Threads of My thinking
My work grows from ideas that I find vivid, expansive, and endlessly generative.
Through writing, world-building, thought experiments and imaginative projects, I inhabit the questions, tensions and unexpected connections that fascinate me. And I attempt to create forms of accessible 'scaffolding' to engage others so we can explore collaboratively.
This page is an evolving map of that imaginative territory: the recurring questions, concepts and conceptual threads that run through my work.
Last updated: 8 Oct 2026
What exists, and what can be experienced, before we have words for it?
BEFORE LANGUAGE
I am exploring biblical examples, including Genesis 1 and higgaion in the Psalms, alongside questions about memory, experience, sensation and relationship. What precedes our descriptions? What remains when words are inadequate? And what happens when familiar language gives us the impression that we have understood something we may not yet have heard?
Do we notice when some kinds of value count, and others don't?
SIGNIFICANCE
Data is one example. Doctrine might be another. So might efficiency, productivity, institutional priorities or financial returns. These can all matter. But what happens when our ways of measuring and organising things begin to determine what we recognise as valuable? I am interested in the quieter, less easily classified goods — including relationships, experiences and forms of significance that may not be interchangeable with whatever a system produces.
WHEN SYSTEMS MEET PEOPLE
What happens when systems designed to help, organise or understand people encounter actual human beings?
I am fascinated by the points where categories, procedures and structures begin to fail us — or where they work so smoothly that we stop noticing what they exclude. My writing and world-building explore the tensions between safety and encounter, efficiency and significance, fluent communication and genuine understanding. Who is accountable when a system's apparent success conceals something important about what is happening to the people within it?
What happens when a familiar image becomes a way of thinking?
METAPHOR
LIke our families have ways of doing things and talking about things that bear traces of shared events and moments, our minds work like this too. My writing involves drawing from anecdotes and examples that have shaped my understanding, as well as suggesting new hypothetical versions that could throw light.
Can new forms of scaffolding allow us to explore what our existing frameworks make difficult to see?
SCAFFOLDING
Studying philosophy gave me ways to wander around the thoughts and images of my faith with new confidence. I continue to experiment with conceptual, imaginative and practical scaffolding — from metaphors and thought experiments to inhabitable fictional spaces. These structures are not the reality they help us explore. They may be useful precisely because they can be questioned, rearranged, extended or taken down.
Is the Bible more than what we have been taught to do with it?
THE BIBLE
The Bible is often presented through preaching, persuasion, polemic and competing claims to certainty. I am interested in what happens when we take it seriously beyond those uses — following the trajectories of its stories, the architecture of its connections, and its invitations into relationship with God. I also wonder whether our changing habits of language and interpretation can make aspects of scripture harder to hear, even when the words remain familiar.
HEARING AND MISHEARING
I am interested in what happens between an utterance and its reception. We may hear the literal words but miss their history, experience or relational significance. We may also hear more than was said, importing assumptions that prevent us from recognising what is actually being communicated. I am exploring these possibilities through language, AI, everyday conversation and scripture — including the possibility that what we fail to hear may be something essential.
What can we fail to hear, even when we understand the words?
ENCOUNTER AND CONTINGENCY
I am exploring what it means to meet, trust, create and participate in circumstances whose outcomes cannot be guaranteed. Structures and safeguards matter, but so do vulnerability, freedom, responsibility and the possibility of being changed. Through theological reflection and imaginative practice, particularly Chapter Seventeen, I am interested in what happens when we create room for encounters rather than simply arranging predetermined experiences.
Can we make room for genuine encounter without controlling what it becomes?
ARTIFICIAL CERTAINTY
I'm interested in how certainty is constructed, communicated and received — particularly when fluent language, authoritative presentation or familiar frameworks make something appear more securely understood than it actually is.
AI offers some striking examples, but the question extends into institutions, theology, personal convictions and everyday relationships. What happens when we mistake a convincing articulation for knowledge, or a confident interpretation for the reality it claims to describe?
And might our confidence in what we think we've heard sometimes prevent us from hearing something essential?
When does the appearance of knowing become a substitute for understanding?
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