Sunny Banana

What if the way through the storm is to run straight toward it? ⛈️

In this conversation, we unpack what it means to face hardship head-on and how faith, discipline, mentorship, and strong role models can shape the way we respond when life gets difficult.

We also dive into the responsibility of guiding the next generation of young men and an exciting vision for 2027: a rugby academy built around more than just performance on the field. 🏉

Rugby. Character. Personal growth. Mentorship.

Because developing a great player means developing the man behind the jersey...

What happens when the crowds go quiet and the thing that defined you is no longer there? 🏉

In this conversation, two longtime friends sit down to talk about life beyond rugby, and the things that matter when the titles, success and external validation start to fade.

They get into faith, fatherhood, failure, masculinity and what it really means to find purpose beyond what you do. 🙏

From navigating life after professional sport to wanting to become a better father, finding a spiritual home and using rugby to guide the next generation of young men, this i...

Do you or someone you know need or want Christian Life Coaching?Follow this link for a free chat to explore - https://linktr.ee/CoachJonah2

You can travel the world, read every book, and still feel that quiet gap: something is missing. That’s where Father Johnson starts, and it’s why this conversation lands so hard. He’s an Orthodox priest from South Africa now serving near Liverpool, and he tells the honest version of the journey, from a barely religious upbringing to Europe, to a serious flirtation with “many roads to God”, and finally to one dec...

Shame is sneaky. It can sound like “I’m not good enough”, feel like a tight chest, and drive you straight into coping habits that promise relief but never deliver healing. We sit down with Jonathan Lewis, a men’s mentor and Orthodox Christian, to trace how anxiety, trauma, and the need to prove yourself can shape a life, and how that same life can be rebuilt with clarity, patience, and grace.

We talk about the difference between symptom management and root-cause healing: why alcohol, pornography, scrolling, or even obsessive self-improvement can become self-soothing rituals; why the body rem...

Prayer is easy to dismiss until you hit the moment where you usually lose the fight. We speak plainly about that moment, and why we believe prayer is not an “extra” but a real form of protection and change, especially when the passions feel stronger than your will.

We also share a practical need close to home: our Orthodox community in Hastings is working to buy the church building on Albany Road for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). A permanent home is not just bricks and paperwork. It is where people learn to worship, repent, heal...

Self-help can be genuinely helpful, so why do so many of us end up back at the same pain, just wearing a different mask? We sit down with Anastasia Girali, a mental health and spiritual mentor, to talk about what she learned after a decade inside the personal development and manifestation world, and why the results she saw never truly lasted until faith moved from a vague spirituality to a direct relationship with Jesus Christ. 

We get into the real tension between neuroscience and the soul: yes, habits and addictions carve pathways in the brain, and yes, t...

A single moment can cut through years of noise: a quiet nudge that says, go to church because you cannot do it by yourself. Joan from Primal Thrive joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox masculinity, and what it looks like to move from private spiritual seeking to an ancient, communal way of life. He shares how childhood glimpses of Russian churches and icons stayed in the background, then resurfaced after a long stretch of New Age spirituality that left him with more confusion than answers.

We talk honestly about the first liturgy...

Consider supporting the Sunny Banana with all proceeds going to our new church building fund. We are the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God of the Sign in Hastings, England. Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Not only will your support go towards the church, but all supporters can also access discounts on all Jarvah Biltong products! Biltong UK supporters only. All products | Jarvah Biltong

Low energy, low drive and a constant sense of being “off” have become oddly normal for a lot of men, but Joan isn’t buying the id...

Consider supporting the Sunny Banana with all proceeds going to our new church building fund. We are the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God of the Sign in Hastings, England. Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Not only will your support go towards the church, but all supporters can also access discounts on all Jarvah Biltong products! Biltong UK supporters only. All products | Jarvah Biltong

A calm voice can carry more strength than a shout, and that idea runs through our chat with George from the Gold Coast. We begin w...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

One bad drink in Fiji turns into a lifelong lesson: what you consume shapes you, not only your gut, but your focus, your mood, and the direction of your soul. George Demourtzidis joins me from the Gold Coast to talk about the unexpected bridge between health and Orthodox faith, starting with the p...

