Within orthodoxy we are confined to language of another aeon. This goes for every aspect of the faith. Think about the concept of sin. In a geocentric universe the idea of God being privy to all and every misdemeanour is not too far a stretch to imagine. In a heliocentric universe such domesticity does not work. That is not to say my misdemeanours do not matter but they are contextualized differently. Furthermore, and more importantly, the easy divide between right and wrong that once worked for humanity is no longer a viable means of determining. Our understanding of what it means to be human, how our responses, emotions and therefore behaviours are modelled in our earliest months; how our sexuality is determined by something far more complicated than conscious choice, and so one could go on, these undeniable facts of the human situation severely undercut the simple division of right and wrong behaviour.

You can see the problem writ large in some cases where teaching and practice come into conflict and are inconsistent. For example, the teachings regarding adultery and divorce are quite clear and specific in the Gospel but they have been moved aside under the pressures of modern living. The prohibition against same sex marriage doesn’t get a mention in the bible, it had never been thought of (presumably). There are some imprecise words about ‘unnatural practices’ which are forbidden, but it is all incidental and very cloudy. Nevertheless, the attitude to same sex relationships has been punitive in the extreme, condemned and criminalized as adultery never has been. Only now is a more enlightened attitude beginning to be shown in some parts of the church. This seeming double standard underscores the problem that we do not any longer have the ability nor the desire for simple categorization of sins.

While one can set it out boldly in such life changing situations it is an ongoing problem in everyday life also, and not for Christians only. Our understanding of right and wrong is so confused by our cultural standards as well as our upbringing that we hardly know where to start in unravelling them. That is a task either for experts or, more likely, for self-responsible adults within their own hearts, not for me in this paper. I am attempting an altogether more defined task, to play around with ideas of God, religion and sin; because when we see how the ancient universe functioned in the minds of the people and how our current scientific investigation deflects our assent to the biblical language, we have a problem worthy of serious attention.

The church, caught in the bind of needing to be true to its formation and its traditions, is struggling to find ways to translate them that both honour the past and communicate in the present. The problem may be solved at the level of theological discourse, but, as is so often the case with academic discourse, it doesn’t filter down to the language of everyday life.

The language of everyday has taken a new tack in recent years for talk about Omnipotence, it is simply referred to as ‘the Universe’. The late Bob Proctor pointed out once, that when scientists talk about energy and when theologians talk about God, they use the same descriptors. Maybe that validates the current fashion for talking about the Universe rather than God as the Source of all. God is such a loaded concept. As I pointed out in a book title some years ago the only answer to the question Do you believe in God? is, ”Well, that Depends What You Mean by God”. What the question means in the mind of the questioner may be so far removed from what I am prepared to assent to, an affirmative answer would be substantially untrue and could mark me out as ‘one of us’ when I’m definitely not!

The only parameters for the Universe are scientific which we do not fully understands anyway so the concept is fluid and free from doctrinal restrictions. It is both more and less personal and leaves the responsibility for life, where it belongs, with the individual and it works for loads of people. The basis for the belief in the Universe as the Benign Source is in quantum physics and smacks of Ultimate Mystery, so we are back to God language.

God as God seems entirely irrelevant to real life. The Universe, however, is a very different thing. For a start, the Universe loves you and wants you to be abundant and happy. God loves you and wants you to be abundant and happy, according to orthodoxy, but that love has been overlaid with so many conditions it appears to be less reliable than the love of your average human parent.

I haven’t discovered the Universe’s attitude to sin, it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned, perhaps it is tucked away, in different words, in the self-responsibility package. In practical terms, I think this is one of the most pertinent differences between the archaic language of religion and the language of a scientific age.

Another area of Christian practice which has come into the limelight under the impact of quantum physics though, of course, the language has changed, is that of prayer, in particular, intercessory prayer, (prayer for others). The unaccountable ways in which energy behaves has caused serious research into prayer and healing and especially distance healing. Instead of healing ’miracles’ being woo-woo or ‘originally misdiagnosed’ they are now a respectable area of research and are talked about in high class academic circles even if the discussion hasn’t ‘hit the streets’.

