AS PART of my training for Methodist ministry, earlier this year I studied for a module called ‘Christian Faith & Ethical Living’. My tutor set an assignment with an unusual brief:
Design a personal/family sigil/logo/coat of arms capturing your moral core. Take time and think about your moral compass, core, code of conduct, ethos, values. Design a sigil and accompanying motto which would capture what you are about.
My tutor had explicitly said that we could use generative AI for this assignment, although that permission came with an acknowledgement that there are ethical questions about how such tools are used. I used ChatGPT to help create the coat of arms. The ideas, symbols and moral themes are mine, sourced from this blog; the image-generation tool helped me turn those ideas into a visual form.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. A coat of arms isn’t something I had ever imagined I would need!
But then I recalled my father’s family history research into our surname, Bohan, which revealed a Latin motto attributed to a family of the same name:
Esse quam videri.
This is usually translated as:
To be rather than to seem.
When I first discovered it, it appealed to me because it speaks of honesty and authenticity, two of the qualities I seek to model in my ministry and my writing. Hence the title and subtitle of my blog:
A brave faith: An authentic journey of identity and courage
Inspired by this, the assignment began to make more sense. Perhaps the question was not:
What would my coat of arms look like?
but more profoundly:
What kind of person am I trying to be?
Or, more uncomfortably:
Is the person I appear to be the person I actually am?
To be rather than to seem
Recorded in the Latin treatise On Friendship by Roman philosopher Cicero (106 BCE – 43 BCE), this motto emphasizes authenticity, character, and substance over performative appearances or reputation. It serves as a reminder to prioritize true virtue and integrity over merely appearing to possess them.
It challenges something that is too easy to do – particularly in a world of public profiles and carefully curated identities on social media. It is easy to seem. We can seem compassionate, courageous, inclusive, faithful. We can even seem to be doing the right thing.
But being is different. Being is what we are and what we do when no-one is watching. Do our actions match our convictions? Do our values survive when living them out costs us?
For me, that makes Esse quam videri more than a family motto. It becomes a challenge, and maybe a prayer.
Let me be the person I claim to be.
What is my moral compass?
Having made a link between this motto and the title of this blog, A Brave Faith, I recognised four recurring themes in my writing and ministry which I wanted to capture in my coat of arms:
- Authenticity and courage.
Since I began writing this blog in August 2012, it has been, in part, about the journey of becoming more honest about who I am, and who we are. That doesn’t mean having everything worked out. Authenticity requires acknowledging uncertainty, vulnerability, failure, and change.
Courage isn’t always about doing something heroic. Sometimes courage is simply telling the truth, saying ‘This is who I am’, or admitting, ‘I don’t know’. And sometimes it is continuing to walk faithfully when we aren’t sure where the path is leading.
These are the qualities I wanted the flaming heart and cross at the top of my coat of arms to represent: a faith that is both deeply personal and willing to take the risk of being lived openly, even if it is costly to do so. The flaming heart also has a more personal significance. I grew up with a Catholic background, and my parents had a picture of the Sacred Heart above the fireplace when I was a child. Including it in the coat of arms is therefore a small acknowledgement of where my own journey of faith began.
- Inclusion and justice.
I have written often about LGBT+ inclusion, human rights and dignity, and the importance of creating communities in which people don’t have to hide parts of themselves in order to belong. This commitment has also found expression in my work as a co-founder of the first Open Table community hosted by and for LGBT+ Christians and as Director of the Open Table Network charity that has grown from it. I wrote about some of this journey when I reflected on why I had become a Methodist.
That is why, in my coat of arms, a six-coloured Pride rainbow path leads towards a table.
The rainbow represents identity, diversity and inclusion. But it is also a path. It suggests that this is not a destination I have reached once and for all. It is a journey I continue to make.
The two figures walking the path are also personal. I chose purple and green because they are the colours my husband and I wore when we celebrated our civil partnership in 2012, in the first civil partnership in a place of worship in the UK. I have reflected on that moment and what it meant ten years later.
At the destination is a table: one of the simplest and most powerful symbols of human and Christian community.
