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You don’t ever run out of goodness All of Your intentions reach their end

I have learnt recently that one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to try and see differently. Change your lens; re-write your script; tell yourself a different story than the one you have always known. It is not the only one that is true. Come to the threshold of what you have always believed to be possible or impossible, real or unreal. Move your feet towards where you thought the ground was sand. And, if you change where you stand, don't be surprised if the light shifts in the room you thought you knew. Don't be surprised if it shows you a door.

i've always known this, but i guess events of late have made me live it out in a different way. multiple things can be true at once. to think of anything, anyone, as completely good or completely bad, is just lazy thinking, our brain's way of making sense of the information presented to us in a way that serves us and us only.

"in this family, we don’t make excuses." it was the casualness with which he said it that moved me, stated matter-of-factly, as if i already belonged. i see now that love can be this easy. it does not have to be earned by good behaviour or performance. it is not a reward, and it is not scarce. it is simply given, falling like snow. you just need to open your hands to receive it.

love is attention, the practice of noticing.

a phrase i’ve been using a lot lately to describe how i feel about things is, ‘I felt moved.’ it does not take a lot to ‘move’ me; i feel moved when i read a line in a poem that touches something within me that i thought was beyond words. i feel moved when someone I love anticipates my needs and provides what i did not even think to ask for. i feel moved when i see the world through the eyes of my darling nephew. he cannot help his wonder. what an interesting metaphor- to be moved. it suggests an inner shift, but of what? and to where?

i felt moved when i read brene brown’s ‘Atlas of the Heart’. it is a beautiful book whose objective is to map out for its readers the whole range of emotions and their functions. we are often so afraid of emotions because they can be so uncomfortable - and we are hardwired to avoid all pain. but naming them is important, and having a language to describe precisely what we feel is crucial so we can navigate our inner landscapes meaningfully, intentionally, helpfully. our emotions should not be shunned, but treated curiously, for they provide us with important information often hidden or dismissed by our logic and rationality. they signal to us what is important, but only if we let them.

if all emotions serve a function, what is the point of being ‘moved’? if anxiety alerts us to danger, and anger to injustice, perhaps being moved alerts us to meaning, belonging and love.

to be moved is to be stirred. we are often moved to tears, or to laughter. perhaps the deepest parts of us are moved to commune with something that transcends us. we move from within to without, and are carried from loneliness to connection.

No, things will not always stay this way, no matter how many times you have had to learn to not cling onto anything too tightly. Don't underestimate the human capacity for change. One morning you will wake up and give yourself permission to see things as they are. No, you really don't have to fear the person you are or are not without the things you grip onto (or that grip onto you). Yes, the shadows will give way when you bring yourself to face them. All they are is interrupted light. Yes, God is really really bent on your good. He cannot help Himself. Return to Him what you cannot keep and He will return you to Himself, over and over again. Finally, no, there is no loss in the opening of your palms to set things free, only gain you may not yet see.

i was moved by the teachers’ day ceremony today. the theme was ‘little things’. i often hear experienced teachers label beginning teachers as ‘still young and idealistic’, as if jadedness is a function of being in the system long enough. all it takes is time. cynicism is easy- reasonable even, given the constraints of the system. it is efficient, because it saves us emotional energy by lowering our expectations. but when unchecked, cynicism turns into bitterness and detachment, which serves nobody- not the teacher, her students, or the organisation. on the other hand, idealism, when unchecked, dismisses genuine struggles and denies the complexity of systems. what then is the middle way? maybe a hopeful realism? it doesn’t mean naively believing that everything can change overnight, nor does it mean resigning ourselves to nothing ever changing. it is honesty about the hardness of teaching, the fatigue, the constraints we come up against, held together with the intentionality in noticing, cherishing the things that recentre the humanness of teaching: moments of connection and breakthroughs with our students, the solidarity of colleagues, and honouring the voice within that calls us to something larger than ourselves. until the Big Things shift, these are the Little Things that sustain our hearts.

the more i think i know the more there is to know such is the soul that carries God only Wonder understands anything.

all of earth is crammed with heaven

Conversations of late tell me that so many of us feel the tension between who we are and who we want to be. But what does true self-acceptance look like? I’ve always been suspicious of those who say it means unconditional positive self-regard, for the danger is that it deifies the self and makes transformation unnecessary.

