About

About the site

“The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

Adam is the original clayboy. I like puns, and, like many an aetiological folk-tale storyteller, so does the originator of the rich story that continues to form part of the essential bedrock for Jewish and Christian readings of the world and humanity.

What then of the tagline’s “stardust, spit and spirit”?

The earth creature (adam, the human) is formed from the dust of the earth (adamah, the humus). With our later and more extensive knowledge of the cosmos, we also read this dust as stardust, incubated in massive stars (now long-dead) before being spewed out again in vast explosions to form the planets. We read the texts of our scriptures in the light of all other discovered truth, and, as people of faith, vice versa as well.

There’s no spit in the story. Not explicitly, anyway, but it’s certainly one way of filling a lacuna. Readers and texts work on each other to produce interpretations, and I think the down-to-earthness of spit has its place in this story of the down-to-earth God, who when incarnate is quite happy to use spit to heal and remake. (See Mark 8:23). In any case, as the Scriptures suggest, if you’re going to anthropomorphise the eternal reality who dwells in unapproachable light you might as well do it outrageously.

Spirit is almost self-explanatory. I don’t believe God is ruled out of the picture by the huge amount we have learnt and continue to learn about our world through the work of science. Nor is God driven out by the awkward and untidy nature of everyday down-to-earth reality in which the meaning-making patterns and relationships of our lives are disrupted by events and every silver lining has its cloud. Rather I believe that God continues to summon us to wiser thoughts and richer lives, and promises by his Spirit that stardust and spit can be more than the sum of their parts, and what was once made will be remade.

“The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.  As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.  Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:47-49)

About me

Location: Worcestershire, UK

Church: Anglican

Paid job: parish priest.

Unpaid job (1): Director of Diocesan Reader (lay preacher) training course

Unpaid job (2): Diocesan Worship Advisor

Academic interests: New Testament and Early Church, with particular interests in Paul, the historical Jesus, and development of worship and ministry.

Favourite Films: Donnie Darko, Godfather (1 & 2), Blade Runner, Slumdog Millionaire, Wargames

Favourite Plays: Macbeth, Antigone (Jean Anouilh’s version), Andorra (Max Frisch)

Favourite Books: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Donna Leon’s Brunetti series (and a great deal other crime fiction), the Harry Potter series, The Power and the Glory, The Tin Drum, and The Catcher in the Rye

Favourite Music: Most baroque choral music, especially Handel. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Blur, The Guillemots, Patrick Wolf, The Killers.