This is another field where devotees of the Universe as the Source of all things have taken up the reality and re-named it for practical use. Saying “I will pray for you” is language used easily only among those of a shared religious sensibility; instead on is likely to say something like, “I will be thinking of you and sending lots of loving energy”. “That which we call a rose…..”

Most recently I have come across a further field of research called ‘emotional contagion’ which sounds dire but is quite the opposite! People all over the world meditating are affecting the global state, the more people do it the more people ‘catch on’ and so it spreads. Whenever you are thinking ‘prayerfully’ about someone or something you are part of something that is so much bigger and greater than you. You get why they say ‘contagion’? Science has proved that ‘flu bugs are not the only form of contagion! Love and a desire for the well-being of all is contagious!

Somehow love is at the core of it all, whatever kind of universe one posits. It is almost as though, through the explorations of the quantum world science is affirming all that is best and enduring about Christian teaching and dumping that which is time-conditioned and fitted only for an age long gone. Paring away the pre-scientific world view and the accretions of church culture that it produced, the God of Jesus and St. Paul is as comprehensive and appealing as is ‘the Universe’. They are recognizably the same Reality, both mysterious, beyond ultimate understanding, with the motivating Force being a kind of love that surpasses our comprehension but not our experience.

Christ in the Universe – Conversations on Christianity and Secular Spirituality is is soon to be available.

In a geocentric universe ‘God’s in His heaven’ and ‘all’s right with the world’; the world of gods and ‘men’ is intimately related; in New Testament times it was a fairly recent switch from their god to God. The God of the Hebrews was for centuries recognised as their particular divinity in a world culture where there were ‘gods many, and lords many’ and each town or country had their own, or several, for different purposes. In New Testament times the exclusivity of the Jewish god-concept was a bane to their pagan neighbours. Even the emperor if not a god while living, was looking to become one, once dead.

The sun, moon and stars were in the heavens for the sole benefit of humankind and at the end of the land there was an infinity of sea. In such a contained universe it was easy to imagine the majesty of God extending to an intimate caring for each individual soul, to understand their desires and to observe and abhor or punish their every sin. He always knew what was going on and took a personal hand in directing the course of history. If His nation suffered it was because of their disobedience and if they thrived it was His blessing on them for their devotion. Good and bad; right and wrong; black and white were quite distinct categories with not much room for various shades of grey.

It is impossible for us fully to immerse ourselves in such a world view. With the best of intentions, we can think about it, try to imagine it but actually for it to be our reality is not possible. This is the world view that determined the language of the New Testament and the creeds of Christendom and is still the language of religion today. This is one reason why it is such a problem for people to be even interested in the faith; there are so many linguistic and intellectual hoops to jump through to make any sense of it; it is all too hard. To accept the articles of faith as stated, for many people is an absurdity too far. Virgin Birth? Choirs of angels lighting up the sky? Poverty is a virtue? Just a few things off the top of the head that make people wince.

Perhaps this explains why people like Stephen Fry or Richard Dawkins etc. are so critical of Christianity. It is why it proves difficult to refute them to any conclusive extent because the gymnastic feat of bridging two vastly different world views is all too hard and maybe it seems like there is more to lose than to gain by attempting it. Christians both believe and do not believe what the words say, and I don’t mean in the variety of churches. I mean in any given Christian church, or person, there are bits confined to the too hard basket or simply ignored as a problem. For the initiates there is no problem, because they have mastered the gymnastics.

In all of this I am not being judgmental about the church I am wanting to point out how difficult it is to bridge the cosmological/language barrier. Just changing the actual words doesn’t do it because the beliefs out of which that language rises are fundamentally different. Let me try an example. Every word and every idea in the New Testament, that is designed to encourage faith, is based in two beliefs, the first being that Jesus was raised from the dead. The story of someone’s life as it was before they rose from the dead, is going to be told very differently when they are resurrected than it would be had they merely died. The Resurrection was the lens through which the stories of Jesus of the Gospel were told.

I need to say very clearly that I am not doubting the Resurrection, what I am pointing to is that the way in which it was understood in the beginning is very different from any interpretation we make of it today. A good example is the descriptions of Jesus eating with His disciples post-Resurrection, this was a way of convincing the original audience of the absolute reality of His Resurrection. For many people now it has just the opposite effect. Believing in His appearances after death may not be a hurdle, but that He needed to nourish His Resurrected body as though physical can be a jump too far.

