By Jo Clifford (From Seeds April – May 2025)

I wrote this poem to go with Chris Ferric’s portrait of me, for it to be exhibited in the No Vacancy gallery in Melbourne, Australia (no-vacancy.com.au).

This is my face

An old face

In a world that fears death

& tries to ignore it

& so fears old age

& tries toignore it too

But it won’t go away

Just as I won’t go away

This is my face

A trans face

In a world that wants men to be men & women to be women

& tries to suppress

Those of us who cross the line

Those of us who defy the frontiers

& wants us to disappear

But I won’t disappear

I love my femaleness

& I love my maleness too

Because I am old enough

To have known much hatred

& old enough to have overcome it.

So I love my aging

& death is my sister

& life my lover & friend

---

Chris Ferric wrote:

“Title/year of artwork: Saint Jo, Scribe of Our Souls / 2023-2024.

Medium: Oil and brass leaf on wood.

This painting is for Jo, my friends, my communities.

Jo is disabled, sexy, trans, old, and worthy of the care and attention required to paint an oil portrait made up of many caresses of her face and body.

Jo was ordained by The Order of Perpetual Indulgence. She is surrounded by a halo of golden nibs gifted by Brother Bimbo. This portrait bears scars from mishandling by a major state gallery. They aren’t hidden, they are part of her story, in gold.

Jo is manifest fully: father and grandmother; Elder; playwright; performer; Queen Jesus; St Jo, Scribe of Our Souls.”

---

I love them for saying that. I love the picture.

Seeing it in the gallery recently was the first time I had actually seen it as a real artwork. It sent shivers up and down my spine. There is something utterly miraculous in the energy of this picture and the life that shines out of it.

Chris has taken the most traditional art form imaginable and, with astonishing skill, subverted it on so many levels.

The portrait has just won a major art award. And I’m happy to see that Chris’s wonderful artistry is beginning to get the respect and appreciation it so deserves.

And as for the painting itself: It is so queer and so glorious it takes my breath away.

Jo Clifford was ordained an Elder of AUC on 23 March.

By Mandy Rathjen (From Seeds April – May 2025)

Dear Augustine friends,

I wanted to say a heartfelt thankyou for all the love, understanding and good company over all the years since Mum and Dad (Ian and Elizbeth Rathjen) first joined the Augustine community.

Augustine was central to their social and spiritual lives in Edinburgh and has been a constant through all the years when Dad was a carer for Mum and managing his own various health conditions with characteristic positive pragmatism.

We were held as a family in the weeks and months before Dad died and in the Thanksgiving Service, with all the usual Augustine behind-the-scenes thoughtfulness and action.

I first came to Augustine to help Mum and Dad on coffee duty about eight years ago, and with nice circularity I was ‘retrained’ this month to come back onto the coffee rota. I may now be almost trusted to operate the dish washer and the coffee machines, which were Dad’s domain, but his legacy on the finance committee, new membership groups, Bible readings, and enthusiastically taking part in all the quizzes, concerts and tea parties is his alone.

Love and peace, Mandy

Mandy adds that Ian had been editor of his school magazine and was happy writing the occasional article for Seeds. So, it’s fitting that we include here some of the memories of Ian gathered by his family for the Service of Thanksgiving, held at AUC on 7 January this year.

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If starting not at Dad’s birth but at his 90th birthday celebration in April of 2024 seems all a bit back to front, that may be true.

But that event was Dad in his element: smartly dressed, hosting a gathering, and addressing an audience with a well-prepared speech; that, and there being a big cake. There was, throughout his life, time for cake… biscuits… but, most importantly, pudding, without which no meal was truly complete and for which, to the consternation of the medical profession, he claimed to have an extra tummy. He was lucky in marrying Elizabeth, who didn’t have a sweet tooth but diligently cooked a multitude of sweet treats for nearly 60 years.

Dad was born in 1934 and grew up in Tolworth at the south-west edge of London, the first baby to be baptised at Tolworth Congregational [later, URC] Church. His parents had been very much involved in getting it built.

