous generations – an increasingly secular society, fewer vocations, expensive upkeep of church buildings, a marked difference in generational viewpoints, social and economic injustice, political polarisation, and cultural divisions. And the reality is that we don’t have the time, resource, or energy to do everything we want to do. This urgent challenge of working out priorities, though, is not a new challenge. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah chastising his fellow Judeans for their skewed priorities (cf. Jeremiah 7:21-28). The people of Judah were confronted with war, destruction, and exile. Jeremiah holds up a mirror to his compatriots and tells them: “you’re getting your priorities all wrong”. He says that their sacrifices and worship mean nothing if their lives don’t reflect the fact that they are God’s people. He urges them to realign their priorities away from greed, idolatry, and false prophets and to turn towards obedience to God’s commandments.

In fact, the call to prioritise obedience comes up again and again in the Old Testament and invariably it’s related directly to God’s commandments. There’s certainly something there we can take into our own lives and ministries. Our call is to take all the duties and passions that we juggle in our daily lives – to take our hearts that are burning for justice and compassion, to take our enthusiasm for sharing the good news of Jesus’s life, to take our need to look after our own mental well-being, to take our need for cherishing the life-giving tonic of friends and family, to take our desires and hopes and needs – and to consider them in light of that call to obey his commands. And, as Christians, Jesus was unequivocal about what those commands were. All the commandments are summed up in loving God and loving neighbour – caru Duw a charu cymydog. And so all our priorities need to be assessed in light of those two directives. Never before have two commands been so simple and straightforward. Never before have two commands been so demanding and difficult.

When I was a curate, I remember confidently reading Jesus’s words at a service at a care home: ‘The greatest commandment is love God with all your heart, your mind, and your soul; and the second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself’.  Without warning, an elderly woman at the back of the room suddenly shouted: ‘I don’t love my neighbour’. I was left speechless. I looked at the care assistants, they looked at me.  But the moment of silence gave the woman the opportunity to add: ‘and, listen ’ere vicar, if you knew her, you wouldn’t love her either’.

Those words from the elderly resident have remained etched on my heart long after she has departed this earth – listen ’ere vicar, if you knew her, you wouldn’t love her either – they have forcefully brought home to me how onerous and ominous is the seemingly simple command to love. Easy to preach, difficult to live. After all, the commands to love God and love neighbour are not some fanciful, sweetly-saccharin idealistic objectives. They are the foundations of all we do. Jeremiah and his contemporaries had 613 commandments to ensure purity and justice. The Welsh Government has the 56-page Future Generations Act to ensure all public decisions are made in light of social, cultural, environmental and economic well-being. But we Christians simply have four words. Love God – Love Neighbour. These commands are the heartbeat of our ministry, our mission, and our faith.

So that’s the challenge that hovers over all our mission and ministry. How do these new priorities that we need to decide upon in the coming months and years align with the commands to love God and love neighbour? They are the touchstone, the yardstick, of all our service. They are what reassure us that we build on rock and not sand; they are what guarantee us that we are with him and not against him. So, whether we are considering our dioceses, our churches, our personal ministries, our families, our own well-being, there are only two priorities that must underpin and sustain us. All other priorities are simply building blocks to construct on those firm foundations – caru Duw, caru cymydog – love God, love neighbour.

A Christian response to the cost of living crisis (Ministry Blog Series – 6)

I have been sharing a number of theological papers on ministry that I have written. This is a copy of my notes for a discussion that I took part in recently with Bishop Barry Morgan (former Archbishop of Wales) and Matt Batten (comms officer for Archbishop Andy John’s Food and Fuel campaign) on the theological challenge that the cost of living crisis poses.

What is the role churches should play in addressing questions about poverty and justice?

The churches need to be playing an absolutely central role in addressing the challenge of poverty and justice. To abandon those experiencing financial hardship is to abandon the gospel. Poverty robs people of dignity and value and so the challenge of those who are “struggling to make ends meet” is central to our faith.

Concern for the well-being of others arises naturally out of biblical theology and our understanding of the Gospel, as does a desire to see the vulnerable and needy provided for and protected. At the heart of God’s character and his relationship with his world is care and concern for the poor – we see this in the teachings of the Torah, the prophetic tradition of Amos, Isaiah, and Micah, the ministry and teaching of Jesus, and the life of the early Church.

It is therefore outrageous that so many children in the UK, the sixth largest economy in the world, are living in poverty and that families are dependent on foodbanks, even those people who are in employment. While the cost of living crisis will impact each and every one of us differently, Christians cannot be silent while so many experience the crisis in an acute way, facing poverty or destitution.

So the challenge to the churches in facing this unacceptable situation, with child poverty on the increase and families having to make choices of eating or heating, is absolutely clear. But, of course, it’s not just about being hungry or being cold. Often the suffering of poverty is hidden from us. In the past few months, the numbers of those suffering mental ill health has soared, even amongst people who were previously stable, as individuals face anxiety, worry, and often a sense of shame at their struggles. Economic poverty has a devastating impact in a plethora of different ways on the lives of both individuals and communities.

