A new beginning...
Thank you to everyone who has just joined us.
. Welcome. It’s lovely that you’ve come.
And I so appreciate your presence here.
One of the things that’s always good about these moments is that it is an invitation for me to think about what this Substack is about, what’s it for, and how can I make it a more effective means of changing the world.
Meantime, so many things are changing in my life.
This electric wheelchair is just one of them…
A lot of work I’ve been doing on myself lately has been about accepting that I’ve become disabled…
Wondering what I’m capable of, and trying to extend it…
And at the same time trying to accept the things I can no longer do.
I’m going to Iona tomorrow, to perform Queen Jesus in the Abbey.
It’s a journey you don’t think about too much when you’re able-bodied, but is painful and difficult when you’re not.
I don’t know how it’ll work out with this amazing machine.
But I’m about to find out….
I have a play running in Sydney just now, by the way.
Thirty-Six, it’s called, a piece I’ve co-written with Bayley Turner.
Watch out for it.
Get a ticket if you can…
Something else that’s changed is that people seem to be far more interested in 3 minute videos than in pieces of my writing.
But because the videos will eventually get pieced together to tell the story of my life, I want to keep them here.
I want to tell my life story not because it’s interesting in itself, but because of the light it shines on the extraordinary changes we’re all living through.
And maybe it helps us all to understand better what’s going on.
I also want to share my past work with you.
And this may be a good reason for paying for your subscription, because I’ll be putting this behind a paywall.
Lately I discovered the very first play I sent out to someone in the hope it might be performed.
It’s called ALL YOU NEED and I wrote it maybe in 1988.
I sent it to BBC Radio Scotland drama, and it led to a commission.
A radio play called DESERT PLACES, inspired by my first visit to Iona in 1982.
I’ve digitised the cassette recording, and I’ll make that available behind the paywall when I’m ready to.
Another thing I’ve been doing has been to share my daily bible readings.
This has been a bit of a bad move maybe because the Christian Bible has such a terrible reputation…
And Christianity in general is being used as a weapon against LGBTI+ people like myself.
And that makes it all the more important to reclaim it as stool for human liberation.
The thing is that I’m convinced there’s a spiritual dimension to our lives, and it’s important we respect and pay attention to it.
Capitalist society operates on a material level, and I think that’s one reason there is so much deep desperate suffering in the world.
So while I’ll keep posting here to “The Light Inside”
I also propose a new Substack called
A QUIET MOMENT IN THE MORNING.
I’ll be describing it a bit like this:
“I have a practice of pausing every morning before the day begins.
I look out my window.
I look at the world around me and try to see it through fresh eyes.
I read a portion of a sacred text and think about it and reflect on it as I look out over the world.
I find it calms and grounds me.
I’ve been sharing this practice with my friends,
and now I want to share it with you. “
What I meant to do is get it up and running before leaving for Iona, but there’s so much happening right now I haven’t had time.
So let me know if you like the sound of it
(or if you don’t!)
And watch this space.
Iona is what they call a “thin place”.
Somewhere where there’s not so strong a barrier between earth and heaven.
I may not want to post for the next 7-10 days; I may not be able to; and it may not be appropriate for me to do so.
So don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me.
But please wish me well…