This is where he met Elizabeth, and they got engaged on a church holiday to Norway. His notable performance of ‘King Rat’ in the church pantomime (pictured right) had the dubious success of reducing the front row of small children to terrified tears, to the acute embarrassment of his teenage children. He had to ‘tone it down’ for the next performance.

“Dad sailed across the Channel, which showed the adventurous spirit of the times”

Dad was not infrequently in trouble as a boy, a symptom of an active and enterprising mind. He bought doughnuts on the way to school and sold them at a premium at the school gate. Sadly, this entrepreneurial initiative was frowned upon by the headmaster. He set up a fully timetabled model railway in the attic and would often annoy his Mum, saying he couldn’t come for tea until the 6.20pm had left the station.

London was a significant part of Dad’s life, from childhood shopping trips to working in Whitehall, and then for so many years visits to the opera at the London Coliseum that he and mum enjoyed.

Rivers were also important to him. As a teenager he built a canoe and a punt in his garden. He and friends travelled up and down the Thames on many weekends, with Elizabeth cycling along the tow path with a bag of sandwiches. In his 20s, Dad sailed across the Channel with his brotherin-law Roger, which showed the adventurous spirit of the times.

He and Elizabeth began married life living in an old mill above the river Waveney, a basic home but a happy time. Having excelled at the London School of Economics, he was working as an accountant in rural Norfolk – a job he enjoyed, visiting many local businesses, exposing accountancy irregularities, saving up, and looking ahead to being able to buy a house and start a family. Accountancy was to take him into the Civil Service and, from there, to become General Secretary of the Civil Service Benevolent fund, a post he enjoyed until retirement.

Service was important to Dad in his working life but also running the youth fellowship at church, and acting as a magistrate in Kingston upon Thames for about 20 years, ultimately chairing the bench, and the Probation service committee. He was very committed to developing probation services and worked almost fulltime hours in this voluntary capacity for many years. This was really Dad’s education and insight into the lives of many people less privileged that he had been. His attitudes and view of the world evolved, and this openness to new ideas and willingness to rethink remained a positive quality throughout his life.

He was a natural teacher, and latterly this was exemplified in the new membership classes at Augustine, which he helped to lead with Fiona for over ten years. Even in his last year, he attended the carbon literacy course at AUC and thought carefully about the need to change habits.

But if service was important, the family was more so, and while Mum very much ran the house, Dad was a keen reader of bedtime stories, the homework champion, a keen player of French cricket in the garden, and never too easy to beat at card or board games.

He had a keen mind and memory, which he liked to keep busy and agile. He sent off The Telegraph newspaper’s prize crossword every Saturday, even into his 90th year.

Dad was proud that his great, great, great grandfather, a young disinherited German farmer’s son, arrived in Leith and ended up married to the Customs officer’s daughter, living in the grand Customs House still standing near Leith harbour. This German/Scottish family ended up in Liverpool and then Dad’s parents moved to London. Dad returned to Edinburgh and enjoyed the last 18 years living in the same city his ancestor knew two centuries before.

Dad was a devoted husband and ultimately carer for Mum in her ten years of living with dementia. He came out of his comfort zone and began to take on much of the cooking and support for her. In his very last days, he continued to enjoy seeing family and friends, but when he lost the love of food, even pudding, it’s how we knew his time was at an end.

By Lewis Reay (From Seeds April – May 2025)

It is 15 years since Metropolitan Community Church, Edinburgh, joined with AUC, so it is time to celebrate!

I came into MCC in Bath in 1995. There I found a safe and welcoming place to heal from the trauma I had experienced at the hands of evangelical Christians.

A few years later, I transitioned, and it was the affirming relationship with God that I found in MCC that made this a possibility.

MCC Edinburgh was founded at the first Pride Scotland event, also in 1995. Maxwell and I were at that first Pride event and helped staff an MCC Outreach Ministries stall to meet people and see what the possibilities were for establishing a new MCC. When we left London, in 2002, we moved to Edinburgh to be part of the MCC here. We were both active in ministry in different aspects of church life and heavily involved in supporting other trans men and working on transgender issues in the wider denomination of MCC.

