Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

in thanksgiving for Ymania

10/7/2025

It was a sad honour to speak at the Celebration of Life of Tuisina Ymania Brown in Redfern Town Hall, having been deeply sorrowed, with so many others, to hear the news of the death of such a good friend, a veritable 'queen' for so many TGD people in Australia, her native Samoa, and across the globe, and a great wonderful warrior for human rights. May she live on in the dynamic active love in which she lived her life, and rise in glory.

I first met Ymania as a co-speaker at the 2018 Uniting Network Conference and she was always a great encourager and example of how to grow healthy intersectional change with joy, faith and determination.
(My full address can be found here.)

fire, futures, and faith

8/17/2025

“I have come”, said Jesus, “to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!... Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Well, good morning to you too Jesus! Today’s Gospel is not exactly happy 50th anniversary greetings to MCC Sydney, is it? - or is it? In the Spirit of Jesus, and with help in a few moments from Black trans people of colour, let us reflect together on three ‘f’ words: namely fire, futures, and faith. What might Jesus’ words about fire mean for us today? What possible futures are there for us and others today? And what kind of faith are we invited to share today?...

changing faces of faith: sharing divine story, identity, and calling

8/10/2025

What a world, we live in! Major economic, military, and psycho-spiritual forces are reshaping of our lives. Worldwide, inherited assumptions, alliances, and aspirations can, it seems, no longer be taken for granted. The ever-advancing use of AI is a potent expression, carrying a mass of uncertainties and unprecedented challenges, as well as breaking open fresh possibilities. No wonder our inherited faith traditions are at sea, where they are not simply in fundamentalist trauma or simple retreat. So how do we find real meaning today? Who are Christ’s followers to be today? And where are we headed? What, in other words, is our Story, our Identity, and our Calling, today? Let me open up some ways of reflecting upon such questions, with the assistance of three artworks, in relation to today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (8.26-40). For at the heart of that text is a profound wrestling with the nature of divine story, spiritual identity, and sacred calling, in another powerful age of human transformation…

waiting with desire

2/2/2025

'Illuminare' - award winning photo of myself, Josephine Inkpin, by Charmaine Lyons

Pink Floyd surely had it right about the vocation of love, in the closing section of the rock opera The Wall. For the vocation of love does not belong to Christians, never mind clergy, but to all human beings, but Christians, and clergy, at our best, can help point us towards it. As Pink Floyd wrote:

All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down, outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

In my experience, ministry can certainly be like that. As it happens, the first music album I remember buying was appropriately entitled Walls and Bridges, by John Lennon. For core to my own ministry has been building bridges, and what the writer Ursula le Guin called the vocation of ‘unbuilding walls’. As I come to the end of my time as Minister of Pitt Street Uniting Church, I want therefore to reflect on such things, in the context of the Gospel story of the presentation of Jesus inside the temple walls. For in their own vocations of priesthood and prophetic love, waiting in holy desire, and glimpsing salvation in their own day, the old folks Simeon and Anna can still speak to us in our own spiritual journeys, now and for the days ahead…

icons of belovedness

1/12/2025

image: Arian Baptistery in Ravenna

When I hear today’s story of the baptism of Jesus, what often comes to my mind is a stained-glass window in the Anglican church of St Luke Toowoomba. It was certainly a handy teaching aid over the years I presided at baptisms there. After all, there is much truth in the well-known saying that a picture can paint a thousand words. That is certainly a strength of churches like St Luke Toowoomba, which also has a number of other even more significant stained-glass windows, accompanying its Gothic Revival architectural features. Not all those windows are also reflections of other ages on another continent. The great western window above the baptistery is a particularly beautiful contemporary stained-glass window. This, with its mandala-resonant patterns, highlights a wide range of Australian animal, cosmic, and other natural features, and resembles a kind of dot-painting as a whole. The church is thus in some ways a veritable picture book, as well as a key city centre space for worship, music and other artistic and festival events. In a similar manner, our current liturgical season of Epiphany is also like a picture book. It too contains various images to encourage and challenge us: significant stories which are icons of God’s love. Let us therefore reflect today on the baptism of Jesus, which is a particularly powerful icon of God’s love, and of our beloved place within it. Indeed, in some Orthodox traditions, it is much more important than the birth narratives of Jesus. After all, they are an amalgam of different stories in only two Gospels, whereas the baptism of Jesus appears as a vital narrative in all four Gospels. Crucially, for example, in the Synoptic Gospels it is found immediately before the stories of Jesus’ temptations. Its central declaration of the beloved-ness of Christ, and our associated beloved-ness, is therefore the vital antidote to the threats and traumas of our world. Let us then look at three particular features of today’s iconic story, with the aid of three significant contemporary painters of the scene, and, thereby, encourage us too to share and become icons of divine beloved-ness ourselves…

