Jolley Gosnold

In light of the Supreme Court ruling yesterday, here's a clip from my sermon from Transgender Day of Visibility at St Martin-in-the-Fields in solidarity with my trans siblings. You can watch the full service featuring choral music from trans and non-binary composers here: tinyurl.com/4rxwvr8a

What if defeating sin and death is…

Not about paying a price.

Not about a place in the clouds.

But about God liberating us from the guilt of what is in the past, freeing us from our worries about the future, and inviting us to be with him in the eternal present.

Surely it should be ‘couldn’t be happier’ … 🎶🎵

We can, with God’s help, work to nurture a space where our doors and hearts are open, and the valuable lives and experiences of the wounded and woundable are less likely to be harmed or lost.

The title acknowledges the reality that we cannot be perfect, we cannot, if we wish to be open and inclusive of all, be the ‘strong fireproof cabinet with a complex lock used for the storage of valuables.’ But we can be safer.

The C of E, which is wrestling quite publicly with the question at the moment, has a safeguarding policy called ‘Promoting a Safer Church’. Note that it does not say safe but safer.

Is it a place where you feel safe? ‘A place where you feel protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost.’

I wonder where you feel safe. Perhaps at home with family, or with friends, or when reading your favourite book, or in the silence of your own company, or with God. As we reflect today on Safeguarding Sunday, on the importance of safety in the life of the Church, I wonder…

It is that safety that allows me to be vulnerable (or woundable as is the root of that word), trusting that I can be seen, known, heard and held by those around me.

I know when I feel safe, and yet that feeling, one so hard to describe, is unlike any other. For me, it is a deep knowing, the comfort I feel in the arms of a loved one, the people with whom I can speak freely, laugh wildly, or cry uninhibited by the fear of judgement.

#SafeguardingSunday

safe
/seɪf/

adjective
1.
protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to noun be harmed or lost.

noun: safe; plural noun: safes
1.
a strong fireproof cabinet with a complex lock used for the storage of valuables.

Over 70 men and women - homeless, refugees, asylum seekers, those with no recourse to public funds - joined us, as they do every Sunday for food, community, legal advice, laundry services and more. It’s tragic that this service needs to exist, but my life is enriched by every single person here.

R&D for New Northern play 'Mumsplaining' New Northern company: exploring tricky themes through comedy! | Check out 'R&D for New Northern play 'Mumsplaining'' on Indiegogo.

Help this emerging company make their first show together www.indiegogo.com/projects/r-d...

Good morning from St Martin’s. Hoping to play a small part in making this app a space of peace and joy.

Just left Twitter and will be setting up shop here. Mostly talking about art, theatre, social justice, faith and the church. Am a theatre director and writer, currently training to be a priest at a church in London right now. Looking forward to connecting with people!

Unfortunately the C of E is not required to offer same sex marriages at the moment, it also doesn’t receive state funding. Perhaps if we started offering same sex marriages, and made it clearer that we pay for ourselves we would be more popular with the wider public.