In the summer of 2009, members of MCC Edinburgh and members of AUC went to a church growth retreat at Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church in Newcastle. It was there that we realised that we had more in common than we realised. It was from this weekend that discussions began about working together, eventually closing MCC Edinburgh, and our members who wanted to transferring their membership to AUC

“It is a profound and intimate moment of connection with God and with one another”

It seemed like we could do much more together than apart. This has proven to be true over the last 15 years.

God was at the heart of this process, and becoming part of AUC was an answer to the challenges we had been facing. We were welcomed with an openness which was truly wonderful.

And that is where Our Tribe started. By April 2010, we were ready to launch a Saturday night gathering for LGBT folk, allies, friends and family. An open space to meet with one another and to experience all that God’s inclusive love can mean.

Communion is an important aspect of demonstrating this affirming and welcoming reality. It is a profound and intimate moment of connection with God and with one another. We share communion at our online meetings as we did at the in-person gatherings before Covid.

For many, communion is something that queer people have been excluded from when they come out. We hope to heal the trauma of exclusion and demonstrate the inclusive love of Jesus in this meal.

Over the years, we have seen greater acceptance of LGBT+ people of faith in the wider LGBT+ community. Having a faith is not treated with the suspicion it once was. However, there is still considerable trauma for people in LGBTQ+ communities about faith, and conversion practices are real and damaging.

We have seen many people come and go, find the acceptance they need, deepen their relationship with God and move on to many places across the world and in other faith communities.

I continue to feel passionate about our ministry to the LGBTQ+ community. A safe, affirming and welcoming space is needed even more in these challenging social and political times.

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds April – May 2025)

Lent is a time in the Church year when we are invited to strip back and re-discover what is truly important.

Many years ago, as part of a course learning about Ignatian Spirituality, I undertook an exercise to write my own eulogy. The exercise was to identify what was truly important and valuable to me, by considering how I would like to be remembered. Having considered what was truly important or valuable, I was then invited to consider how much of my time and energy in the present I invested in these important and valuable aspects of my life.

It was quite a challenging, and very Lenten, exercise.

Throughout my ministry I have written and delivered many eulogies and have often pondered on what it is that makes a life ‘well lived’? Each life is very different but I think there is a general admiration for people who have adapted to whatever life has brought them, and thrived in doing so; a deep appreciation for people who care for, encourage, and support others; and a sense of inspiration from people who fearlessly savour life and grasp the opportunities it brings, whether ordinary or unusual.

I wonder for people in our world today, who have lost homes, jobs, basic security and even their legal identities, what they perceive to be truly important and valuable. If Jesus was right that the poor are blessed, then there is wisdom to be learnt from all who are stripped down today, about what is truly important and valuable in God’s eyes.

“I undertook to write my own eulogy”

Listening to, and being shaped by, voices from stripped down experiences is another significant exercise for Lent, as we seek through the season to realign our present living to invest in that which is truly valuable and important as disciples of Jesus in the world today.

Our Tribe – AUC is holding a special event for LGBT History Month 2025 on Saturday 22 February at Augustine United Church. Doors open at 1:00 pm.

Plan for the day:

• 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm: Panel of speakers on LGBT Activism
• 3:00 pm – 4.30 pm: Drag Queen Bingo
• 4.30 pm – 5:00 pm: Singer/Songwriter – Mike Mckenzie
• 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm: T Dance/Disco

Please feel free to join us for all or part of the day.

Refreshments and snacks will be provided. This is an alcohol free event.

Changing space is available. The building is wheelchair accessible. Please ring the bell to the right of the main front door.

This is a free event and ALL are welcome.

If you would like any more information please email ourtribe@augustine.org.uk or drop us a message through their Facebook page.

We look forward to seeing you!

By Eilidh Carmichael (From Seeds February – March 2025)

Eilidh Carmichael shares some positive news about an Amnesty International case that AUC members have campaigned on in the past.

