God Is Alive

Working with Bristol Cathedral to create dialogue, reciprocal regard and mutual understanding between the Church and the Witchcraft, the Establishment and the Grassroots, the Old Paradigm and the New Paradigm was, as you can imagine, extremely difficult, full of prejudice on both sides, and ultimately deeply damaging to any hope of rooting my vocation for ministry within the Church.

If that’s not what you were hoping to read, then I assure you, it’s not what I was hoping I’d ever write. Or maybe you’re thinking, “well that’s obvious, you should have seen that coming!” If you’re on that side, then you can know: I have no regrets at all about trying my absolute best to heal the rift between the Church and the Witchcraft, to heal the rift between spirit and body, between holy and human, between man and woman, church and justice, one diocese at a time. It was a worthy dream, I’m glad I met it with dedication, determination and brazen courage. I needed it!

The time when Jesus spoke to me the most throughout the whole project was when I decided that I’d had enough of being underpaid and treated with suspicion by the lay staff and volunteers at the Cathedral. I knew in my heart that it was outside of basic self-respect to stay in the role. In those sad days of reckoning, Christ Jesus and Christ Magdalene were with me, telling me that the frontier of love, faith and hope was somewhere else, not in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel, not with the Cathedral. They prayed over me to let this dream go, before it broke me.

I chose to close God Is Alive down after it had been open for six months in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel. Despite over a year of preparation and planning, as well as staking my whole reputation as a community organiser, priestess, artist and musician on the promise of the project, there was no way to continue with my integrity in tact, or to guarantee that God Is Alive collaborators would be treated with respect. That decision was one of the hardest ones I’ve ever taken in my professional life; it was the right thing to do.

My favourite things about God Is Alive were: having a cup of tea in the LMC with people who had come in to talk to me about their love of GodS, their relief that someone in a church building was taking their belief seriously and not trying to change it; collaborating with Bristol Love Jam; standing up to the Cathedral stewards who tried to chastise a company of professional dancers for dancing on the pews; cocking a snook at every piece of pompous colonial statuary in the place; wailing to the goddess with my lyre and drum in the oldest part of the building, feeling the old ghosts of the building quake with fury; the support of The Very Revd Dean Dr Mandy Ford; the wonder, hope and sense of possibility that the project offered to people on both sides of the bridge.

Below are some of the promotional images designed by me for events that took place and some that I had to cancel, some bits from socials, and a great photo by Jo Bushell of me opening the doors to the Lord Mayor’s Chapel for the first time, after having been entrusted with a key.