A writer in a valley

The valley is part of the writing. James walks it most mornings with Daisy, the family dog, and the mountain at the end of it, Mount Thabor, has a way of showing up in his books and articles. It never changes shape, he notes, but it is never quite the same twice.

He is British, and has lived long enough in France to know that a French breakfast is mostly Austrian, Chinese and south-east Asian, and to enjoy it anyway. That combination of amusement and attention runs through everything he writes.

Before the books there was ordinary working life: businesses built and run, community projects started, a family raised, study for a pastoral role, church leadership, and a long habit of sitting down with younger people who wanted to follow Jesus and had questions nobody had answered properly. Their passion for simplicity yet depth in faith is a hallmark of James and Julie's ministry.

That is the ground his writing grows out of. Stop & Listen walks through John's Gospel and argues that listening is not an advanced spiritual discipline but the basic pleasure of being someone's child. The Follower goes through Matthew and asks what it actually looks like to let Jesus lead. Baron Stanislav von Cockadoo, written with Julie, is a farmyard tale about pride and pecking order, and is very funny.

He is grandfather enough to have earned the right to make dreadful jokes, and he uses it. He is also comfortable with large questions, and does not pretend to have finished answering them. As he puts it in one article: he does not have all the answers, but he knows someone who does.