The second belief that coloured the reporting was that Jesus was going to come again in glory, very soon. Creation as they knew it was coming to an end and a New Order, with Christ at its head, would be installed.

Given their interpretation of the ‘shape’ of the universe this was quite do-able for an Almighty God. The New Creation was open to all people, not just the Jews (which was a bit of a shock for some of them) and that was why Paul was dashing around furiously trying to convert everyone because he wanted them all to have entry into this great glory, and the entry ticket was belief in the Resurrection of Christ.

The next article will look at language as a significant problem in communicating the truths and traditions of the Faith. These articles form an introduction to the issues I explore in my soon to be published book:

Christ in the Universe: Conversations on Christianity and Secular Spirituality.

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The Oratory of St. Sophia

The Oratory of St. Sophia came into being in 1980, at a time when there was so much foment in the church, the issue of the ordination of women, and, indeed, women’s role in the church, was high on the agenda. Many women were leaving the church but not leaving their spiritual dedication. The Oratory came into being to meet the needs of a small group of people whose previous locale for prayer and Sacrament was no longer accessible. We wished to pray together and have the support which such a group can give, and, most of all, we needed a topos for a variety of prayerful concerns. Several of the original members were working in the helping professions and had clients who needed this gentle, non-specific support.

The Oratory soon became a safe place for people who had lost their connections with the church but who desired to participate in a worshipping community. The Oratory proved to be a gentle ‘way in’, a kind of half-way house, where such people could orientate themselves and get a fresh feel for worship. It also worked in reverse. People who felt that they could no longer worship in the traditional parish church found solace in this smaller gathering, sometimes it meant quitting Christian worship altogether. People came, stayed awhile, found what they needed and moved on, some stayed; some simply called when they needed prayer support; we went on doing what we needed to do.

Several ‘functions’ grew up out of the needs which presented. One was a ministry of prayer for the dead. In counselling one may meet a client who has wounds relating to a dear departed, maybe concerning a recent death, maybe one long since. When the death is due to suicide the pain and loss are at their most poignant. Typically, the people feel a sense of incompletion which is often expressed as a sense that the passing was not appropriately ritualised.

In the Oratory we had the scope, the sensitivity, and the freedom to follow a personal ritual for the bereaved and/or the departed which met the present need. We operated within a context of understanding that ‘all time is eternally present’. This ministry for the departed was occasional and was not pre-planned, it grew out of the needs of the situation. It followed that the Feast of All Souls became an important holy day for the Oratory. On 2nd November each year there was a Liturgy in which the dead were remembered.

Over the years liturgies particular to us, arising out of our corporate experience became mini-traditions. The Oratory was dedicated on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6 1980, and the choice of dedication was of great significance. The date also marks the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. As we celebrated, we also remembered, and we committed ourselves to the pursuit of the light that we may each make our personal contribution to wholeness and healing of and on the earth.

Shrove Tuesday, Maundy Thursday and our Pre-Advent Mass, which took place on the Wednesday before Advent Sunday, were other days that had special liturgies, and special meaning for the group. February 2^nd, the Feast of Candlemas, was the festival with which our new liturgical year began.

The whole gathering, intent and organisation of the Oratory was quite unspectacular; but highly functional and attested to an ongoing need. Its virtue seemed to be that it existed to meet that need, it did not need to exist. Sometimes the worship was planned around a particular cause or intention, most often it followed a regular, simple form.

The Oratory came to a close with the death of our priest on St. Francis Day, 4^th October 1999. Our home was relinquished and the Oratory as we knew it was no more; it had fulfilled its purpose, but the friendships that were formed endured. For all of us, in crises or emergencies, we would automatically call up these friends, knowing that we could ask for prayer and the request would be met, with dedication. Several of our devoted members now ‘worship with us on another shore and in a greater light’ while others continue to meet together for prayer retreats twice a year.

