Feeling flat - A reflection on Body, Mind, Spirit by OTN Patron Barbara Glasson
Rev Dr Barbara Glasson is a Methodist Minister currently teaching pastoral theology at the Queens Foundation in Birmingham. As the founder of The Bread Church in city centre Liverpool, she has a passion for the transformation of the church in ways led by people who have experienced discrimination and exclusion.
Barbara has written a number of books, including The Exuberant Church: Listening to the Prophetic People of God, which reflects on the process of ‘coming out’ as both profoundly human and deeply of God, and those who experience this as prophetic voices who invite us into a new way of understanding mission and the Church.
Her latest book is Reflections on the Water, a daily resource for the season of Lent, drawing on Barbara's recent time as the President of the Methodist Conference in Britain, her insights from around the world, her interfaith work in Bradford and her experiences during lockdown in Derbyshire.
PHOTO: Alex Baker Photography
SAVE THE DATE: We will host a Q&A with Barbara Glasson on Thursday 20th May 2021 7-8pm on Zoom. Watch this space for details or register for our e-news.
FEBRUARY is LGBT+ History Month, an annual celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans & non-binary history. This year’s theme is Body, Mind, Spirit - We’ve asked our Patrons and Trustees to share their thoughts on this theme, starting with our Patron Barbara Glasson, former President of the Methodist Conference in Britain:
For the last year I have been rather flat. I don’t mean depressed or downcast, I mean I have become flat.
I have been flattened onto a screen by Zoom and Whatsapp, I have lost a dimension, I am no longer rounded. My fourteen-month-old grandson thinks I exist on a phone screen, that I am a phone screen, he kisses me on the screen.
As a flat person I have new powers. I can, if I wish, be in Scotland and Pakistan at the same time. I can fly around my own house and view it like a bird. I can chat with my friend who is in quarantine in New Zealand whilst teaching a whole classroom of students, who are not in a room and I can even talk to the Archbishop of Antioch in my Derbyshire attic. I am almost omnipotent.
I am becoming quite used to my life as a flat person. I am getting quite used to other people being flat too. They are much less annoying in flat form, I can mute them, turn them off or mysteriously lose internet connection when I’ve had enough. They don’t smell or fart or give me diseases when they are flat. Flat people can even hook up for a date without having to pay for a meal or endure a boring film. Flat people can go to work in their slippers, drink wine from coffee cups and shop in flat shops. Flat people can even go to church whilst sitting on the settee playing Lego with the kids. Flat life can be very busy - flatly, packed!
It’s just that I’d rather be round! I’d rather be able to give young Oliver a great big granny cuddle. And I’d very much like to sit in the classroom with the hoards of the unwashed and listen to the questions they are actually asking, and I would really want to turf out of bed on a Sunday morning and sing out loud with Doris and Monica. Humans can manage pretty well flat, but round is better - bodies, minds and spirits need to be three dimensional, need to be rounded.
And what’s the point of being a human being, if we can’t touch, caress, hold, cry, mess up or really annoy each other? How can we live on this beautiful round globe of an Earth, if we can’t dig the soil or wonder at the starlit sky? How dull life would be if we were all just holograms or pixels.