Church members and friends have written Write for Rights letters on behalf of Marielle Franco’s family, and Eilidh Macpherson, Campaigns Manager (Individuals and Communities at Risk) for Amnesty International UK, has written to say:

In 2018 we campaigned, as part of Write for Rights, for Marielle Franco’s family. Marielle was a Brazilian activist who was fatally shot in a hit and run in 2018. For six years, the police investigation into Marielle’s death was shrouded in secrecy. It was reported that the bullets that killed Marielle were from a batch bought by the federal police and, what’s more, President Bolsonaro himself had been pictured with one of the murder suspects. You and thousands of others took action, and finally there has been a breakthrough in her case. In October 2024, six years after her death, Marielle’s killers were sentenced to 59 and 78 years in prison.

Thank you for taking action, and showing that when we come together, we can get justice.

From Seeds February – March 2025

On behalf of the Finance & Property Team, Fiona Somerville highlights the plus-points of Gift Aid.

In these economically difficult times, we understand that people may find it challenging to increase their charitable giving as much as they would like, but could you help Augustine boost its income using Gift Aid?

When you Gift Aid a charity donation, the government adds another 25p for every pound you give. We calculate that, for 2024, Augustine will be able to reclaim over £11,500 from the government in Gift Aid.

This is very welcome, although to meet the financial challenges we also face, we would love to increase this figure. Anyone can Gift Aid donations provided you pay enough income tax during the year to cover the amount the charity (or charities) you donate to reclaim from the government in Gift Aid. This means that for every £100 pounds you pay annually in income tax you can make Gift Aided donations of up to £400 to charity, and the charity (or charities) will receive an additional £100 from the government.

If you haven’t already done so, feel you meet the above criterion, and would like to help Augustine boost its income in this simple way, please consider completing a Gift Aid declaration form, which can be downloaded from the website. Or you can talk to our treasurer (Ewen Harley) or Gift Aid coordinator (Fiona Somerville).

Link to Gift Aid declaration form: https://www.augustine.org.uk/gift-aid-declaration.

From Seeds February – March 2025

Pictured is the beautiful communion tablecloth dedicated in worship on 5 January. The cloth is the result of the skill, patience and dedication of Fiona Somerville, who says she ‘crazy quilted’ the cotton scraps donated by others in the congregation.

The cloth celebrates so many stories in the donated fabric that makes up the patchwork surrounding the central dandelion images.

As Fiona Bennett reflected at the dedication, AUC’s dandelion logo says much about our discipleship: its roots can be used to make medicine, and keep us strong and healthy; we support one another as the stalk supports the yellow flowerhead, in glorious radiance as we bring our worship; the leaves can bring nourishment; and the dandelion clock is a mass of seeds that carry on the wind just as we are seeds of hope and love in our discipleship of transformation.

We are rooted in God’s love; we support each other; we offer nourishment; we worship God; and we seek to be a part of God’s transformation in the world.

Our thanks to Fiona Somerville and all who have contributed to this special gift.

By Nick Dearden (From Seeds February – March 2025)

Together with Christian Aid, Global Justice Now is a key partner of the URC’s global justice programme, Commitment for Life. Here, Director of Global Justice Now Nick Dearden looks back on some significant moments in 2024. We can make a change, he says.

Last year, 2024, the fragility of our world was laid bare. The genocide in Gaza, spreading conflict in the Middle East, and the war in Ukraine devastated tens of thousands of lives.

At the same time, the fast-accelerating climate crisis – driven by the power of the fossil fuel industry – continues to wreak havoc. Extreme weather events are destroying food systems, depleting water supplies, and devastating the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities.

The concentration of wealth and power has been decades in the making; a direct result of the rules which govern our global economy. The inequality and injustice that have flowed is now so great that it is tearing at the social fabric in dozens of countries. International law, applied unfairly at the best of times, now has been rendered completely meaningless. So, the inequality, the conflicts and the climate breakdown we are witnessing aren’t inevitable. They aren’t accidental.

And that means that we can reverse the tide.

