Jo Inkpin Blog - Blessed Imp

on Oxford and Gerard Manley Hopkins

14/11/2022

I don’t often think of Oxford - though I spent a total of eight happy years (out of my first thirty), on and off, in and around it - but, when I do, it is often triggered by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Maybe it is because I find in Hopkins a fellow soul - both in the way faith was for him both life-giving and a confinement, and also in his longing and creative expressions of another, and transcendent, world, drawing on wisdom from the past and the ‘book of nature’ of present and in-breaking creativity. Oxford at its best can be like that - not for nothing did Matthew Arnold famously name it ‘that sweet city with its dreaming spires’ that needs not summer ‘for beauty’s heightening’...

singing hope beyond shame

6/11/2022

Wonderful to have Rachel Collis back with us today at Pitt Street Uniting Church, singing songs from her new album Mayfly and sharing spiritual insights together from our faith journeys.

at Chequerboard

6/11/2022

It was an immense delight, and honour, to meet and share tea, conversation, stories and inspiration with the wonderful Peter de Waal - such a gorgeous person and one of our great LGBTIQ+ elders.

Peter and his equally terrific partner Bon enabled so much over the years, not least the vital public breakthrough with the ABC Chequerboard program in 1972 - including the famous first ‘gay kiss’ on Australian TV. Bon’s subsequent sacking as a church secretary was also but one part of the religious and other repression that then issued, but his and Peter’s willingness to stand up and speak out in those dark days has helped bear such fruit and should continue to empower us today. Watching the original Chequerboard program with Peter was deeply moving, particularly in hearing Bon speak so powerfully (as a then would-be Anglican priest, cruelly treated by his Church - not only in Sydney - which still has to grow up into humanity) reflecting life-giving faith as well as life and identity, and in hearing much more from Peter of accompanying stories, complexity and background. Without heroes like Peter and Bon, some of us would not be here today and certainly where and how we now are. Huge thanks therefore continue to be right and proper (as they say in some liturgies) and I certainly hope we may all meet again.

With many thanks again to '78er and fellow Pitt Streeter Meredith Knight for her friendship, inspiration and liaison in bringing us together.

help the queer angels fly!

1/11/2022

lighting up with queer angels with Lismore

31/10/2022

Such a delight to be partnering with renowned community artists Jyllie Jackson OAM and her Lismore LightnUp team on the Queer Angels project - part of our Faith @ World Pride initiatives. Two of the larger Queer Angels are now in production in Lismore - despite the latest bout of flooding - part of our Faith @ World Pride initiatives at Pitt Street Uniting Church Sydney with Equal Voices and other faith and community partners.

two new hymns for this year's Trans Day of Remembrance

19/10/2022

One day I hope Australian Churches (and all elsewhere) will actively celebrate, support and promote gender diverse people - essentially passive, patchy ‘inclusion’ is so not good enough (as the UCA and the best parts of the ACA really should know by now). In the meantime, I encourage those who will, and can, to use the resources trans and other gender diverse people are producing - and personally, for the upcoming Trans Day of Remembrance this year (a Sunday - so no excuses church folk - 20 November) this year, I offer two new hymns (to well known traditional tunes) and a couple of the prayers I’ve created in the past
(a few more bits too at https://www.transspirit.org/celebrating-gender-diversity...)
- but hey, this is an opportunity to talk to trans and gender diverse folk and do the work of catching up with our gifts and genius, including so much that is life-giving in published form - Tina Beardsley, Austen Hartke, Shay (Shannon) Kearns, Rachael Mann, J Mase III, just to name a few for a start. Celebration and solidarity with trans people is part of the transformation and liberation of us all :-)

flourishing together

19/10/2022

It is (sadly) interesting to me that, whilst I am a lifelong Anglican, and one with decades of helping lead Anglican teaching and formation, my mother Church tradition rarely asks me to contribute to ways out of its neurotic obsessions with sexuality and gender, whereas others in other spaces do (‘a prophet is not without honour’ and all that?).

Here is a latest offering, with thanks to The Sisters of the Good Samaritan for the opportunity to offer a brief perspective on how flourishing LGBTIQA+ lives flow out core elements of Catholic wisdom down the centuries - not least in considering family, the Body, natural law, the imago dei, and God’s grace in Creation.
For:
‘this is about reclaiming Catholic emphases on the centrality of God’s grace in the diverse expressions of creation and incarnation, rather than imposing false ideas of sin and shame on those who are actually gifts to help lead us into greater life together.
LGBTIQA+ people of faith do not need welcome, or inclusion, for we are already at home with God, as family members and part of Christ’s Body, wholly natural, and imaging the divine in our diverse ways. What we do need is space to flourish, and thereby we can enable others to flourish also.’ See link to the article iFlourishing Together' in The Good Oil here - or text below...

hearing First Nations call to genuine treaty

19/10/2022

Among the several fine contributions to last Saturday’s ‘Voice and the Church’ gathering was that by the Revd Dr Rangi Nicholson, Assistant Priest of Rangiatea Church, the oldest Māori Anglican Church in Aotearoa, and author of ‘Treaty, Church and Nation’, reminding us that though our own struggles are specific they are also common and enriched by solidarity with others across the globe. He spoke powerfully of what needs doing from Māori and Anglican experience in Aotearoa New Zealand - including how, without meaningful resources empowerment is limited, and how the Church needs to be held accountable for benefitting from oppression. There is so much, he rightly identified, that the Church needs to do in terms of recognition, repentance, restitution and reparation.
His three future hopes are pertinent to struggles in Australia too, and beyond:
1. More commitment by the Church to truth telling and ‘the whole story’ - with repentance and reparations
2. the Church needs to put its own house in order re authentic partnership whilst offering constructive critique of Government’s commitment to the UN rights of Indigenous People, reimagining a more just Church and nation.
3. the need for the Church to contribute boldly and with love to a new constitution - to visioning and values clarification for the future of the country - as part of restorative justice
As he says:
Whilst Treaty, in the experience of Aotearoa, can be a ‘sacred covenant’ allowing new life and renewed attention, there needs to be much more - for:
‘Restorative justice needs to become a priority’ - led with young people...

Voice and the Church

15/10/2022

Lovely to be back in an Anglican Church in Sydney today - actually conveniently my local one - for such a vital gathering today, organised by Scarred Tree Indigenous Ministries. #VoiceAndTheChurch

ecumenical blessings

13/10/2022

Wonderful this afternoon, at Pitt St UC, to host pastors from the Asia-Pacific region of the EKD (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) - a federation of Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestant churches - talking First Nations recognition, progressive theology, climate change, ecumenical fruitfulness and other good things
A beautiful gift of a scarf made by an Indian women’s project of the ecumenical Bangalore United Theological College was also received - a lovely blessing signifying love and faith across our global connections - not to mention chocolate too!