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We are an Orthodox Church in St Leonard's-on-Sea, Hastings in Albany Road.

Check out the awesome Bed and Breakfast run by Fr Aleksandr and Paul - St Benedict - Victorian Bed and Breakfast, Hastings (updated prices 2026)

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Something strange happens when you step into an Orthodox church: the room i...

The saints are not a chapter in a history book for us, they are part of the Church’s present tense. We talk about the startling intimacy of Orthodox Christianity: speaking to the Panagia like family, kissing an icon beside a stranger and feeling a real bond, and remembering that holiness is not reserved for monks or martyrs. Along the way we touch on incorrupt relics and the living memory of saints in places like the Ionian Islands, where faith was defended not with clever arguments but with a simple, practical confidence in God’s work among real people. 
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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Nektarios' Business selling beautiful Orthodox Products
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You can’t argue someone into the Orthodox Church, but you can invite them to come and see and that invitation changes everything. We sit dow...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Ten reps can feel impossible until someone looks you in the eye and believes you can do them. After a morning at Trojan Gym in Hastings, I share a small moment that caught me off guard: I’m grinding through dips in tired little sets, then a stranger asks, “Can you do ten for m...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Anger, lust, jealousy, pride, cravings, addiction, we usually talk about them like they’re glitches to delete. I’m taking a different angle today, sparked by reading Orthodox bishop and theologian Kallistos Ware in The Image Of The Father, where he asks a brave question: are the passions evil by nature, or ar...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

A woman is healed of blindness by Saint Brigid of Kildare, takes in the world with tears in her eyes, and then makes a request that stops you cold: “Make me blind again.” That ancient story is not just strange, it is diagnostic. It forces us to ask what “seeing” is for, and wheth...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

You can hear it when someone stops treating faith like a label and starts treating it like a life. Jonah (formerly an Anglican lay minister and school chaplain from South Africa) tells the story of how candles, incense, and a teenage confirmation first woke his heart, and how the Church’s witness cut...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

A message recorded while driving, sparked by a phrase on the back of a lorry: “Making the world a better home”. It sounds right, but it also raises a harder question. What if the world is not quite “home” in the way we mean it and what if it is more like...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Fighting against your body can feel like the normal version of spirituality. But what if that posture is backwards? I’m unpacking a line from the Orthodox theologian Father Alexander Schmemann that hit me hard: we’re meant to fight for the body, not against it and the same goes for food...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

What does it take to walk away from a life built on fear, force, and a code without love? We sit with a man marked by runes and a decade of violence who is preparing for baptism, taking the name Michael to announce a future led by obedience rather than willpower. T...

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What if the bravest act you make this week is a sincere “I’m sorry”? We open a heartfelt space to rethink repentance during Lent while honouring the parallel fast of Ramadan. From the hush of Mount Athos to the bustle of a school chapel, we explore why turning back can matter...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Certainty feels safe, but it often shuts our ears and hardens our hearts. We open up about a different way to live: faith as trust, not as a denial of doubt. From a striking AA moment of surrender to memories of growing up under apartheid, we trace how humility and the i...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

What if the way we talk about love is quietly shaping us into consumers rather than companions? I take a hard look at the easy phrase “love is love” and test it with two simple images: murky “water is water” logic and a monk’s punchy reminder that loving the taste of fish isn’t...

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A dark, rain-slick road. Headlights flash, water pools under a bridge, and a stranger glides through the flood like it’s nothing. That simple moment sparks a bigger reflection: we don’t become ourselves by sheer willpower—we learn by following people who have crossed before us.

We unpack why imi...