The Oratory gave us the opportunity to express community in a devout and real way with no fuss, flairs or grand gestures. It gave us the room to shift and change as our needs shifted; it was organic, lived its meaning then faded back into the Unconscious leaving its members deeper and richer in their spiritual life and in their companionship.

“I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and to touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made.” Virginia Satir (d.1988)

Spiritual Direction traditionally sat within the Christian ethos but not everyone in ministry is either trained or interested in this aspect of their calling. Individual spiritual care is one of the few Christian ministries that has not historically, been the reserve of the clergy or even laymen; women have traditionally been recognised as valuable in this role.

In the present time this kind of spiritual friendship is no longer exclusively a church matter. As more and more people, therapists and counsellors, are coming to understand the need for soul care, the domain of the spiritual is more seriously talked of and addressed with care and attention. Clearly this is not a role that can be taught along with other subjects, simply as part of the curriculum. Spiritual direction is not learned from a book, it requires a different kind of dedication, along with age and experience. This need for experience applies both within the church and in the wider world.

To quote Satir again, “A lifetime of intention and dedication to the quest for consciousness is the best and sincerest gift we have to share with the world.”

The Rolls Royce of Coaches

The greatest gift I can give to you is a lifetime of personal development and spiritual questing.

Mentoring, or Coaching is for the healthy person who wants to get even more out of life; it is about living on purpose, developing the future rather than fixing the past; a mentoring in possibility. My coaching model is about empowering people to evolve the life of their deepest desires. We look at the desires you have for your life and devise strategies to achieve them. Whatever means a better, richer, more satisfying life for you is the focus.

Most people do not really want to avoid their issues; they just don’t know how to confront them safely. Our conversations are safe, entirely confidential and always dictated by your wishes, to discuss or work on whatever you choose. Your Personal Coach is there for you, barracking for you, staying with you and helping you to keep going in the way you want to go.

Mentoring can also be a very particular kind of companionship in those times when we need to talk about things our loved ones don’t want to hear. Problems like learning to adjust to retirement; or when you no longer have a partner and have to live alone… or maybe you’ve spent so long doing what you have to do that you’ve forgotten what you like to do. Maybe you are so tired, the kids are driving you nuts and you feel you’ve turned into a monster, not a mother! There can be issues of grief or bereavement, anxiety about the future, death – our own or that of a loved one, big questions, often carrying fear, confusion and denial, and no-one with whom to share these anxieties honestly. Sometimes we just need to talk about the difficult, dull or dismal parts of life without fear of being fobbed off, being told not to be morbid or perhaps the worst of all, to be met with a hearty Pollyanna kind of helpfulness! That’s when the greatest gift is to be heard, not advised, put right or corrected; someone who listens to what it is really like for us. Sharing these sad and important times can lead to new insights and the very fact of being heard can seriously lighten the load and allow the way through to a new place of peace and contentment.

​Wisdom is something most people aspire to achieve and it is rare to be in the company of someone who embodies it, and so generously and beautifully conveys, shares and teaches wisdom. Josephine is an individual who seeks to understand you, help you understand you, and truly inspires you to be the best that you can be. Wisdom is one word to describe her and the skills that she brings to your encounters but it is the generosity of spirit to encourage you to live your life well, to empower you, that is a genuine experience I recommend. Life-coaching and counselling for the whole being: body, mind, soul and spirit.

Thank you Josephine. J.E

If you find these articles interesting and/ or challenging please consider subscribing. A free sub means you receive the artticles as the apprear, a paid sub means that you are helping support me in my work.

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We are accustomed to the idea of Jesus being the Son of God, who was with God from the beginning. This is so familiar that we don’t stop to think how extraordinary that claim is. How did the ancient thinkers and writers go from Jesus as the wonder worker, son of God (think what that term meant in the ancient world), Resurrected One, to the One who was with God before the world was made?

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made” (The majestic opening to the Gospel According to John) The Old Testament does not reference the Word as the pre-existent One but there is Wisdom who was with God from the beginning and by whom all things were made “I was with Him from the beginning the first of His works of old” (Prov 8:22)

It was by taking the teachings about Sophia that the first Christians found a way of expressing their belief that Jesus was pre-existent with God before the foundation of the world.

