Two days with Rowan Williams, Jurgen Moltmann, David Ford, Miroslav Volf, Luke Bretherton, Dallas Willard and Saint Symeon The New Theologian!

My notebook has an amazing few pages. Illegible and hastily written scribbles bear testimony to an unbelievable week. Pages entitled Rowan Williams, Jurgen Moltmann, David Ford, Miroslav Volf, Luke Bretherton and Dallas Willard would be a lifetimes worthy listening but within a space of two days I struggled to get as much down on paper as I could.

It was Rowan Williams who talking on reclaiming hope, as a deep desire and yearning to be what God wants us to be, that tugged at something deep within me. Quoting Saint Symeon The New Theologian (949- 1022) he used Saint Symeon's prayer 'Come'

"Come, you who have become yourself desire in me,who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one."

RW's paraphrase was slightly different as he said "come you who have become desire in me, and want me to desire the unreachable you".


William's helped us to realise that with freedom and Christ shaped full humanity, there is an emptying of self, an aliveness through self giving and self forgetting. Making sense of this desire within us, we discover that letting go of our own agenda to take up God's is where God's own passion belongs.

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