gifts for groundedness and growth, in the power of three

1/5/2025

Adoration of the Christ Child, Mughal India, ca. 1630. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Symbolism abounds in the season of Epiphany, this great season of revelation, or spiritual revealing, that we are now entering. This morning it is focused especially in the visit of the Magi to the newborn Christ, a narrative rich in symbolic meaning. For today, let us reflect on two features: the significance of the gifts brought by the Magi, and of the number three associated with them. In doing so, let me speak briefly about three things: firstly, interpretations of the gifts and their three-ness in Christian Tradition; secondly, further perspectives on the gifts and three-ness which we may glean from other traditions, somewhat as the Magi helped enlarge the Judaean context of Jesus; and, thirdly, what gifts and symbolic three-ness we might offer up from our Australian contexts to bring further Epiphany meaning and spiritual revealing…

disruptive, delightful and divine - the bells and babies of Christmas

12/25/2024

I believe some of you have some bells – bells to recognise and welcome the Christ child on this Christmas morning. If you’ve got some bells, can you give them a shake now, so we know you’re there? Thank you. Now you bell-bearers have an important job today – to keep us all awake to the possibility of Christ among us today. So, every time in the next few minutes that I say the word ‘bell’ or ‘bells’ or ‘baby’ I want you to shake your bells. Let’s give that a test run – one of the most easily recognised symbols of Christmas is bells. Well done. Now some of the rest of you listening, may be thinking that all this ringing of bells is going to be rather disruptive of your peaceful contemplation. And you’d be right. Bells are disruptive in general. They have been used throughout human history to alert us that something is happening – for good or ill...

welcome to the divinity reveal party

12/24/2024

past Christmas focus in St Luke, Toowoomba

Something is missing here. What do you think it is? I mean, I have been involved in these Christmas Eve gigs for a long time. I’m sure there is something I was typically aware of, on Christmas Eve, in the first years of my ministry, which we don’t see around us here…

so, what about the Virgin Mary?

12/22/2024

Our Lady, digital print by Alma López (1999)

So, what about the Virgin Mary? How do you relate to the mother of Jesus? What sacred significance do you see in her? Mary has certainly ignited Christian feelings powerfully down the centuries, prompting both profound spiritual warmth and reaction. This continues today. Back in July, for example, a sculpture of Mary was attacked in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Linz in Austria. The figure, designed by Austrian artist Esther Strauss, depicted the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus. It was beheaded by protestors, who, with others, had complained that it was blasphemous. It was a dramatic instance both of continuing contemporary struggles about religious freedom, and also, a very striking illustration of how women, and female bodies, are at the heart of conflicts over what is powerful and sacred. In the case of the Linz statue, it is important to note that it was part of the DonnaStage art installation project on women’s roles, family images, and gender equality. As we hear Luke’s account of the Annunciation, let us therefore reflect: firstly, on what we inherit from history about Mary; and secondly, on how we ourselves might fruitfully understand Mary’s role in salvation; including on how we might positively understand the doctrine of the Virgin Birth today. Let me begin however with another true story involving attacks on an art work and differing interpretations of Mary, faith, female power and the sacred…

on elf pilots and dianellas

12/15/2024

Do you remember the twelve days of Christmas? No, I don’t mean the song. I mean the time when the festival of Christmas began around Christmas Eve and ran through to the eve of Epiphany, otherwise known as twelfth night. That is where the song comes from of course, alongside the tradition, now long gone in many places that used to practice this, of taking Christmas decorations down before January 6. Today, in contemporary Australia, the Christmas season seems to start at the beginning of November and is essentially declared over before the feast of St Stephen, aka Boxing Day. This year this has been vividly illustrated by the Wundrful World of Christmas,[1] which opened near us on the corner of York and Market Streets on 8 November and continues until Christmas Eve. Complete with helpful elf pilots – mainly friendly students and backpackers needing a job – it is billed as ‘an epic animated walk-through immersive experience and journey to the North Pole’, with ‘stunning’ VFX and CGI, and tickets from $25 but free to under 3s, all coming with a free Santa letter pack and complimentary North Pole digital family photo. No, sadly, especially for our treasurer, I am not getting a commission! What it does give me however are three questions. Firstly, in that context, and many other such lively things, what are our churches doing in marking the ecclesiastical season of Advent? Secondly, how, in doing so, are we engaging with the contexts in which we live? And, thirdly, and not least, what has the message of John the Baptist we hear today (in Luke 3.7-18) to say to our world?