St Paul's Cathedral

Advent is the season when we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ at Christmas – a season for slowing down and reflecting on the great spiritual themes of light and dark, life and death. But while all around us the world speeds up in pre-Christmas rush, it can be difficult to find a place for stillness and contemplation. Malcolm Guite suggests one way is to read a poem each day and offers a seasonal reflection on this. Recorded in December 2015.

Music parallels and illuminates the experience of God in its changeability and fleetingness, and is one of the best ways we have to find the stillness in which a experience the sense of God’s presence. It can also provide a narrative for the cycle of life which allows our inexpressible feelings to be given voice at times of both sorrow and rejoicing. In reflection and conversation, renowned theologian Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP and award winning musician Andrew Carwood explore together what music can teach us about faith beyond words. Recorded in June 2015.

What kind of person do you want to be? It’s easy to go through life without ever really considering what we’re here for and who we want to be. How can we think not just about what we do with our lives, but who we’re becoming while living them? Steve Chalke, minister of Oasis Church Waterloo and the Founder of Oasis Trust, says that God calls each one of us to play our part in his plan for a just and loving world, and it’s finding our place in that story that will shape us and our lives into everything we were meant to be. Recorded in September 2015.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that in dark places and times it can be possible to begin to see the world and sense God’s presence around us in new ways - guiding us through things seen and unseen, teaching us to find our footing in times of uncertainty and doubt, and giving us strength and hope to face life’s challenges. American Episcopal priest, professor, author and theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor speaks about her new book 'Learning to Walk in the Dark'. Recorded in July 2015.

We all want to be blessed and to be a blessing to others, but we rarely stop to consider what that means. Familiar from every sort of liturgy, blessing is one of the most commonly used Christian terms, but one of the least understood. Andrew Davison suggests we begin to understand it through its place as a powerful theme running through the Bible, from the very beginning when God blesses Creation, to Jesus’s last act on earth, blessing the disciples as he ascends to heaven. Recorded in September 2015.

Michael Hampel talks about detective novelist Dorothy Sayers and the enduring resonance of her controversial radio play about the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King, exploring her fascinating theology of creativity, which connects the doctrine of the Trinity with the process of creating, making and sharing new things.

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.

Compassion is love-in-action, and it’s also been said that the best name for God is Compassion. Trystan Owain Hughes,Diocesan Director of Ordinands for the Diocese of Llandaff, draws on contemporary scientific thought, ancient wisdom, poetry, literature and film to explore compassion’s place at the heart of humanity, and what it might mean for our public, church and spiritual lives if we were to put it at the centre of our lives. Recorded October 2014.

May God protect me from gloomy saints! said St Teresa of Avila, the least gloomy of saints. Peter Tyler, Reader in Pastoral Theology and Spirituality at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, brings refreshing new light to the life and work of this great mystic and considers how it is that Teresa’s ‘language of the soul’ finds such resonance in contemporary spiritual life, including the worlds of psychology, meditation, mindfulness and personal development. Recorded June 2014.

St Benedict wrote his ‘rule of life’ – his practical and spiritual guide for living a good life – in the sixth century, and it has been a foundational document for Christian monasticism and spirituality ever since. Esther de Waal explores the ancient, gentle wisdom of the Rule of St Benedict in relation to the demands of modern living and the importance of balance between prayer, work and study.

There is a great tradition of finding God in the natural world, and many people who have given up on church appreciate the spiritual benefits of climbing a mountain or walking in the countryside. Graham Usher, Bishop of Dudley, encourages us to look at the world with fresh eyes – and so be enchanted by the wonder of God all around us. Recorded September 2014.