I’m in my primary school hallway Council coloured walls and closed doors Between classrooms standing on coffee stained floors A gateway
Lessons are in session but I’ve got the principal’s blessing A hall pass of sorts permission to explore To wander and ponder and search for more An adventure
I’ve never been out of place in these liminal spaces Always sat on the edges always outside the fences Finding friends as I walk this way – a kid sent out, another running late Familiar faces
Did I mention I stole that hall pass while in detention? An open store cupboard door I just couldn’t ignore It was a dance between chance and circumstance Divine intervention
So when they try to keep you confined When they insist you must fit and colour inside the lines Resist it and show them a different existence A life undefined
In a talk for Oasis Church Bath, I talk about the concept of ‘reimagining’, drawing on biblical concepts and examples to inspire us as we think about how to reimagine our plans, beliefs and expectations when things in life perhaps don’t go as we’d hoped or expected.
This spoken word poem below was inspired by this photo, taken by my wife while we were on a weekend away recently.
It became more than a photo and took on a deep meaning for me – how sometimes just smiling and living fully are acts of rebellion against all the despair and hopelessness we can sometimes experience in our lives or read about on the news. Not many of us have had an easy time in the last few years, and sometimes it’s just lovely when a moment of joy like this is captured.
I hope it inspires you to be you, to recognise joy when it finds you, to live fully, and to love your imperfections and quirks! The full words to the poem are below the film if you need them.
I uploaded a new profile pic today, The one I made you take. The one where I sat with my back to those cool wooden slats and you made me laugh, Reminiscing about that clip from that show on Netflix. I realised how brilliant it is to exist. How existence is resistance to all the shit-ness I’ve witnessed, My smiling an uprising an insistence of aliveness.
I uploaded a new profile pic today, The one I made you take. No I’m not holding a mic and it’s not with my wife or my kids, Ok I don’t have any but if I did, They wouldn’t be in a picture or a visual description of me, They wouldn’t define who I am or who I can be, don’t you see? I’m enough when alone I have worth on my own.
I uploaded a new profile pic today, The one I made you take. Light is shining right above my head, A reminder a spotlight on the good times ahead, Or the divine guidance and kindness that’s been mine every step. There’s a part like a shard that’s pierced the darkness, Just a shimmer just a glimmer but it still softens the starkness.
I uploaded a new profile pic today, The one I made you take. It shows my tattoos including the one that’s still new, Like me not yet healed and it’s partly concealed its design not quite yet fully revealed. If you zoomed in you’d see wrinkles and dimples, crinkles and pimples, imprints on my skin, But these marks are battle scars I’ve made my peace with.
I uploaded a new profile pic today, The one I made you take. And okay I’ll spend way too much of my day, having a play in Photoshop But I won’t change, rearrange or display what I’m not. Maybe a filter is needed, some aligning and refining, Some shifting and lifting and colour defining. But this picture will still be the real me, Both who I am now and who I’m trying to be.
