Jessica Martin: Scripture as conversation

On the podcast this week, Canon Jessica Martin reads an extract from her much-anticipated new book, Holiness and Desire: What makes us who we are? The extract is published in this week’s Church Times (3 July). “Trusting the scriptures is not wilful blindness, but a speaking act of love. Because of love, I believe that the power of a medieval anonymous lyric to move me to tears signals an authentic rather than an historically naïf response. Because of love, I believe that a paradisal early memory of playing with my brother on a carpet of cherry blossom is a present earnest of the joys of heaven, not a corrupted image of a lost event. The fount of all these is the same as the belief which turns me towards my spouse trustfully rather than in suspicion. “As with my spouse, I pursue my relationship with scripture assuming that the process of becoming which led to this communicative moment will, in the end, fulfil and not betray my trust — not because it is a history of perfection (that’s true neither of writing nor of people), but because love underpins the conversation; love makes it possible.” The Revd Dr Jessica Martin is a Canon Residentiary of Ely Cathedral. Holiness and Desire: What makes us who we are? is published by Canterbury Press at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.30). Picture credit: ©David Hartley/Church Times Podcast edited by Serena Long Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks