Text on black background with a thorn motif in the corner: Scene 2: Samuel talks with Ezekiel. Living with conflict theatre series. Faith in Grey Places

Living with conflict: A duologue between Samuel and Ezekiel

For lent 2022, I’m writing six duologues between Samuel and other people in the Bible, all on the theme of living with conflict.

The prophet Samuel, now deceased, converses with a series of guests in paradise, reflecting on their past experiences and what it was to live with conflict. In this, the second scene, he meets Ezekiel, the would-be priest who was exiled to Babylon, where he saw some pretty indescribable visions of God and wrote them down in a book of prophecy.

Samuel asks Ezekiel whether he’d rather be a prophet or a priest. Ezekiel answers that he’d be a mathematician.

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"My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people." The Prophet Ezekiel, Ezekiel 37:27

Christmas 2020: Week 2, Day 6: Temple

Pollution is incredibly unjust.

It’s so indiscriminate, so harmful, and its effects can be so long-lasting. Its point of impact can be far removed from its cause. When you stop and think about it, it’s hard not get angry. 

I don’t just mean environmental pollution. Harmful substances, ideas and actions can pollute our bodies, minds and communities. The biblical writers often spoke of wrong-doing as something that polluted the people and their land. 

(They also believed some perfectly healthy life experiences were polluting, but I won’t go into that now.)

If you ask me, the unifying thing about all forms of pollution, is that it steals people’s futures.

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Christmas 2020: Week 1, Day 6: Bones

I have a strange relationship with legal codes. 

On the one hand, I love seeing how they interact. Geeking out on Old Testament laws is one of my pastimes.

On the other hand, there is something very dead about written regulations. They are static. They always have cracks and limits. And legal documentation can be dry as a bone. 

But sometimes things need to die before they can really live. 

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