How do you react to the statement that God helps those who help themselves?

The statement “God helps those who help themselves” is completely alien to a theologically-literate faith. In the context of poverty and justice, there is certainly nothing biblical about that statement. In the book of Genesis, God looks at his creation and sees it as tov me’od (“very good”). Thus, God’s intention for this creation is that there should be no shortages. We are, after all, gifted with more than sufficient provisions to meet our physical needs. So, Levitical and Deuteronomical laws ensure care for the vulnerable and marginalised in society, while Sabbath and Jubilee pronouncements lead to debts being regularly cancelled. Later in the Old Testament, the prophets rage against the injustices of the day and the structures of their society. So the expectation is certainly not that we leave people to fight their own individual struggles, but rather that we ourselves should rage against today’s injustices and ensure that we provide for those on the losing side of the inequality divide. Certainly that’s what the early church did – the book of Acts details the church of the disciples dedicating time and resources to meet the immediate needs of those struggling in their communities.

It is clear in scripture that poverty contradicts the will of God, and so Christians need to ensure that we nurture communities where no person is left behind, where no child goes to school on an empty stomach, where no parent has to make a choice between feeding their children and feeding themselves, where no young person has to eat raw food because using their hob is too expensive, and where no pensioner has to choose to sit in a cold and damp room just so they can afford their daily meals.

How can we engage with others to work towards a fairer society?

Generosity is at the heart of working towards a fairer society. St Paul urges generosity in his epistles and we Christians should be encouraging and showcasing generosity in our churches. Archbishop Andy John recently invited churches to be “practitioners of generosity”, urging every congregation to donate 10 boxes of basics items for the foodbank distribution network during Advent. The fact foodbanks and other ventures like pantries need to exist in twenty-first century Wales is appalling, but they do exist and the need is increasing in light of the cost of living crisis. So we need to be generous in our giving – donating food to foodbanks, but also donating money to charities. After all, the whole charity sector is feeling the effects of economic instability, with donations to charities going down considerably because people need their money for food and fuel.

We also might consider generosity in terms of opening churches and church halls as warm spaces for those struggling to heat their homes. This, of course, relies on the church being able to pay its own gas and electric bills – and that’s no longer a given. But we can still as churches and Christians join forces with other public bodies or charities to work together to continue reaching out and assisting.

Is it possible to be ambivalent or non-committal about politics and faith?

Being ambivalent or non-committal about politics and faith is not an option for Christians. The arc of the biblical narrative is for justice, fairness and equality – and these are political matters. From the outset of the creation narratives, we hear that God creates humanity in his own image. That may only be one little verse in the Bible, but its implications are profound. If all people reflect God’s image, then we are duty bound to care for one another. Poverty robs people of what God intended for them; it inverts God’s desires for his creation.

No wonder Jesus tells us that we see God himself in the face of the poor. ‘Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me’, he says in Matthew 25. But the real challenge is what he says a few verses later, when he states: ‘Truly, I tell you, whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me’. In other words, it’s not just about what we do for others, it’s also about what we’re not doing for others. That’s a huge challenge for our commitment to politics, social action, and justice. God is present in people who are struggling, financially or otherwise, and, if we Christians are not there standing alongside them offering hope, warmth, and light, then we are not living as Jesus wanted us to and, of course, we we are not living as Jesus did. Not only was Jesus’s teaching unequivocal about what we ought to do with our wealth and resources, but he himself modelled a life of selfless solidarity with the marginalized of his day.

And so, in light of the biblical call for justice and in light of Jesus’s life and teaching, Christians can’t be ambivalent when surveys are showing one in seven adults in the UK had skipped meals or routinely gone without food, when the number of workers on zero–hours contracts in the UK have increased fivefold in 10 years, and when we hear dreadful stories about people having to eat pet food or trying to heat food on radiators.

Where do things like prayer and fasting sit within a prophetic and radical engagement with the world?

We sometimes feel helpless when we face the problems we see in our society. But our faith is all about hope. And that’s where, for me, prayer and spiritual exercises collide beautifully with prophetic and radical engagement with our world. As Christians we believe that God is at work in the world and so our prayers matter. They matter objectively, but they also matter subjectively. Desmond Tutu described prayer like sitting in front of a warm fire. Just as we become warmed ourselves as sit in the light and heat of the fire, time spent resting in God’s love makes us more loving ourselves.

So prayer strengthens us and inspires us to be God’s hands and feet and voice in the world. There’s a wonderful African proverb: “when you pray, move your feet”. And there’s something profound about that – prayer is essential, but remaining on our knees is not an option. Pope Francis talked about prayer by stating: “you pray that the hungry will be fed, then you get off your knees and you feed the hungry – that’s how prayer works”.

