Author: Henry Morgan
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146 A Christmas Tale
As Christmas draws near I am reminded of a story a friend told me last spring about the events that occurred the previous Christmas in the village where he lives on the other side of Bredon Hill. We met again this autumn and he repeated it. This is the story that he shared. There was…
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145 Who was present at the birth of Jesus?
I’ve often been fascinated by the characters artists have shown to be present at Jesus’ birth, who they’ve omitted, and the implications of their choices. Clearly Mary and the baby Jesus are there as the primary characters, and Joseph too, albeit in a less significant role if they took the ‘Virgin Birth’ literally, or in…
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144 The Artist’s Room
I was recently in Sheffield with my daughter Lizzie, and we visited the Graves Gallery hoping to see a favourite painting of mine by Gwen John, ‘A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris’. It was out on loan, so I bought a postcard instead. It is a remarkable image. It captures what R S…
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143 The painting behind the painting.
Recently I went with my friend James to an art gallery to see a small exhibition of just three paintings. One of them we both knew well, the other two less so. We spent a long time looking & talking about each painting in turn, and the more we looked the more we saw, and…
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142 The Power of Love
In one of her excellent newsletters [newsletter@themarginalian.org] Maria Popova wrote some words that touched me deeply not least because they appear to me to be profoundly true. I quote them here, not in full but without further comment from me.. She wrote: “Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different…
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141 Early Morning Walk
I woke early one morning last week, and being wide awake, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to doze off again, I got up and performed my usual morning tasks before getting dressed and going out for my morning walk. It was quieter than usual, and I saw nobody. I decided on a whim, that…
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140 A Spiritual Conversation
Increasingly I feel uncomfortable with the term ‘spiritual direction’, with its implication of a one-sided meeting with an authoritative person. Instead, I prefer to talk of a ‘spiritual conversation’ which implies to me a mutual meeting of friends. Both terms are concerned with a meeting in which God is felt to be present. An obvious…
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139. A Spiritual Odyssey
When I was a young man beginning to study The Bible, the story of The Annunciation [Luke 1:26-38] always left me cold and mystified. I was very doubtful about the existence of angels, and the idea that one might ‘appear’ to Mary to announce her forthcoming pregnancy sounded ridiculous. The story made no sense. But…
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138 Vote for Jesus
We are soon to have an election, and many people are pressing that it should be about policies and not personalities. I think that Jesus would agree with that. His preaching was not about himself, [He claimed no title save the that of ‘the son of man’] but about what He had learnt of God…
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137 The Last Supper
Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper” is for many Christians the clearest image they have of The Last Supper. He painted it on one wall of a monastic refectory where the brothers would have sat along the other three walls for their meals. For them Christ and His disciples would have been present…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 