Author: Henry Morgan
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10. Did Jesus have a spiritual director?
January 2015 You might think of John the Baptist? Tradition talks of them as cousins, and the Gospel assumes that they were ‘family’. But John does seem to have had his doubts about Jesus [Luke 7:18-23] which perhaps casts doubt on their having this sort of relationship? Mary and Joseph seem more likely candidates. Its difficult…
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9. What is spiritual direction?
January 2015 Classically it is understood as a conversation between two people in which one helps the other to recognise God’s presence in their life, and then supports them in responding to it. Today that tends to be a matter of regular meetings every couple of months. But I’m sure that most spiritual direction doesn’t…
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8. Keeping Sabbath
November 2014 I met up with my friend Mary this week at Stixwould. She’s a retired Anglican priest with a spirituality earthed in the everyday, and she was telling me about the way she keeps Sabbath. I found it very interesting, and with her permission I share below two pieces from her blog on the…
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7. The challenge of the new
November 2014 I draw a number of conclusions from all this: 1] Most of the above take place outside the structures of the institutional churches. 2] They incarnate a face of God other than that incarnated by the church. 3] They often involve men and women of deep faith taking risks, stepping out into the…
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6. What is God doing?
November 2014 My ministry means that I listen to people trying to hear and respond to what God is calling them to. Not altogether surprisingly there is a deal of common ground: God does not appear to be calling people in completely random directions. There are certain themes that emerge, and I begin to wonder…
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5. Who might save the Church?
November 2014 There was an article on the BBC News web-site recently which began “The Bishop of Truro has said the Church of England has only “five or six years” to save itself’: “radical changes” were needed to halt a “steady decline” he said, and ‘the Church of England will struggle to exist in 10…
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4. Hungarian Spiritual Direction
November 2014 When I travel abroad I like to read a novel or some poetry, look at some art, listen to some music, from the country I am about to visit, to give me a bit of a sense of the culture I will be entering. So when I visited Hungary some years ago I…
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3. Norwegian Wisdom
October 2014 I’m recently back from a trip to Finland and Norway which was immensely stimulating. Before I set out I was reading some of the poetry of the Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge, available in an excellent collection ‘Leaf-huts and Snow-houses’ translated by Robin Fulton, published by Anvil. I was especially taken by one…
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2. Praying with loom bands
September 2014 Here is a photograph of a wrist with a number of loom bands on it. A few weeks ago my seven year old grandson Owen came to stay with us for a week during his summer holidays. He brought with him some loom bands, and was eager to show us how to make…
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1. A Disclaimer
I have recently been re-reading Belton Lane’s fine book ‘The Solace of Fierce Landscapes’, and was much taken by a quotation from Barry Lopez who is writing about the difficulties involved in reaching a mysterious desert that symbolised for him what’s most worth finding. He writes: “There is, I should warn you, doubt…….about the directions I…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 