I think one part of self-acceptance entails the difficult work of embracing the shameful parts of our past and the parts of our current selves that still need some working on. It means seeing ourselves rightly as human and having compassion for our flaws — because grace has the final word and it is always at work in us. Which also means we must embrace a future self: the one that, actually, we were always called to be. It may be hard to believe, in our current states, that God Himself dreamed us up. But if we claim to stake our whole lives on what He says — then we better live as if this is true.

Self-acceptance means forgiving who I was, being at peace with who I am, and learning to live up to a higher, truer version of myself. We will spend our whole lives living into our true identities. This kind of self-acceptance demands that we shed every other unhelpful voice that tries to tell us who we are, even our own. It puts God in the centre of our experience of who we are, and not only makes transformation possible, but necessary.

a breath of fresh air at work today. i am drawn to the intersection between self and work, the space where inner work meets outer impact, where identity meets vocation, where working effectively demands that you show up fully as yourself. work is not just performance, but about wholeness—the self feeds and is fed by work. i believe in self-knowledge as the beginning, not the end point, and growth for the sake of others.

what does it mean to be a child again? when the topic arises, people often think about the innate qualities of a child - being completely reliant and dependent on the adults around her. we liken this to trusting God and relying on Him unquestioningly. but apart from that, i think to be a child is to simply be delighted in. a child's very being is the source of delight. she is not trying to be anything other than herself. unabashedly and beautifully, herself.

The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

I’ve been abandoning fiction for non-fiction/psychology books lately. My Instagram feed is a stream of self-improvement reels. What is it about self-help that draws millions in? I think the promise that these books, reels and podcasts offer is this: not only is change possible, but all you need for the life you want to create is already within you. You can indeed reprogramme the very person you are. It is quite possible to think yourself into someone new.

After all, who are we but the stories we tell ourselves? Identity is not fixed; it is a narrative, shaped over time by what we have experienced and chosen to repeat to ourselves. Some of these beliefs were handed to us before we even knew we had a choice; others we adopted to survive or to make sense of our world.

The thing is, you can choose, at any point in time, to rewrite the script and to let go of what no longer serves you. This kind of change requires a profound, daily courage to question your own beliefs and to let go of what has always kept you safe. It requires embracing uncertainty as possibility, and loss as space to grow. In other words, your new life will ask your old life to die. It is painful, but at least you will grow. You could also choose to stay the same—that would also be painful; it’s just death of a different kind.

three days ago, a colleague said to me over lunch, "God loves us into obedience." i've heard many variations of this statement, but in that moment i knew He was depositing something in me, spirit to spirit. i know that He loves me - in the same way that i know it's always freezing in the Arctic. it's a fact of life that has not quite yet become embodied knowledge. i know it, but has it truly changed how i live? do i know it in my bones? is it the ground i stand on? is it the lens from which i see everything else? if not, why not? shouldn't it be?

how would God like to be loved? as a Father - with trust, and a childlike hope beyond hope, that is neither naive nor timid. as a friend - a safe space, not with perfection or performance, but presence. as a groom - longed for, a love that chooses Him over and over and over again. i believe He seeks a heart that is always open and honest towards Him, however messy or brutal.

it's easy to forget who we are. He calls us sons and daughters, but we live like servants: anxious to perform, to earn some apparently elusive love and approval that is already freely given.

i sometimes feel like a wayward child who learns a lesson one day and forgets it the next. it is so easy for my human heart to turn to lesser loves. yet His love is not punitive... though frankly, in some ways, it would be easier if it was. then i could do something to repay Him, or to be right with Him. it would assuage my guilt, and i would owe Him nothing. neither is His love permissive - He certainly does not treat my disobedience lightly. if He did, He would be a nice God, not a holy one. love that permits everything spares the pain, but hinders growth. and so there are some lessons i must learn the hard way. but between my running away from Him, and desperate running towards Him eventually, He waits to be wanted. at the end of the day, as Peck said to me all those weeks ago, His love really brings all my wanderings home.

i suppose the most profound truth hides in plain sight. we think we know it, sing songs about it, speak about it, but until it reaches the part of our being that leads to transformation, we don't fully know it yet. i have nothing poetic to say, except that we really are loved! how simple, how true. i think maybe this is how God would like to be loved: to let Him love us into loving Him in return.

may. do not resist the unbecoming for it is possible to fall apart into something new. each day you start and end with surrender, a yielding to the call. though it costs you, you must say the daily yes to grace, to renewal by loss. refining is painful, but so is staying still; it is death of a different kind.

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