Category: Spiritual Life
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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…
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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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135 Two Dimensional Lent
The season of Lent is an opportunity to deepen our relationship with God. Last week I was sat in my shed listening to some Bach and floating prayerfully on it, when looking out of the window into our garden, I saw Sylvia tending a plant. To my eye the plant looked healthy enough if a…
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134. Jesus Calling: a shorter version
John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus went to John to be baptised so he must have had something to repent of. After his baptism, Jesus had a powerful spiritual experience in which God spoke to him. The baptism & the spiritual experience were separate events. The latter…
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133. The Calling of Jesus
This piece has been some time in its gestation, it’s something that I sense has been revealed to me over a period of time, and that it’s now time to share it. I sense that there is truth in it. I might of course be wrong, or there might simply be bits of truth in it.…
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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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130. Just Knowing or Revelation?
Earlier this summer I read that Alice Oswald had been elected as the next Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. I recognised her name but wasn’t familiar with her poetry, so on a whim I went to BBC Sounds and on entering her name came upon a programme in which she had been interviewed. I…
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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…
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127. Life and death
We.see a painting of a dark table with an upturned skull on it, and a lit white candle.. The background is a pale colour, there is a dark strip down the left hand side, and a less clear dark strip down the lower part of the right hand side. This painting “Skull and Candle”is by…
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125 The Wounded Angel
July 2023 I enjoy looking at paintings. They often slip under my guard and take me by surprise. I sense that they speak and my soul hears them before the rest of me catches up. One painting that does this for me is this one. This picture is entitled ‘The Wounded Angel’. Its is by…