He is the image of the invisible God….

For in Him all things inHeaven and earth were created.

He himself is before all things and in Him all things hold together. (Col 1 15-17)

Throughout Paul’s epistles there are constant references to the Christ as the One through whom the world was made, he uses the Sophia scriptures to interpret his understanding of Jesus as the Christ. By this means he could claim the full divinity of Christ without diminishing the truth of monotheism. It is primarily from these texts, along with the Prologue to the Gospel of John, that the theology of the Incarnation was thrashed out in the following centuries and has fed and nourished the faithful ever since, though the Source of it all rarely rates a mention.

There is much in a Sophia based model of God to encourage a new life in Christianity that meets our world and today’s people where they are, for it encourages participation, belief in one’s one singular importance and the equal importance of everyone else. It justifies a far healthier attitude to the physical world, where traditional theology has rather left that alone, (or left it to God to sort) it promotes a sense of purpose and responsibility, an inner spirituality and above all, joy in the world. There is nothing soppy about Sophia, She expects people to step up. They are invited to eat Her bread, drink Her wine, but also to care for each other and for the created order. Best of all She is joyful, enjoys life and encourages sharing enjoyment and delight in all the wonders of creation.

According to the scriptures, Sophia ‘enters into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophetic voices in the world’ (Wisdom 7:27) which I find a great deal more satisfying than the demand to be an obedient child. Think of the difference between being a friend or being a child. A child does not participate, is told what to do, has little expected of her and is excused when things don’t go right. A friend, on the other hand, is responsive, answerable, reliable; she is expected to step up and participates in whatever is going on. In Sophia spirituality we are encouraged to believe in the significance of our lives as co-creators, we are faced with the reality of all things being one and all embraced, filled, infused with the divine life.

This must make us more careful of our beautiful world. As children we have made an awful mess of it and as children we expect someone else (Dear Heavenly Daddy?) to put it right. As children we are excused from responsibility, though under the traditional model we are constantly reminded how very naughty we are and how fortunate we are, if we try very hard to be good, not to have to face the full consequences of our stupid, sinful, mean and nasty actions. We are encouraged to see ourselves as children but as pretty nasty little tykes in whom there is no health, spiritually speaking.

As people today look for a spirituality outside of the confines of the church, and as quantum physics has brought strange new insights into the nature of the universe, and most particularly the understanding of how intricately and absolutely the whole is bound in one amazing unity, the idea of describing God in concrete terms becomes increasingly unacceptable and to some even absurd.

The figure of Sophia offers a means of speaking about God that witnesses to the presence of God in the whole of creation and in the oneness of creation; She gives us a respite from the unremittingly masculine imagery of the divine. She is found in poetic rather than a dogmatic language and that is a big bonus! And She stands firmly within the tradition. The power of God and the Wisdom of God, the agent of creation, She represents the invisible energy which maintains creation and, though She was first described out of a cosmology vastly different and inestimably smaller than ours, somehow, She can be seen to permeate ours – She is that force of creation which cannot be located or defined, but sensed with awe and wonder and known in the heart.

The Reclaiming of Wisdom is a great source for more detailed information.

Hard copy or PDF available from me jojo1@iinet.net.au or on Kindle from Amazon.

*Image from Sculpture of Leopoldine Mimovich, with permission.

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It can be quite interesting to delve into snippets from history that have slipped by unnoticed, this is particularly true of religious history. Today, 6^th March in the ancient world was an auspicious day, it was the day on which the Goddess Isis blessed the Nile. With rituals, processions and festivities her effigy was taken out along the Nile, so that she might bless the land with fertility and look favourably upon the people. Isis was the epitome of all representations of the Great Mother, she was known as ‘the Many-named Goddess’ ‘the Goddess named by all the nations’. So what does that have to do with Now, more than two millennia on?

Descriptors of Isis helped form the language Jewish scribes used as they struggled to express the truth of the Divine encompassing both feminine and masculine in the Totality; she was known as Sophia. Without these ancient Jewish scriptures the writers of the New Testament would have been hard pressed to explicate the meaning of Jesus as the Son of God. Two thousand years of Christian teaching on the Holy Trinity carries, at its heart, this ancient belief that all creation is the work and care of the divine feminine. Today we are perhaps in line with the ancients, apt to say, “What’s in a name?”