Again, we can look at the model of Jesus. It’s no coincidence that Jesus began his ministry by quoting the Jubilee passage in the book of Isaiah “the spirit of the Lord, is upon me, because he has sent me to proclaim good news for the poor”. But Jesus’s life was not one that was only marked by social action, just as his life wasn’t only marked by prayer. Jesus’s life was a balance between prayer and action – we could call it contemplative action. We need to embrace that beautiful balance in our lives.

With news that the 2021 census results show that less than half of the UK population identify as Christian, do people care or even believe that the church is the voice of the marginalised?

I think perhaps that question starts in the wrong place. Rowan Williams writes that “God did not make us human to become Christian, but he made us Christian to become more human”. In other words, what matters is not whether people care or believe that we Christians are the voice of the marginalised, but rather that the Spirit does inspire us to become the voice of the marginalised. Reaching out in compassion and love to our brothers and sisters who are vulnerable and struggling financially is what becoming more human is all about. It is also what God is all about – he is, after all, the God of justice.

The reality is that Christians do so much in local communities to assist those who are struggling, whether financially or otherwise. According to a recent survey, Christians who attend church regularly are more likely to be taught and experience generosity in their own lives than non-Christians. The poll found that 79 percent of Christians who practice their faith said they had been taught the importance of generosity, while only 58 percent of non-Christians said the same. And so it’s little wonder that church communities across Wales, as elsewhere, are becoming hubs for generous activity in the cost of living crisis, whether as foodbanks or warm spaces.

So it doesn’t matter if people outside the church see us as the voice of the marginalised – it matters that we are. It is, after all, our duty and calling to reach out to the marginalised and vulnerable, to empower and enable people, and to ensure power balances are redressed.

What is Ecumenism? Seven reasons churches must work together (Ministry Blog Series – 5)

In a change from my normal blog posts, I have been sharing a number of theological papers on ministry that I have written down the years, including for the Doctrinal Commission of the Church in Wales . My good friend and colleague Revd Siôn Brynach has recently been appointed Chief Executive of CYTUN (Churches Together in Wales) and so I thought this was a good time to share a paper I wrote recently about the future of ecumenism in Wales.

Ecumenism has changed. In my doctoral thesis, I explored ecumenism in the 1960s and many then were predicting the future to be a steady march to Christian unity. By the time I set up the Welsh National Centre for Ecumenical Studies with Dr Noel Davies in the 1990s, it was dawning on us that this was not inevitable – but there was still a feeling that it was good for both the Church and society that denominations work together. By today, we live in a changed world, with very different priorities, challenges, and hopes from even a generation ago. And so, in light of these, we need to reflect upon seven points in considering the future of ecumenism in Wales:

1. Ecumenism is absolutely necessary to the future of our faith.

We live in a society that is obsessed with choice. But in this I believe we don’t have a choice. Christians working together is not a preference for us to consider. For the Church to survive and thrive, for the Church to be a gift to Welsh society, this is our only option. As the Welsh football logo puts it – Together Stronger. After all, we pray to “our father”, not “my father” – we are all one family in Christ. It is facing the future together that we can become a true blessing, inspiration, and resource to the people of Wales.

2. Ecumenism in the future faces a different reality.

In the past we have, quite rightly, argued that ecumenism is absolutely necessary because it is a biblical and theological imperative. But, in today’s world, it is also absolutely necessary because of how the younger generations view us. Almost all non-Christians (young and old), and even a good majority of the younger Christians, express confusion and disbelief that we don’t work together. Many young people today don’t know what the word “ecumenism” is, but my experience of schools and universities show me that, when they talk of Christianity, they’re talking of ecumenism. Valuing and cherishing our unique traditions is an important part of being in this ecumenical family, but the fact that the world doesn’t see us as different is both a huge challenge and a liberating blessing.

3. The future of ecumenism is rooted in the community.

Good ecumenism grows from grassroots outwards – it evolves from practical action in our communities. Becoming a holy ‘talking shop’ alienates and divides. Ecumenism must make a very real and practical difference. In my experience as a parish priest and as someone who has trained ordained and lay ministers of various denominations, ecumenism comes alive when it is real people coming together to live out God’s love in their local community – to help refugees, to assist those struggling financially, to maintain foodbanks, to ensure environmental initiatives flourish, or to protest against discrimination and inequality.

4. The future of ecumenism is at the centre of public life.

It is only together that we can truly be at the heart of the public square and the public life of Wales. Recently I taught a Masters course for chaplains of various denominations, and the chaplains (health, military, school & University) were consistent in telling me that, aside from a small dissenting minority, those in our secular institutions and organisations still look to us for spiritual, pastoral, and moral leadership. In Wales, we are a country of two principal languages and a flourishing Welsh government. The ecumenical presence needs, therefore, to prioritise relationship-building and continue to be embedded in Welsh life (in both the Welsh and English medium) as a resource and an inspiration – in the Senedd, in schools, in the health service, in the media, in city centres, in rural workplaces, and so on.

