Tonic masculinity. Tonic, like medicine.  Tonic, like liquid health you drink down to boost well being.  Tonic masculinity. Tonic, like in music, the stable grounded pitch to which the song returns home.  The tonic chord that feels perfectly at rest.  The tonic key, which holds the harmonic ecosystem.  Tonic masculinity.  Can you see it?  Healthy and healing masculinity.

I’ve never done a sermon / book report hybrid, but that’s pretty much what this will be.  World Communion Sunday during a series on peace felt like a good time to hear from the pope.  The fact that AI has occupied the headlines for much of the last month makes it all the more timely.  How we relate with these increasingly powerful technologies has become one of the key questions of what it means to be human.

So embodied peace must mean something more than simply feeling relaxed. Sometimes our bodies should be disturbed by what is happening around us. Sometimes anger is an appropriate bodily response to injustice. Sometimes fear is telling us that something needs our attention. And so the work is not to become disembodied people who don’t feel those things.

[Thank you to Imam Horsed Noah, Outreach Director of Abubakar Mosque, for bringing us this message during our Courageous Peace Witness worship series.]