The Chaplaincy of Joyful Abandon

Poetry, gender, illness and God

Welcome to the Chaplaincy of Joyful Abandon, where we explore the quirky and paradoxical ways in which we become fully alive.

Today I am joined by Rachel Mann, a poet, liturgist, short story writer and novelist,  a heavy metal reviewer, a theological writer and philosopher, a broadcaster and a lecturer. Rachel is an Anglican Priest and Area Dean in Manchester Diocese, and in this Podcast she tells how her conversion to Christianity and call to the priesthood were harder and more courageous than the transition she undertook in her early twenties from being a man to becoming a woman.

I sought out a conversation with Rachel when I heard her say: ‘With poetry, I know I’m in the place I’m called to be, because I’m always about to mess up’. Her conversation takes us beyond the fear of making a mess of things, and relishes the feeling of being out there on a precipice, at the very edge of what we can do.

Rachel describes herself as having died many deaths: dying to being male and the consequent loss of male-privilege (it is fascinating to hear her awareness of micro-aggressions against women, having lived without those micro-aggressions in the early part of her life); the loss of good health and the cost of chronic illness; the loss of a parent; the loss of a comfortable life disrupted by a divine calling, and in it all, the joy of becoming oneself, and of taking risks for love and for grace.

Rachel Mann’s books include, Dazzling Darkness: Gender, Sexuality, Illness and God (2nd edn 2020); Fierce Imaginings, shortlisted for the international Michael Ramsey prize for theological writing; her debut poetry collection, A Kingdom of Love; and debut novel, The Gospel of Eve.

Cover Art, by Mark Harris

Music, ‘Swilo Yini’ by Soweto Melodic Voices, from their CD Harambee, 2014.

Welcome to the Chaplaincy of Joyful Abandon. Today we are considering the joys of not-knowing: not having to possess polished knowledge, or to defend our position. Instead we can come in with an ‘innocent eye’, to use John Ruskin’s phrase, and thereby see more truly who or what is before us, and engage more vitally with life around us.  What a tonic for perfectionism! We are let off the hook of having to know, and present our knowledge, perfectly: an effort that anyway causes us to screen out whatever does not fit our understanding.

Bringing us her enjoyment of not-knowing is Sarah Woods, herself a polymath: a librettist, award winning playwright, teacher, facilitator, public intellectual, and performer, who works with people with lived experience of homelessness and of asylum, and is an active ecological and political campaigner. For Sarah, not-knowing is a practice: allowing ourselves to be in flux rather than occupying fixed ways of seeing. She applies this practice to learning from her ‘rescue dog’, and to the pitfalls of White privilege. Her insights present parallels to what Zen Buddhists refer to as the beginner’s mind, though it is the work of Victorian art critic, writer, and polymath John Ruskin on whom she draws, along with latest research in neuroscience and the predictive brain.

Sarah’s works for the BBC include Borderland, Powerout, an adaptation of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, and of Jane Goodall's classic In the Shadow of Man. She is currently dramatising The Limits to Growth report for BBC Radio 4.

Cover Art, by Mark Harris

Music: ‘Swilo Yini’ by Soweto Melodic Voices, from their CD Harambee, 2014.

Welcome to the Chaplaincy of Joyful Abandon where today we are talking about ritual. Ritual sees us through the changes in life, from such small transitions as walking into a café, through to the large transitions of saying goodbye to loved ones, ushering in the rain or welcoming the return of daylight. In particular, we are exploring in this episode whether ritual might help us to speed up how we change, given our climate crisis: rapid change on our part is now a matter of survival.

I am Harriet Harris, Theologian and Chaplain to the University of Edinburgh. With me is Andrew Simms, author, political economist and campaigner, who has been called by New Scientist magazine a 'master at joined up progressive thinking’.

Andrew is co-director of the New Weather Institute, coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, and a research associate at the University of Sussex. He was a co-author and publisher of the original Green New Deal in 2008. Andrew devised ‘Earth Overshoot Day,’ marking when in the year we start living beyond our ecological means and, with Prof Peter Newell, proposed the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty, now a major international campaign. He also coined the term ‘Clone Towns’ describing the homogenisation of high streets caused by chain stores. His books include Cancel the Apocalypse, Ecological Debt, The New Economics, Tescopoly, and Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth? His latest, Economics: A Crash Course, is the first beginners guide written from a plural, new economics’ perspective, co-authored with David Boyle. Andrew’s other current campaigns include Badvertising – to stop adverts fuelling the climate emergency, and Car Free Mega Cities. And he is editor and contributor to a collection of ‘modern folk tales for troubling times’, described by Caroline Lucas as like sitting round a campfire hearing stories from your favourite people. This book is compiled for our time of climate crisis and pandemic, and you can find the link to it in the write-up for the podcast. And we are offering a free copy to the winner of this podcast’s challenge, so listen out for what you have to do to