5. The future of ecumenism cannot ignore the digital.

Both the local community and the wider society are central to ecumenism, but digital communities and communication are also of paramount importance. Churches and denominations cannot consign themselves to ecclesial ghettos, but need to work together to reach out to our digital world. I was delighted to speak to the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland trustees recently about the hugely successful podchurch venture that my church pioneered during the pandemic. Podchurch, which released worship that was centred on climate change, racial justice, disability, refugees, and many more issues, was listened to across the denominational spectrum and was able to inspire so many beyond my own tradition.

6. The future of ecumenism needs to be open to inter-faith friendship

Ecumenism emphasises our unity in Christ, but it also recognises our common humanity with our brothers and sisters in other faiths. This leads to fruitful dialogue and effective action. Not that ecumenism and interfaith work should be confused – in the early 2000s I resisted pressure to make the Welsh National Centre for Ecumenical Studies the “Welsh National Centre for Inter Faith Studies”. It is only because churches come together in ecumenism to celebrate both their similarities and differences that we can have something unique and inspiring to contribute to inter-faith dialogue and action.

7. The future of ecumenism is grounded in hope.

So many people in Wales have lost their attachment to institutional religion. But this need not lead us to lose heart. Those of us championing ecumenism can build on two things:

a) The latest studies reveal that spirituality is still important in people’s lives. The work of theologians such as Gordon Lynch and Charles Taylor have shown that people’s spirituality is simply taking a new form – in film and music, or in exercise and yoga, or in football and other sports, or even during public grief, as was shown after the death Queen Elizabeth II, when places of worship were visited for prayer and for the signing of books of condolences. Together churches can consider the implication of this popular spirituality and then work to provide moments of uplifting transcendence for a society hungry for connection.

b) As well as the presence of an innate spirituality, the respect for the tireless work of the churches for social justice is also increasing. The impact that ecumenical initiatives have had in Wales in recent years has shown this, both at a local level, with life-transforming ecumenical projects like Llanfair on the Penrhys estate in the Rhondda Valley, and nationally, with inspiring CYTUN work on such important issues as campaigning against poverty, welcoming refugees, and combating climate change.

So, yes, ecumenism has evolved so much in the past decades. But its absolute necessity remains. In a world where there are now so many divisions in areas of politics and identity, we Christians can embody a wonderful unity in diversity to bring hope to our fractured world, as we speak for those with no voice, stand alongside the sidelined, and reveal to the people of Wales that our faith is good news for all.

Thought for the Day: Our Wonky Hearts

In the style of my Lent Book Opening our Lives and Advent Book Real God in the Real World, I will be sharing occasional “thoughts for the day” on various subjects on this blog. Hope you enjoy.

Recently, I’ve been watching the TV series Britannia, about the Roman invasion of Britain. It was filmed on the beautiful stretch of coastline at Llantwit Major in South Wales, so I was inspired to go for a walk there with my family last week. We’d heard there were fossils in the rocks there, so we started searching. My wife suddenly shouted, so we ran over excited to see some ammonite or other. We were disappointed to discover that there was no fossil, but rather she wanted to show us markings on the rock that were shaped like a love heart. Our crestfallen 7-year-old bluntly blurted out: “mum, it doesn’t even look like a heart”. “Just look carefully”, my wife answered, “it’s a wonky heart!”

As I stood on that beach, it dawned on me that all of us have wonky hearts. This is, of course, quite literally true. Our hearts don’t really look like the love hearts that appear on Valentine’s Day cards. Instead, they can appear as a variety of shapes, shapes described by the medical school in the University of Minnesota as elliptical, conical, and trapezoidal. In other words, hearts are wonky.

While this is true physiologically, it is also true emotionally and spiritually. The love that we share with others will always be flawed and imperfect. Our care and compassion for those in need, for those undergoing oppression, for those who are struggling in life, for the environment around us, will always be lacking in some way. Bruce Springsteen once sang “everybody’s got a hungry heart”. But perhaps “everybody’s got a wonky heart” holds far more truth.

Rather than leading us to feel helpless and to feel as if we can never do enough or do things correctly, though, our faith teaches us to accept the limitations of our wonky love and to still strive, the best we can, to live out God’s commands to love those around us. In other words, even our little steps of wonky love matter.

It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking there really is no point doing anything if our hearts are flawed anyway. Recently someone told me that there was not much point cutting down use of their car or making a real effort to recycle. After all, they continued, our own feeble acts are like a drop in the ocean of what is needed. “If only China or the US governments would change their policies;” they concluded, “now that would make a difference”.

For us Christians, though, however seemingly small our good deeds, living out God’s love for the world around us is central to our calling. We certainly can’t do everything, but we can be the change we want to see. After all, this is what Jesus meant when he urged us to “seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness”. We bring in a little of God’s kingdom each time we speak a kind word to a neighbour, each time we make a phone call to a friend who is struggling or lonely, each time we speak out against inequality and injustice, each time we decide to walk rather than use the car, each time we donate to a charity. Our actions matter. They really matter.

