Yes, "Now". Here and now. Whatever's going on — isn't it just the big picture on pause?

Some things are frankly impossible. Like seeing a spider thread at the end of the garden without binoculars. Then — oh…!

Yes, there's SEO and all that, and this is a blog post after all. But I'm much more interested in making eye contact with the person at the bus stop. So, whatever.

News stories and memories colliding around rollercoasters, circuses and empty church buildings. Outrageous, glorious, both?

The Trinity is like a cloverleaf, I was told. Really? I thought, and proceeded to teach a lesson on hamsters.

The kinds of questions around mystery that end up drifting because they're not allowed to land — in this lifetime — without permission.

So, there's chips, and there's chips. Ask your great-grandparents, and then ask the nearest five-year-old. A crucial difference. Not just one.

The unfolding of Chapter Seventeen's architecture and approach feels compelling. I’m thinking aloud here about potential areas of research.

I'm thinking aloud about Chapter Seventeen, but you're welcome to listen or read, climb in or create, write or study, collaborate or unplug — and carry on doing all the same things in the real world…

You get knocked over by a wave. It was 5ft. No, sorry, 50ft. No, sorry, 50,000ft… or like Job. At what point is the hurt such that the scale isn't the point. Oh, and AI.

These things would only ever happen in church or in a crisis. (Like Tom Hanks with an ice skate — needs must. Sometimes. Other times it's inappropriate, dangerous, outrageous and misguided.) Hence my new fancy word, ship-wreck-less-ons. The kind of things any one of us might learn in Chapter Seventeen.

Fork handles. Scaffolding poles. Metal things and metaphors that might be in a box out the back, but I'll have to look. Was this what they meant by theological imagination?

The way I think about things like this — like Hezekiah's story — is like walking around a shed filled with metaphorical mechanisms. But then, my grandfather was a toolmaker.

Taking something or someone seriously means not hoovering in front of the football, and saving their drafts from the bin. And other things I've learned.

What in the world…? The Stage Door was only the beginning. There's an unfolding rabbit warren of possibilities by the look of it. According to the Keyholder, he doesn't know, and you'll need to see the Architect. But no one's seen the Architect.

More notes on my thinking around metaphor and metametaphor — and how metaphor can provide scaffolding for ideas, thought experiments and meaning.

So many things to say about the nature of reality as seen through plastic hammers for babies and how teachers — like, God, for example — teach.