When it comes to names there is a further link with Isis, she lives today in forms of devotion, titles, and customs, which honour the Virgin Mary. For example, Isis was known as Queen of Heaven and Star of the Sea, titles which now accrue to Mary. In some countries the practice of carrying effigies of Mary in procession around the fields or to bless the fleet to guarantee good harvests of grain or fish, imitate the archaic festival of this day. Mary, of course, is not divine, no matter how fully she is worshipped in some parts of the Church but, nevertheless, she stands as testimony to the desire, even within a thoroughly patriarchal faith, for humanity to hold the feminine in the court of heaven. A final note of interest: the last temple to the goddess was demolished in the fifth century around the time Mary was officially entitled Mother of God.

My forthcoming book Christ in the Universe has a more detailed discussion of the importance of Sophia. For a full experience see an earlier book, The Reclaiming of Wisdom. (available from me at jojo1@iinet.net.au

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A talk by Josephine Griffiths at St George's Cathedral, Perth Western Australia, 2019.

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Silent Retreats for Women:

June 12-14

November 13-15

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New Book - Out Soon

Christ in the Universe - Conversations on Christianity and Secular Spirituality

“Thank you, Josephine Griffiths, for this rich and timely book, Christ in the Universe-Conversations on Christianity and Secular Spirituality, inviting readers more deeply into their own interior conversation between Christianity and the wide landscape of secular spirituality which has ( thankfully) reemerged as a lively, welcoming and legitimate space. It refuses to collapse either tradition into the other, but instead honours deep questions, longings, and practices that shape human experience, evident in the writings of those with whom the author engages, across diverse settings. What emerges is not an apologetic or a dismissal, but an invitation to the reader to enter dialogue with openness and courage.”

- Kay Goldsworthy, Archbishop of Perth

“Josephine Griffiths reminds us that the search for meaning is never finished, that faith and spirituality alike are part of the ongoing investigation for our purpose, not restricted to this moment but holding the possibility of transcendence within and in company. This framing, and the weight of scholarly investigation, brings both freshness and depth. It cultivates curiosity and respect, showing how both Christian wisdom and secular spiritual practices can speak into the lives we live in the 21st century.

“Christ in the Universe is a fascinating and thoughtful exploration of the life and teachings of Jesus, and how they might be more relevant for an even broader audience. This book provides a useful and compelling way to find greater spiritual connection – including in much of the personal development teachings that are often in great harmony with Jesus’ message.”

-Brad Yates

In Christ in the Universe, Josephine Griffiths presents a bold, compassionate, and intellectually rich exploration of faith for a contemporary world. With theological depth, poetic sensitivity, and a personal tone that is both intimate and insightful, Griffiths bridges traditional Christian doctrine and the evolving contours of secular spirituality.

What sets this book apart is its integrative spirit. Drawing from scripture, mysticism, neuroscience, psychology, quantum physics, and energy healing modalities such as EFT, Griffiths offers a “theology of possibility”—a hopeful, healing vision of the divine that is as intellectually serious as it is emotionally accessible. Her work is deeply ecumenical, invoking Christian saints, modern scientists, poets, and spiritual teachers with equal reverence.

-Emeritus Professor, Tarquam James McKenna

Previous Books

You can buy these books as hard copies from me - or get them on Amazon Contact: jojo1@iinet.net.au

This Year For Joy - A Day-By-Day Guide To Care For The Soul

This Year for Joy is a collection of readings, poetry, humour, meditations and thoughts for every day of the year, set within a contemporary Christian...This post is public so feel free to share it.

Griefs Hermitage - A Book Of Comfort And Consolation For The Bereaved

This is a delightful book, well written in four distinct parts. The first part is a series of short pieces, designed for people who are not up for reading anything lengthy. Grief dissolves the ability to concentrate but picking up something brief and meaningful to read can add a slither of value to the day. The material is consoling, relevant and varied and addresses the real, and often unmentioned, troubles that accompany the loss of a loved one. The second section is an anthology of readings, poetry and prose, from different times and places, on the different aspects moods and experiences of grieving.

