Category: Spiritual Direction
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152. In the beginning
My 80th birthday in April has turned out to be a more significant milestone than I had expected. In March a series of synchronistic events led me to find and re-read my Priest’s Exam papers of July 1971. In Southwark Diocese you had to sit this in the summer after you’d been ordained Deacon, and…
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150. An Awesome Fact
I recently visited Krakow in Poland with my daughter Hannah, as part of the celebrations of my 80th birthday. Her Polish friend Joanna had recommended Krakow, and so I asked Hannah if her friend might suggest a book or two that would give me a feel for Polish culture before we went there. She suggested…
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149 Our Vocation
One of my favourite films is entitled ‘Mail for Pastor Jacob’, which is set in the 1970s. It’s about a blind elderly Finnish Lutheran minister, who amongst other things has a ministry in what we might call ‘spiritual direction’ although that phrase is never used in the film. Every morning the mailman cycles up the path,…
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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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104. Spiritual conversations
June 2022 I’ve been blessed with two very good spiritual directors over the years, but I struggled when the last one died. It was probably not a bad idea to have a break for a while, but finding a new one, someone who would encourage, stimulate and challenge me spiritually, proved depressingly difficult. Then, one evening,…
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72. Feral spiritual direction
July 2019 I think of spiritual direction as one person helping another to recognise where God is speaking to them, and walking with them as they seek to respond. There’s often a degree of mutuality about it. My friend Keith and I have been meeting in that way for a long time. But he couldn’t make…
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57. Everyday Miracles
May 2018 When I get up in the morning I like to make myself a cup of tea, and a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon for my wife, and then spend time in prayer. Usually that means walking down to my shed in the garden, but earlier this year the weather didn’t…
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12. The Spirituality of Jesus can be ours too
February 2015 I sense that all of the above is important because these elements of Jesus spirituality are potentially ours too. We don’t need a complicated system of teaching in order to grow as people and in relationship to God. All we need to do is the follow Jesus’ example. [1] We all stand in a…
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11. The Spirituality of Jesus
February 2015 I have been wondering about the spirituality of Jesus, and how I might describe it. Nowhere in the Gospels is it described directly, so I need to try and infer it from what we know. There seem to me to be at least several recognisable elements. [1] Jesus clearly stands within a tradition [see my…
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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…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 