Thomas Sharp (he / they) 🏳️‍🌈

I genuinely can’t fathom the right wing commentators looking at the French riots and then saying that western culture is dying. French political riots are one of the most important french contributions to western culture!

Academic life, like parish life, also involves lots of heavy lifting. Profoundly grateful for the college library team, and the first sweep of the library this year to clear space for the new books for our newly designed ministry courses!

Controversial liturgical opinion. The Psalms at Morning and Evening Prayer should be prayed in the Common Worship translation but according to the BCP 1662 Lectionary getting through the whole Psalter in a month. The Psalms make so much more sense prayed through from start to finish. ⚓️✝️

Deploy the Cappadocians!!!

To all my trans and gender divergent friends and to-be-friends… I love you, God loves you, you are precious and holy. And you are welcome anywhere that I am.

10/10 commentary. No notes.

No reason. Just joy and thanksgiving and love.

Opened a book to prepare for a seminar and this fell out of it. The bookmark I was given by the cathedral scribe when I became a chorister. 26 years ago is a long time!

Letter of the day (in the Times)

New ordinands on their first residential, and graduates being licensed as Readers in the Diocese of Canterbury. It’s been a good weekend at St Augustine’s!

Among other things, Christian patriarchalists are heretics and blasphemers to the faith they profess. They use bits from the letters of St. Paul to justify their misogyny, but he would be nauseated by both their behavior and their attitude.

As I said the other day, I think a restoration of rights is not enough. However it would be welcome indeed if we did have two political parties prepared to argue that attacks on our human rights are abhorrent. Not enough, but a significant advance on “we will actively work to eliminate you all”.

The RNLI is the closest you will ever get to actual Batman. When rescue is visibly, viscerally, obviously impossible; when the water is a smothering, thundering black wall and the wind is screaming straight from Hell; when you are absolutely going to die: someone’s hand pulls you out and you don’t.

The audible gasp in my classrooms when I tell students this about the “rapture” - amazing how many (particularly in Evangelical circles) still have this superstition as a standard part of their faith.

English autumn reminds me of living in San Francisco, but in reverse. Cold in the morning, hot in the afternoon… or the other way round. Either way, one needs a rucksack with a complete second outfit in it to get through the day.

Today’s to do list includes building the “Safeguarding Treasure Hunt” for our new students to do around the Abbey grounds during their induction day. Part of making fostering good safeguarding culture something people WANT to do, not just HAVE to do! ⚓️ ✝️

Keep praying for Mayanmar.

…and when Jesus and then St Paul were saying lots of things about love being the fulfilment of the law… they were deliberately teaching in continuity with the OT / Hebrew Bible.

Stock markets: “paraphrasing Jameson/Zizek/Fisher, it is easier to imagine AI destroying humanity than not being a good use of $1 trillion”

The public: "Create opportunities for us to engage with cathedrals and major churches on our own terms and within our existing cultural lexicon that enable us to benefit from and support them in ways that are meaningful to us." Also the public: "Don't do any of that." Cathedrals: 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️🤷 ⚓✝️

Before and after. A plant that was not thriving and was fleeing the neighbour’s tree cover has been removed, and about 4 wheelbarrows of passion flower that had infested the rest of the garden has been chopped back. Now surveying the drought damage in the back of the garden. 🌿

A serious democratic society simply cannot allow this. That's £72 million from just two men. (Both, until lately, based overseas). The average UK earner (full-time) would have to work for over 1,800 years to raise that much. It's a nuclear strike on any pretence at the equality of political power

Please pray for us at St Augustine’s as we welcome new students for induction days and study skills sessions over the next two weeks. And pray for the admissions staff still receiving applications! And for those applying to be our new full time tutorial colleague! @churchofengland.org

As someone #actuallyautistic and also as a theologian, I have made my opposition to assisted dying quite public, sharing many of the concerns of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But many of those who voted against it did so for very different reasons. Expect reworked “safeguards” in the next round.

Pray for all who were harmed that day, and in the wars that followed it. Theologian point: I know the prayer isn’t well written so that it sounds like we are telling God to reflect on God’s letting things happen… but just pray the spirit of the prayer! ⚓️✝️

A video statement from the RNLI chief exec about recent events and about the RNLI’s unchanging and single mission, to save lives at sea. rnli.org/news-and-med...

Well, today I have thrown in the towel and shaved my head, and it is SUCH an improvement. And I am also remembering a load of music I haven’t sung or heard since my childhood. Don’t know if the removal of the hair has let the music out!

Listened to Cameron Carpenter playing some Bach and now need a lie down.

just take a look at this pig ok

Because we are just as capable of being venal, selfish, unkind and stupid as anyone else. And, actually, for a Christian theologian, affirming our agency to fail to do good is fundamentally an affirmation of our shared humanity.

As a member of the University, I look forward to seeing how Cambridge respond to the exposé of James Orr’s participation in illegal activity with the Reform Party. I shall be simply astounded if he is allowed to remain an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Divinity.

BBC now reporting on Reform Party funding story www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Well, this is a marmalade dropper

A SUPERB response to channel 4’s “Is ADHD real?” and a sense of what the research actually shows the reality to be. #actuallyautistic blogs.city.ac.uk/needs/autism...

Holy God, the world is very loud, but far from me. You are silent, but always with me. Thank you for that. #actuallyautistic prayer for the day

Yet again... at the gym and young men are openly discussing using steroids and HGH. There's a real problem with male body dysmorphia and it is NOT getting better.

Your regular reminder that limiting children's social media access and "giving parents control" does not necessarily make children safer. Only 33% of those abused before 18 report that it was strangers. Of those who report non-contact abuse before the age 18, only 14% report it happening online.

Ok, let’s do novels now. Make a novel smaller. Modest Expectations.

Total banger at evensong today. The only annoying thing about officiating is that you have to maintain some sort of decorum whilst screaming this schmaltz! A happy feast of St Bartholomew to one and all! ⚓️✝️

A sitting Conservative MP using the word Yookay. Genuinely astonishing to me that visibly there is no warning sign, at all, will be heeded by loads of people at Westminster with a *direct stake* in this type of politics failing.

Anglican but… yeah totally! The church (at least from my generation) is a really openly neurodivergent place!

Is it wrong to say that I am really excited to read this book?

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Theologian: The water, cup and the one who holds them are all finite effects of the infinite goodness and perfection of God and so are precious, wonderful and luminous beyond measure, description or any attempt to diminish them.

If you are an academic still on X, you are facilitating a guy who aims to destroy you

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is unimpressed with THAT documentary about ADHD.

One of the things I love about English culture in particular (shared I think with the Scots and surpassed by the Welsh) is the capacity to express SO much disappointment and dissatisfaction with the world in such quiet and unshakeable ways.

In a phase of my research where I’m spending a LOT of time immersed in holocaust studies and post-holocaust jurisprudence. Even studying death I didn’t find I needed to boundary my consumption of media as much as I do at present. If its sad/angry, that capacity is full and I wont read it right now

Congratulations to Rhine as he takes up his teaching post at the College of the Transfiguration! Please pray for Rhine, for his family, and for his new students and colleagues in Makhanda!