The Reclaiming Of Wisdom - The Restoration Of The Feminine In Christianity

The tradition of God as feminine within Christianity has been neglected, sadly, since the Reformation, but it is a valid and constant tradition within the scriptures and within historic devotional literature. This book was written with the desire of bringing something of this beautiful tradition to the interested reader.

Seeking Sophia - Meditations and reflections for women who no longer go to church

The tradition of God as feminine within Christianity has been neglected, sadly, since the Reformation, but it is a valid and constant tradition within the scriptures and within historic devotional literature. This book was written with the desire of bringing something of this beautiful tradition to the interested reader.

It Depends What You Mean By God

A gentle, open minded book that gives the reader a new look at the essentials of Christianity; God, Jesus, prayer, spirituality etc. It looks at the origins of Christian belief, especially the pieces that have been neglected and forgotten; how the faith changed at significant points in history and what is interesting and different in Christian expression in the present day.

This Above All - Hamlet And The Art Of Ageing Brilliantly

“This above all, to thine own self be true” is a fine slogan for any time of our lives but it works especially well for Misfits and women who are no longer young. This is a book for grown women (and Misfits) who have progressed through the old and the new books on personal growth and find these books no longer speak to where they are in their lives. Mature women are past the elementary stages of self understanding; the issues and concerns of their lives are not what they were when they were young women, wives and mothers. This book has been especially designed for women who do not fit the common mould, the stereotype of ‘older women’, hence the accent on Misfits. It is for women who rejoice in life and want to live everyday to the fullest.

This Royal Throne - A History Of The Kings And Queens Of England

This frivolous little number is designed to amuse, entertain and inform people who are devoted to historical drama and/or fiction but have forgotten most of what they ever knew about the English Succession; who came when, who married whom, who killed whom and even, why. And what all the fuss was about.

You can buy these books as hard copies from me - or get them on Amazon Contact: jojo1@iinet.net.au

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Two writers who have inspired me to grapple with the issues of understanding Christianity from a woman’s perspective, are Mary Robinson, one time President of Ireland, who wrote about women ‘handing on (the fruits of academia) in a fresh and radicalised form’. I find this a very cheering thought! To find fresh and radicalised ways of presenting the Jesus of the New Testament is a theological endeavour about which one can get excited!

The Gospel accounts were written by men and for men at a time when considering women’s experience as potentially different had not come onto any agenda. Today we find that many points in the traditional teaching, which Christian women have devotedly tried to live by, are simply not true to women’s experience. They confirm the irrelevancy of the Christian story for women in real life as they underpin the very attitudes and mores that, with determination, we are leaving behind. These are the issues I like to play with, to consider how, at root, the Christian teachings are supremely relevant, shorn of centuries of patriarchal emphasis and interpretation.

The title Theology of Possibility was suggested by another writer, though again, not writing of theology. Ellen J. Langer, in her delightful and encouraging book Counter Clockwise referred to what she called ‘the psychology of possibility’ which she described as ‘more positive, less evaluative and more process orientated than most personal or scientific research’. I loved that and thought that that is exactly what I want for theology. Two thousand years of teaching and devotion, covering an endless and ever-changing variety of beliefs, needs and circumstances have solidified Jesus, the Point of it all, into, for many people, a distant and largely irrelevant figure whose words and their ‘meaning’ seem to have little to say to us.

The women’s perspective is not the only issue that needs renovating, we need to look anew at Jesus the man, after all that was the point of the Incarnation. Historically the focus of teaching and devotion has been on Jesus as the Son of God but does the term ‘Son of God’ have any real meaning for the average, non-church-going person today? “If that’s what they (churchy people, God-botherers) want to believe”, such people may say, “that’s fine, but what on earth does it mean? It doesn’t really make any sense to me.” And in this way so much is lost. In my writing about the Gospel accounts, I have been focusing on Jesus the Man. We get clues to his experience, particularly in the difficult bits, the words and actions that bothered his disciples because they didn’t seem to fit. Of course, what they didn’t fit was the image of the perfect Son of God, the post-Resurrection Figure who is actually the subject of the Gospels.

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