So, yes, our hearts are wonky, but they still hold the wonderful potential to make just a little difference in a world that desperately needs love and hope. And the more of us that recognise that fact, the bigger the difference will be. As activist Howard Zinn put it: “small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world”.

Our Challenge this Christmas – Prophet not Profit

This is my first guest blogger on the “Finding Hope, Meaning, Faith, and Compassion” blog. The writer, Gareth Erlandson, is a young Masters student who is training for Anglican ordained ministry. I heard him give the talk below last week and I was personally moved and inspired by it (and not, rest assured, because it namechecks me!). I, therefore, asked him to adapt it into a blog post for publication on this blog. I hope it also inspires you in these weeks running up to Christmas:

When I started teaching about twelve years ago, I shared a house with an old school mate who would drink coffee from a mug emblazoned with the words “Jesus is Coming – Look Busy!” I often think of that mug during Advent – the four weeks running-up to Christmas. We tend to be so busy this time of year, as we supposedly wait in hopeful anticipation for Jesus’ coming – racing around buying presents, eating ourselves to bursting at Christmas meals, rushing from concert to concert. Last week I lost three hours driving around Cardiff on the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree, only for it not to fit in our lounge after all that!

The prophets of the Bible knew what it meant to look forward with hopeful anticipation. In light of their message, we can view the busy run-up to Christmas in a very different way. Rather than preparing materially for Christmas, we can try to take time to prepare ourselves. By doing so, Jesus can challenge us – challenge us to make the old new, to fix the broken, to dispel darkness with light.

But what does it mean to be prophetic? Well, it is certainly nothing to do with crystal balls, wizards, or seeing into the future. Rather, the words and actions of both the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist in the New Testament encourage us to get right personally with God as we await for his arrival, and a large part of that includes our actions. In other words, there is a political and social edge to our call to be prophetic. After all, being a prophet is to call out against everything that is broken in the world. This can be brokenness within ourselves, in our relationships with others, in the community and wider society, and of the environment. The Bible encourages us to recognise this prophetic voice within us (Rom. 12:6) and tells us that, when we use our spiritual gifts to strengthen, encourage, and comfort others (1 Cor. 14:3), we are doing God’s work (1 Pet. 4:10).

I recently heard blogger and author, Trystan Owain Hughes, challenge a group with these “Questions of Love”:

“How do we share God’s love with people?”

“How are we compassionate and kind to the suffering?”

“Are we at peace with others?”

“How do we care for the environment?”

These, to me, could be summarized in one question: “Do we take our political and social responsibilities seriously?” Asking such a question is the start of prophecy, but we also need to listen for God’s answers and this demands time and space. John the Baptist himself is referred to as one “calling in the wilderness”. He takes time out of the hustle and bustle of everyday living to listen to God’s voice and, by doing so, it is God’s message that he proclaims.

Similarly, for us, we must listen out for God’s voice and then proclaim it. Some Christian traditions refer to five basic signs that God is speaking – through scripture, pictures, emotions, physical reactions, or everyday “words of wisdom”. Such signs can appear in our “mind’s eye” but can equally crop up in our everyday lives. But time and space is needed to recognise these signs. We need, in other words, to follow John the Baptist’s example by stepping back from the humdrum in order to hear God’s voice. In doing so, though, we also need to be careful. We only truly know if we’re hearing from God if what we perceive is compatible with God as revealed in Scripture. In other words, are the messages we are hearing leading us to loving actions? After all, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).

We can see numerous examples of prophetic responses to God’s call. One fictional example is in a book of which many of us will be watching filmic versions over the next few weeks. Scrooge’s ghostly visitors in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol act as prophets, leading the miserable miser to transform his own relationships and the lives of the poorest in his society. A more recent and real life example is that of my wife, who was disturbed on a shopping trip by the increasing number of homeless people sleeping on the streets of Cardiff (Wales, UK). Taking some time to reflect on this experience, three words of wisdom came to her – “Greggs the Bakers”. On her next trip into town, Greggs was her first port of call, where she bought a stack of gift cards which she now distributes to the rough sleepers in the city whenever she pops in for a bit of Christmas shopping.

Advent is certainly a time we should be getting excited for Christmas and so that naturally means we are busy – don’t feel guilty about that! But we could also commit to taking just a few extra moments each day to ask God to show us where and how the broken world needs healing. Then, we can take time and space to listen as he answers us. This is how we, like the prophets of the Bible, can help bring light into the world, just as Jesus did 2000 years ago at the first Christmas.

Compassion and the EU Referendum

Having a toddler in your house introduces you to all sorts of strange and colourful TV programmes with some intriguing titles – Twirlywoos, Hey Duggee, Messy goes to Okido, Rastamouse, and the list goes on. My two-year-old’s favourite show, though, is not so new-fangled – it’s the old classic Tom and Jerry. He avidly watches the original series from the 1940s and 1950s. Most Tom and Jerry episodes are the two enemies competing with each other. There are, though, a number of them that see the cat and mouse working together, to overcome obstacles. My son’s very favourite episode is, what he calls, the “baby one”, where the couple join together to care for a little baby who gets into all sorts of scrapes.