For example…

THE UK’S EXIT FROM THE CLIMATE-WRECKING ENERGY CHARTER TREATY

This time last year, the UK announced its exit from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), joining a wave of European nations abandoning this harmful agreement. This victory against corporate power puts the ECT – often used by fossil fuel companies to block climate action – on the brink of collapse.

This victory capped off three years of dedicated campaigning. Since 2021, we’ve been raising awareness about the ECT’s dangerous Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which allows corporations to sue governments over climate policies. While the fight against ISDS continues, the defeat of the ECT marks a crucial step in dismantling corporate control and protecting both people and the planet.

“a crucial step in dismantling corporate control and protecting both people and the planet”

MOBILISING SUPPORT FOR A FOSSIL FUEL TREATY

The climate crisis is driven by fossil fuels, yet they remain the elephant in the room at international climate summits – a sign of how powerful fossil fuel interests are.

Last year, 17 local councils across the UK, including Manchester, Glasgow, Reading, and Stroud, passed motions backing the call for a Fossil Fuel Treaty. Stirling University’s student union became the first in the UK to endorse the treaty, and we’ve secured growing cross-party support in Westminster, Holyrood, and the Welsh Senedd.

“a global movement to phase out coal, oil, and gas production … we’ve built real momentum”

We’ve also got growing support from the trade union movement, with Unison passing a resolution in support at the union’s annual conference.

These victories are part of a global movement to phase out coal, oil, and gas production and ensure a just transition to renewable energy. www.augustine.org.uk Through grassroots activism, local campaigning, and strategic alliances, we’ve built real momentum.

In 2025, we’ll build this campaign, pushing for more councils and more political support, including working with the union movement to ensure a just transition – the only way to undermine the power of fossil fuel corporations.

CHALLENGING THE UK’S ROLE IN THE GAZA GENOCIDE

Historically, Global Justice Now has not campaigned on Palestine. No organisation can take on every injustice, and we have trusted others to dedicate the attention this issue requires.

But last year, we could not remain silent. The horrifying violence unleashed on civilians in Gaza demands action. So, in 2024, we took action to confront the UK government’s complicity in the crisis in Gaza. Israel’s actions in Gaza, and its decades-long occupation, is made possible through political, military and economic support from countries like the UK. We’ve increased the heat on arms sales, making some progress with a partial ban. But this isn’t enough.

During 2025, we will work for a total arms embargo as well as challenging the UK’s trade ties with Israel, mobilising to block a new trade agreement and pushing for the suspension of the existing deal. We also plan to shine a spotlight on corporate complicity, particularly in the tech industry, exposing how major companies profit from violence, and building momentum for divestment campaigns.

It’s hard to look at the state of the world today without feeling a mix of fear, anger, and, at times, despair. But through it all, we must find hope in the incredible work being done by activists worldwide – and remind ourselves that change is possible.

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds February – March 2025)

Earlier in January, I was up very early one morning, out in my garden. Everything around was encrusted in white frost.

I was cold, very tired and resigned to a tired day, when I happened to look up. A deep indigo sky was studded with sparkling stars. It was stunningly beautiful. Lines came to my mind from a re-working of Psalm 23: ‘You lift my head; my vision clears. The blessing cup overflows.’

I would not have seen that glorious sight but for the clear cold sky and my early start.

It was a reminder to me that in the midst of ‘all that troubles, threatens and diminishes’ it is important to allow God to lift our heads, clear our vision, and to be reminded that God is always with us, abundance is always around us and that God’s bigger story of love and hope is always going on in the world.

God’s story is far broader and richer than that which is consuming my thinking or feelings on a cold, grumpy morning!

It was due to the cold and the early hour I felt put out by that I could see the stars.

It is often in the tougher situations in life that we remember what is truly important and learn to savour the beauty and wonder always around us in any given moment.

The blessing cup overflows (even when we are tired!).

‘In the midst of all that troubles,
That threatens and diminishes,
You set abundance before me.
You lift my head; my vision clears.
The blessing cup overflows’

Part of Psalm 23 (Psalms Redux: Poems and prayers by Carla Grosch-Miller