Category: Everyday Life
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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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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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136 Revelation
Regular readers will know that I like John Henry Newman’s words: “No revelation can be complete and systematic, from the weakness of the human intellect; so far as it is not such, it is mysterious … The religious truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together; it is like the dim view of a…
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132 The Flight into Egypt
The Flight into Egypt by Henry Ossawa Tanner [1859-1937] The journey of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to the land of Egypt takes place under the cover of darkness. The fact that it happens ‘by night’ (Matthew 2:14) underscores the urgent note of danger and the threat of death. As the angel announces to Joseph, Herod is…
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131 Happy Christmas
I sense gloom and despondency in the air. Partly it’s directed at our government which seems burnt out & out of control, busy making the mess it’s created worse. Partly it’s despair at the situation in Gaza and Israel, where two sides each with a legitimate cause, their ownership of their land, seem intent in…
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129. Supper with Jesus
We see a painting which will be described in detail, below. This painting is entitled ‘Supper at Emmaus’ and Caravaggio painted it in 1602. He was a hugely gifted and theologically perceptive painter with a bit of a reputation for violent behaviour: he often had to leave town in a hurry. Before we look at…
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128. Just Knowing
A picture of geese flying in formation. I met recently with a friend who is having to rest and recover through the summer & into the autumn, after a spell in hospital suffering from a debilitating illness. The strange thing was, he said, that he’d planned some months before to clear his diary for those…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 