At our toddler’s insistence, our household is presently watching that Tom and Jerry episode on a continual loop. The care and compassion shown by the sworn enemies towards a helpless baby has provided a welcome break on our TV screen from the toxic atmosphere of hate and vitriol that the EU Referendum seems to have birthed. So much of the literature I’ve had through my door, not to mention the front pages of newspapers that I walk past in newsagents, are rooted in fear – principally, fear of outsiders who are, it is claimed, coming here to take our jobs, use our health service, and commit heinous crimes. This past week, the bishops of Church in Wales have issued a joint statement announcing their intention to vote to remain in the EU and noting that the emotive language of fear and distrust is overshadowing any meaningful discussion, with immigrants being ‘demonised’ in the debate.

Certainly, the tone of the campaign has denigrated the weakest of our communities, and, in reflecting on Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, those lying on the road to Jericho are not being ignored, but are being actively derided, as hate, divisiveness, and bigotry has been spread in our country. Our challenge as Christians is to model the Good Samaritan, and not to turn our heads to look the other way like the Priest and Levite. Jesus, of course, never referred to the ‘Good’ Samaritan. I find the word ‘good’ to be rather insipid and bland. These days, it’s used when a dog collects a stick you’ve thrown or when a toddler eats his greens – “good boy, good boy”. My own suggestion would be to rechristen the parable as ‘the Compassionate Samaritan’ – here was someone who entered the suffering of his neighbour, treating him as he would a brother or sister.

It is natural to think Jesus himself would act as the Samaritan did in this story – he offers healing and wholeness to those whose wounds he sees and cries he hears. But the incarnation leads us also to see him in the wounded, dying man on the road to Jericho – “truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Jesus enters the suffering of the distressed and depressed. Our call is to recognise him in that suffering – in the eyes of the mother queuing at the Foodbank, the refugee pleading for hospitality, the so-called immigrants who feel unwanted and alienated by the rhetoric of hate; in the eyes of the poor, the disabled, the grieving, the ill. Our role is to see Jesus in each and every person and be ready to offer our own love and care to them, whoever they are.

And yet too often the discussions around whether we leave or stay in the EU have not been about the unique beauty and worth of each person, but have been about what is best for us personally. Such fear and self-centredness was the response of the priest and Levite in this parable. The Compassionate Samaritan didn’t say, “wait there, before I do anything – what’s in this for me?” He didn’t ask the question, “what’s better for me – to keep walking or to stop and help?” He didn’t check whether the beaten body at the side of the road was a different nationality, different gender, different race, different sexuality, than he himself was. Compassion is not about individual satisfaction or personal gain. Neither is it about being comfortable. As Christians, our role in politics is not to ask what is best for us. Rather, we simply need to ask: “what’s the most compassionate thing to do?”

There are undoubtedly Christians on both sides of the debate surrounding the EU Referendum. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, maintains that leaving would harm the poorest in our society, while his predecessor, Archbishop Rowan Williams, and Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales have noted that the EU has led to a “fairer, safer, and cleaner world”. Certainly the benefits it has brought in terms of peace, human rights, scientific research, animal rights, environmental care, reducing chemical pollution, and artistic and cultural interchange, relate directly to Kingdom values. Other Christians, though, have argued that we could continue to champion these values if we left the EU. Gillan Scott, in Christian Today, has written that “there is no reason why we cannot continue to show generosity, sacrifice and reconciliation to our European neighbours outside of the EU”. There is certainly truth in that viewpoint. However, just because we could build a more loving and compassionate society having left the EU, that doesn’t mean we would do that. As a football fan, I know that scoring a goal through individual brilliance is always possible, but most goals are scored as a team, working together. Many Christians purport that “Together Stronger”, the tagline of my beloved Welsh football team, is the more effective attitude in facing the deep-seated problems of our time – poverty, climate change, human rights, and so on.

In the past week, we’ve seen posters vilifying refugees fleeing war zones, English football fans chanting anti-European slogans while mercilessly teasing children who are begging on French streets, and a senseless and brutal murder of a devoted MP that may have been perpetrated because of her compassion for the downtrodden and helpless. My hope is that, whatever people vote for in this Referendum, their choice will not be rooted in the fear or distrust of the Levite and Priest on the road to Jericho, but in the peace, hope, and generosity of spirit of the Compassionate Samaritan. Our faith challenges us to expand our circle of compassion to all people and all living things, not merely those who are “like us”. There is a biblical imperative to care for each other, not simply as neighbours, but as family. This is what ‘good news’ is all about. Our country, and indeed our world, needs healing, not hostility; peace, not prejudice; freedom, not fear; hope, not hate. “A dark shadow of disappointment stubbornly follows our obsession with personal satisfaction;” writes theologian Miroslav Volf, “we are meant for something larger than our own satisfied selves”.

