Becoming Friends
of Time

Author John Swinton
Publisher SCM £19.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9780334055570

Swinton offers us profound reflections on some foundational issues – time, memory, disability, normality, identity, vocation – and how they are linked. I am not likely to think of any of these issues in the same way as before. Running through the book is a plea to be ‘timeful’; I loved the notion that love has a speed: 3mph, i.e. walking pace. Swinton deeply challenges the way our perception of time affects our view of disability, with special reference to dementia and acquired brain injury; the implications for Christian communities and how they view and integrate people with disabilities are far-reaching. The book finishes with a liturgy for a ‘lived funeral’, a ceremony for a person who has had a life-changing injury and wishes to mark the transition from themselves as before the injury to the person they have become afterwards. While not many Readers may have an opportunity to use this, there is much in this book which has relevance for our practice as ministers.

GERTRUD SOLLARS

Disability, Christian Identity