Category: Spiritual Direction
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165 Why Jesus had to be abandoned by God
In my previous blog “God plays hide and seek” I wrote that “My experience is that when God appears to have disappeared it has been for one or two reasons: maybe both. Either in order to invite me to deepen my trust in God’s reality and love, despite the seeming lack of evidence. Or to…
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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…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 