Setting the world on fire at Christmas!

Christmas is nearly here, and I am busy preparing for our midnight Christmas service. My most memorable midnight service, though, was ten years ago now in the small church of Gileston in the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales. The service had all gone smoothly until I stood up to preach. As I got more and more enthusiastic about the peace and joy that should inspire us at Christmas, I noticed that the people in the front row were beginning to wave their hands around. For a moment, I thought that they had suddenly being filled with the spirit and were manifesting a charismatic side to their worship. I started to get excited, as they started to mouth words at me. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, but I just imagined that they were mouthing “amen, preacher” or “hallelujah, reverend” or “preach it, vicar”. It was filling me with more and more confidence, so I got louder and louder and more enthusiastic in my delivery.

Then, I noticed that the whole congregation began to wave their arms and point and mouth words. I also suddenly smelt something… smoke! I turned around and to my horror I saw that a candle had fallen onto the wonderful display of flowers behind the altar and the whole display had gone up in flames! I ran up to the altar, and looked around for a fire extinguisher. Unfortunately, not one was to be found. By this point the flames were pretty fierce and smoke had filled the whole church. There was only one thing for it – I grabbed the large jug of water that we use at communion and threw it on the flames. Unfortunately, I had actually picked up the decanter of communion wine and so had thrown all our communion wine onto the burning flowers! In the end, I ran out of firefighting ideas, so I just took off my robes and smothered the fire with them! Even now, when I go back to my old parish, I am not remembered for my kind heart, my pastoral visiting, or my lively preaching. No, I am rather remembered as the vicar who threw communion wine on a fire and then stripped off and threw his clothes on it!

I remember at the time, though, that the whole incident got me thinking about how Christmas should inspire us. We celebrate Christmas during our winter, the coldest time of the year. We’re excited if there’s any mention that it might be a white Christmas, and many of our Christmas cards have beautiful snow scenes on them. After my experience of firefighting in Gileston, though, I started viewing Christmas, not with winter and snow in mind, but with fire, light, and warmth.

Of course, this is not a new image for our Christmas celebrations. Many churches have candles on their christingle oranges and light the candles of the advent wreath. With these candles we remember that Christ is the light of the world, who illuminates a way of living, a way of compassion, a way of peace that goes beyond whatever other worldview that might be in ascendance. For us at Christmas time, that means that the baby of the manger, the child of the stable can help us see beyond the consumerist haze of this season – we can see beyond our society’s desperate desire to buy, or to have, or to abuse, or to dominate. Wealth, power, authority, money – none of them are important when seen in the light of a crying child in a dirty manger, born to offer us another way of living. As Mary exclaimed when she was expecting child: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”.

This has huge implications on how we live our lives – on our priorities, on our politics, on the way we treat others, on our values, on how we use or money, on what we consider to be important. It challenges us to look beyond our own cold wants, needs, and desires, and to show the warmth of love and compassion to others, whoever they are and however different they may be to us.

I’ve been to so many carol concerts, services, and nativities over the past few weeks, but one thing links all of them – and that’s the faces of those attending. There have been so many smiles, so much laughter, and a good deal of genuine warmth. The Christmas story is certainly one that brings us hope and it makes us stop and assess what is important in our lives. After all, this is the season when we recognize the importance of love, peace, acceptance, and forgiveness. But, we must also look beyond Christmas Day. We must also commit, not just to allow God to warm our hearts, but to allow God to set our hearts on fire. By doing so, we can take the message of the season into the new year, we can live out lives inspired by the life of baby born 2000 years ago, we can help subvert the worldly values of wealth and power, and we can commit ourselves to lives of peace, hope, joy, love and compassion. That’s what the fire of Christmas is really all about.

See also:

Advent and the Weight for Christmas

Unto us a Child is Born: A new baby at Christmas

Things-with-wings: A Christmas Reflection

Are you sitting comfortably? Christmas and the wonder of story

Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering

Recently I was privileged to have been asked to contribute a guest post on my story for the “God and Suffering: Our Story” series on the wonderful Thorns and Gold blog. The Thorns and Gold blog explores themes of suffering, faith, and hope, and is certainly worth following. Here, though, is my own guest contribution to that blog:

Ten years ago my life changed completely when I was diagnosed with a degenerative spinal condition and required major back surgery. This story would be a far more interesting if I could write about an injury playing rugby for my beloved Wales or while skiing at the Winter Olympics. Alas, no. It was an injury sustained playing badminton in the local sports hall that led to the investigations that discovered prolapsed and degenerative disks. Within three months of the initial injury, the pain in my lower back and my legs was excruciating and unceasing. I was unable to sit or stand for longer than a few minutes. I was stuck, quite literally, lying on a sofa all day, unable to go to work or to socialise outside of the house.

