St Paul's Cathedral

The contemporary church seems riven with controversies, particularly about sexuality, celibacy, and the role of women. Drawing deeply on the Bible, the early Church Fathers and the writings of Freud and Jung, Sarah Coakley argues that desire can be freed from associations of promiscuity and disorder, and we can forge a new positive, ascetical vision, founded in the disciplines of prayer and attention. Recorded in November 2015.

How can we learn to live wisely? The renowned theologian David Ford draws deeply on a lifetime of faith and study to explore the ways of wisdom, focusing particularly on ‘the dramatic and mysterious’ Gospel of John. In this talk he will offer reflective and practical insights into living wisely and well, rooted in the Spirit, and drawing also on contemporary poetry and music. David Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

Dave Tomlinson's new book puts forward the modest proposal of ‘reinventing God’ - shaking up our settled ideas of what God is, and where we might find him or her. He writes ‘After a lifetime of seeking to know God better, the most important thing I have discovered is that we cannot find God. God was never lost. And we were never lost to God. God is everywhere, named or unnamed, recognised or unrecognised, bidden or unbidden’. Recorded July 2015.

Too often we think of Easter as just one day, but in reality it’s the fifty day season during which we explore the disciples’ experiences of the risen Christ and the meaning of the Resurrection. From Mary Magdalene meeting Christ at the tomb on Easter Sunday to his great commission to the apostles to make disciples of all nations, they meet, eat with, touch and talk with Christ, seeing his wounds and hearing his voice. Lent and Holy Week are seasons when we remember the past, but the time we live in now is the time of the Resurrection. How can we enter into this supremely mysterious story?

Jesus enters into Jerusalem in triumph, and a week later he is dead. Holy Week is the great crisis of Christianity, which moves at terrifying speed from the crowds hailing him, to the Last Supper where he foretells his death, his anguished prayer in Gethsemane, and the shocking events of his betrayal, trial and execution. But it’s also true that these stories can become so familiar that we lose our sense of their revolutionary message about the nature of God. How can we make the great pilgrimage of Holy Week, following Jesus to the cross and the echoing silence of the tomb, in such a way as to experience these events afresh? Recorded March 2015.

Lent is the slow season of reflection, repentance, inwardness and change, founded in Jesus’ forty days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness. It survives in popular culture as a time to ‘give something up’, but what is the deeper path of taking time to make this inward journey, readying ourselves to live through Jesus’ betrayal, trial and death, and encounter the transforming mystery of the Resurrection? Recorded Feb 2015.

Rowan Williams will explore the meanings of Christmas, the darkness and strangeness of the story at the beginning of our faith as well as its message of eternal joy and hope. He will also offer suggestions about how we might reclaim Christmas for our spiritual lives. Rowan Williams is the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was formerly both Archbishop of Canterbury and Professor of Theology at Oxford University. Recorded 8 December 2015.

It’s all too easy to get the impression that faith is about creeds, doctrine, and knowledge - about mastering the ‘facts’ and having the ‘right’ answers. But Margaret Silf believes that faith is much more about mystery than mastery, and that living in the mystery allows us to shift our focus from religion to relationship – relationship with the Divine. Margaret Silf is a retreat leader and the author of bestselling guides to the spiritual journey. Recorded November 2014.

Can we ever encounter the Christmas stories as if for the first time? Stephen Cottrell tells the story backwards and from the perspective of some of the characters we don’t usually hear from or think of as Christmas people - the prophets Anna and Moses, the Innkeeper’s wife, Rachel who weeps for her children, as well as Isaiah, the shepherds, wise men, Joseph and Mary. Stephen Cottrell is the Bishop of Chelmsford. Recorded December 2014.

'In our search for God we are our own starting point.’ Rosemary Lain-Priestley, Dean of Women’s Ministry in the Two Cities area of the London Diocese, explores the spiritual necessity of looking our own experience in the face without glossing over the difficult bits, and how we can learn to see and be changed by the ordinary miracles we miss if we don’t pay attention to the daily. Recorded July 2014.