2 Feet, 4 Paws & 1 God

I promised you all that after Lent I'd make the occasional post and true to my word here is the first of what I hope will be a fairly regular stream. 

What I'm going to attempt to share with you today are a bunch of ideas that have been haunting me, many of them for many years, which although they are beginning to take shape are far from being fully formed so please stay with me as I share them with you all and maybe you can help me make sense of them. 

For a large part of my adult life it has been my prayer that one day the church would value the ministry that disabled people can bring, not just the priestly role but right across the broader field of ministry. I myself have over 40yrs experience in music ministry, yet when Jarvis and I turn up to play at an event younger band members give us the head tilt of compassion and you can tell they are thinking this poor blind guy will be no good but we have to humour him for fear of causing offence. After the event they often seem genuinely in shock that a blind guy can also be a gifted musician.


Hold on to that for now and let's move on to the next group of random thoughts. 

I have always been someone who has put a lot of sore by what are known as "thin places". For me these had always been places with obvious spiritual connections such as Lindisfarne, Durham Cathedral, Minsteracers Monastery, Old Bewick church etc, these are all places where the only way I can describe it is that the prayers of generations have seeped in to the very stones of the place and reflect those prayers back out at the modern visitor. 

As you all know by now I spent years avoiding facing up to my blindness and avoiding becoming a guide dog owner. Imagine how shocked and surprised I was then back in 2001 when I walked in to Midlesborough Guide Dog Centre, a building I was expecting to be the most basic and functional of secular buildings only to be struck immediately by that hair on the back of the neck feeling. However until this point I had only ever associated such feelings with places of spiritual significance so to experience this feeling in a place with no obvious spiritual connections made no sense to me. 

Over time I learned that the building had been built, funded, maintained and staffed by volunteers. Then it began to make sense to me that what I was feeling was the love and commitment, the hopes, dreams and even prayers of all those involved had seeped in to the very fabric of the building and radiated back out on all those that entered. 

So how do these strands come together?

Well what I've been dreaming of is a building where we can demonstrate to the wider church what disabled people can bring to ministry, a building where those people struggling with feelings of anger and rage at their disability can come to a safe space where it will be seen as OK to work that anger out. Above all a building that feels thin, where the presence of God feels near. 

I feel strongly that this can not be done by simply asking for cash and throwing that cash at it. All the thin places I have listed were built out of love and labour that was given as gift, they were buildings built out of love and if my dream is ever to happen it must happen in the same way.

So you may think I'm a fool but there it is, my dream. I have many more detailed thoughts and ideas but for now let me simply pit that out there and see if it strikes a chord, ion it does please pray about it, talk to me about it, circulate the idea and let's see where God might take us, or not as the case may be, I simply put it out there as a way of trying to discern what He might be saying.