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A quiet blessing rounds a corner and meets a room most people would avoid. What follows isn’t scandal or retreat. It’s a living lesson in compassion as Elder Porphyrios steps into a brothel during a house blessing, stands firm at the door, and insists that every soul deserves the d...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

When the world goes dark, it’s easy to assume the worst. We take a breath together and try on a different image: you’re not buried—you’re planted. Across a short, reflective journey, I share a monk’s wisdom, a friend’s hard-won phrase, and a captain’s call that reshapes h...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

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Do you or someone you know need or want Christian Life Coaching?Follow this link for a free chat to explore - https://linktr.ee/CoachJonah2

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

What if Christmas isn’t a soft-focus memory but the moment the world tilted toward restoration? We open the season with a bold claim: if God truly became human, then matter matters, history bends toward healing, and every ordinary moment can carry eternal weight. No clichés here—just a step-by-step walk throug...

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Anxiety loves to keep us time-travelling—looping old regrets and forecasting worst-case futures—until the present feels thin and brittle. We take a quiet, focused walk through a three-part path that restores peace: repent and receive mercy, forgive and be free, love and live gratefully now.

We start by naming psych...

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A gentle greeting turns into a clear call: men and women are not rival camps, and strength is not the enemy. We share three hard-won lessons from lived experience and faith, starting with a simple truth that changes everything—when one side rises, both rise; when one side falls, both fall. That len...

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Something is shifting. The old script—more science equals less God—no longer fits the moment, and faith is making a comeback. With Andy Bannister, we explore how the edges of AI and physics are reopening big questions about meaning, purpose, and the origins of intelligence. From fine-tuning to the ethics of machi...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Here is a link to the Conversation from Freya India's Substack - Girls

https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/diagnosing-our-daughters?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

What if the fastest way to strength isn’t fixing feelings but facing them together? We delve into a father’s candid perspective on ra...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

A single beam of light through a church window changed how we saw the day—and ourselves. What began as a personal story of losing hearing in one ear and living nine years in partial silence becomes a wider meditation on restoration, grace, and the brave work of loving people back to who...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Desire isn’t the villain of a spiritual life; it’s the compass that needs re‑calibrating. We’ve been sold the idea that wisdom means wanting nothing, but what if real freedom is wanting the right things with our whole heart? In this conversation we walk straight into the heart of longin...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Memory can either blind us or guide us. We open up a timely reflection on Black History Month by asking a hard question: how do we face what happened without turning the past into a weapon—or pretending it never happened? The answer, we argue, lives in the daily practice of humility and...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

A polished pitch promises a future without pain, work, or death—just upload your life, give up a little control, and enjoy a near-perfect world. We took that claim head-on, read it aloud, and held it up to the quiet strength of prayer, the honesty of humility, and the Christian vision of...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

"I kissed a priest and I liked it" – a provocative statement that opens the door to a profound spiritual exploration. This episode takes you on my personal journey from Anglican tradition into Orthodox Christianity, where I encountered the ancient practice of kissing a priest's hand during worship and greeting.

Wha...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Have you ever stopped to consider that regardless of your formal religious beliefs, you might be naturally religious in how you interact with the world? 

Through a thoughtful exploration of the Latin root of religion—religare, meaning "to reconnect" or "to realign"—this episode delves into how humans naturally venerate images...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Peter Owen-Jones invites us to rediscover our profound connection to the natural world in this thought-provoking conversation about spirituality, silence, and our place in the cosmic order. The vicar, author, and documentary filmmaker challenges conventional thinking about human separation from nature, offering a revolutionary perspective: we are not isolated beings but c...

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

What happens when the most valuable thing you own isn't your smartphone—but your attention itself? 

In this eye-opening talk, filmmaker and "reformed mythologist" Nate Morgan-Lock pulls back the curtain on the attention economy that's reshaping how we experience the world. With humor and insight, he reveals how social medi...