Author: Susan Jones
Publisher: Independently published February 2022. 158 pages

Susan Jones is a Presbyterian minister who brings to her ministry the gifts of poetry and musical composition. This book offers us both lyrics and liturgies. Like anyone who writes resources such as these, she writes from a perspective, a particular understanding. Jones clearly owns her position as theologically progressive. 

Her progressivism influences her writing and composition. The clarity of her position and how it is expressed may inform our choices about whether or not to buy this book. We so often read only the theology and commentary we agree with and that is a shame. It behoves us to engage with thoughts, arguments and positions that are respectfully different from ours. 

Jones advocates that we see the world as it is. If she were still writing this book she would perhaps have illustrated this by referring to the photographs just released from the James Webb telescope, images from the infancy of the Cosmos itself. She writes of the wondrous complexity of the atomic substructure of matter which we had no knowledge of until recently.

Several hundred years ago we came to the realisation that the earth is not the centre of the universe. Yet we have persisted in thinking of ourselves as at the centre of things. In regard to the health of our planet, this has been close to ruinous.

Jones writes of her dismay in embracing the Season of Creation in finding that all the recommended hymns celebrated what we take from the world and not what we gift or nurture in it. She writes poetically of nature in itself unfolding. 

She writes for a range of occasions, some fixtures of the Church’s year, some responding to particular circumstance, such as the terrorist attack in Christchurch. On that following Sunday many of us leading worship had to work hard to find the right words to gather people and speak of our grief, loss, anger and fear. Her words for gathering and blessing on that day were clear and focussed.

Jones has a concern for the dignity and inclusion of LGBTIQ people in church and community. She has written several prayers on this theme and for occasions such as Pride month and Transgender Memorial Day. I applaud her prompting us to be truthful, honest and respectful about the variety of human experience.

Finally I applaud her courage. She asks readers if they cannot use the whole of a prayer or hymn as written, then why use it at all? Worship leaders often self-censor. I recommend this brave and poetic work.