There is room around a table. There is welcome and hospitality, food, conversation, and relationship. There is the possibility of meeting someone who is different, and discovering that we have more in common than we expected.
In the Christian story, Jesus repeatedly crossed the boundaries of respectable society by eating with people whom others thought should not be there.
So the table in my image represents something I want my life to contribute to: communities where people are welcomed rather than judged, where difference isn’t something to be feared, and where nobody has to become somebody else before they can belong.
- Peace and reconciliation.
Peace is something I have returned to repeatedly in my writing and in my ministry. I explored this particularly in my reflection on Peace Sunday in 2025.
But I have become increasingly conscious that peace is not simply the absence of conflict.
Sometimes what looks like peace is actually silence, when ‘keeping the peace’ means asking the person who has been hurt to remain quiet so that everyone else can remain comfortable.
Real peace requires truth, justice and reconciliation. It requires us to have difficult conversations rather than avoiding them.
This connects with the quotation that inspired my A Brave Faith blog: ‘Know that no-one is silent, though many are not heard. Work to change this.’ For me, peacemaking includes making space for voices that have been silenced or overlooked.
That is why my coat of arms contains a dove carrying an olive branch. It is an ancient symbol of peace, but for me it represents something active: the work of peace-making and reconciliation.
I want to be someone who contributes to peace rather than division; who seeks reconciliation without pretending that harm has not happened; who can hold truth and compassion together.
- Kindness and community
It might seem less dramatic than justice or reconciliation, but it is at least as important. Justice and reconciliation are unlikely to come into being unless they are built on the foundations of kindness and community.
Our moral compass isn’t only there to guide us in big decisions. It can prompt us in conversations, encouragement, and hospitality. It can help us notice who is sitting alone at the table, or who is missing from it. I explored this when I was chaplain at YMCA in 2016.
It can help us choose to be patient when irritation is easier. It can inspire small acts of kindness that may go unnoticed by anyone except the person who receives them.
This is represented in my image by the hands holding the flame.
The hands speak to me of care, support and community: the ordinary ways in which we hold one another when life is difficult, and offer what we can to help someone else keep going.
As I am becoming a Methodist minister, the flame is a reminder of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, who described experiencing his heart as ‘strangely warmed’ and gaining a deep assurance of his faith in Christ.
But for me, the flame means so much more than what some might dismiss as ‘religious enthusiasm’ for its own sake. It represents an inner fire – a conviction that keeps burning when the excitement has gone; love that becomes action; faith that is lived out in love and shapes the person I am becoming.
The uncomfortable bit
There is an obvious irony in all this. I can create a beautiful coat of arms containing crosses, flames, rainbows, tables and doves. I can write eloquently about authenticity, inclusion, peace and kindness. Yet I can (and do!) still fail to live those things at times.
It is not these external symbols that make me virtuous. Choosing these images isn’t evidence that I have achieved what they represent; it is a reminder of the direction in which I want to travel.
The simplicity of the symbols also risks making moral life look neater than it really is. Real moral formation is messy – it involves conflict, failure, contradiction, and moments when I discover that my actions have fallen short of my convictions.
In the Christian faith, the goal isn’t moral perfection achieved through self-determination. It is grace-filled perseverance: the willingness to keep becoming, to recognise when I have got it wrong. To apologise, learn, and try again, trusting that becoming the person I am called to be is a journey rather than a performance.
The moral compass I want to carry
So perhaps I don’t really need a coat of arms after all. What I need is a moral compass, to help me ask, when faced with a decision:
- Am I being truthful?
- Am I making room for others?
- Am I contributing to peace?
- Am I acting with kindness?
- Does what I am doing reflect what I say I believe?
And perhaps the hardest question of all:
- Who am I when nobody is watching?
For me, Esse quam videri has become more than an interesting find in family history research. It is a challenge to authenticity: To be, rather than to seem.
It is a challenge not to construct an impressive version of myself for other people to admire but to allow my convictions to shape the person I actually become.
I don’t always get it right (nor do I expect to do so). But I aim to keep walking that rainbow path towards the table, carrying the flame, and trying to live the motto:
To be, rather than to seem.
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