Six months later I was lying in a hospital bed in the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London and I opened my Bible on Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest”. My eyes filled with tears as the words echoed the emptiness and frustration I was feeling. Physical pain, combined with the mental anxiety of facing a long-term, chronic condition, led me to ask questions most of us face at some point in our lives: What’s the point of this suffering? Why doesn’t God stop suffering? Is life really worth this pain?

During a lengthy recovery, which included hospitalisation for two months, my view of these big questions of theodicy began to change. I saw that the mystery of suffering was far less important than the mystery of love. On returning to ministerial work in churches in Cardiff, Wales, I came to realise that the most joyous smiles often mask terrible pain and tragedy – bereavement, divorce, illness, disability, addiction, or chronic pain. At some point in our lives, each of us has to face suffering. Whilst none of us are given the option of rejecting suffering, we are blessed with the choice of the path that we take through the dark night of our pain.

Through my own experience of suffering I realised that, while I couldn’t change the pain I was feeling, I could change my attitude towards the situation. Slowly, but surely, I began to re-wire my ways of viewing the world, as I embarked on a journey of forging meaning from the apparent meaninglessness of suffering. This was certainly not an easy process, and involved soul-searching, tears, and prayer. I was convinced, though, that the one thing that we have left through any amount of suffering, great or small, is a choice of how we react to what we are enduring. As an Arabian saying reminds us: ‘The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the garden’.

For all of us, opening our eyes to moments of God’s light and grace, even in our times of suffering, have a cumulative ability to transform, illuminate, and bring us hope. Held as a hostage for many years in a dark room in Beirut, Brian Keenan recalls how he made a candle from small pieces of wax and string from his clothing fibres. ‘Quietly, calmly a sense of victory welled up in me’, he later wrote, ‘and I thought to myself without saying it, “They haven’t beat us yet. We can blot out even their darkness”’. Light, of course, does not avoid darkness. Rather, it confronts it head-on. ‘The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it’ (John 1:5).

Ten years on and I am still unable to sit or stand for long periods. Much of my life is, therefore, spent pacing around rooms (even during meetings) or lying down (while I prepare lectures or sermons). I also use icepacks, heat patches, and a tens machine on a daily basis. Through the whole experience, though, my view on suffering has changed radically. No longer do I regard suffering as something that stops life from being lived. Instead, I aim to find hope and meaning in those small, seemingly insignificant areas of life that I took for granted before my injury – in nature, in friendship, in family, in laughter, in the arts, in memories, and so on. Most of us, after all, are like flies crawling on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel – we are unaware of the depth of beauty and joy all around us.

I can truly say, then, that God has been vividly present in my pain. Not that he wants us to suffer, either directly or indirectly. Rather, he is present in our suffering, helping to redeem and transform it. As the Old Testament shows us, God suffers alongside the persecuted, imprisoned, and victimised. ‘In all their distress, He too was distressed’ (Isaiah 63:9). Likewise, Jesus’s sorrows on the cross show us that God truly understands our dark times. As such, he can meet us in our afflictions, bringing meaning and hope at the most unlikely times. God is love, and just a glimpse of that love can powerfully illuminate the darkness that we are going through. ‘And here in dust and dirt, O here,’ wrote Welsh poet Henry Vaughan, ‘The lilies of His love appear’.

Those times when the still small voice of calm seems mute may well be frequent for us, but my own experience is that, even in that silence, we can actively listen for his voice. By doing so, we affirm the importance of love, joy, hope, and meaning in our dark times, rather than dwelling on the horrible reality of suffering. Even though it may not feel like it at the time, our trials and tribulations are, therefore, turned into triumphs of our will and spirit. After all, like diamonds, which sparkle all the more brightly the more facets are cut, our lives reflect God’s light all the more brilliantly when we have many cuts.

—

See also my book Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering and the following blog posts:

“Love reminds us why”: God and the mystery of suffering

‘The path of peace’ (Luke 1:79): Can our faith help us when we face depression, anxiety, and stress?

Worry may not kill you, but it can stop you living

“Pencils in the Hand of God”: Some thoughts on All Saints Day

‘You don’t have to be an angel to be a saint!’ Today is All Saints Day. Last year I posted a reflection on the day. I have been pleasantly surprised at the popularity of that blog-post, and so I thought I would post it again. Thank you for your support of my blog over the past year, and I hope you enjoy reading this again.

Trystan Owain Hughes

Below is a reflection taken from ‘Real God in the Real World‘, my latest book that can be used in groups or by individuals over the Advent and Christmas period. Each day begins with a bible reading and then uses lively personal stories and engaging illustrations from popular culture and the arts to reflect on the reading. The reflection below takes Revelation 7:9-17 as its starting point:

I was due to be born on November 1st, which is ‘All Saints Day’ in the Western liturgical calendar. My mum was excited about delivering her own personal saint. In the week running up to the day, she, therefore, did everything she could to induce labour – from rough country drives to long mountain walks. On the night before All Saints Day, she even fell for the old wives tale of consuming a large dose of castor oil. Unfortunately, I didn’t appear, and all…

View original post 597 more words