Category: Spiritual Life
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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…
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124 In Defence of Angels
June 2023 The Church has a tendency to make simple things difficult, like prayer & faith, both of which are simple in principle but challenging in practice. Society has a tendency to trivialise important things like miracles and angels. I’ve written about ’Everyday Miracles’, so now I’m going to write “In defence of Angels”. School…
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123. Faith
23rd June I remember, many years ago reading a poem by David Whyte entitled ‘Faith’: I want to write about faith About the way the moon rises Over cold snow, night after night. Faithful even as it fades from fullness Slowly becoming that last curving and impossible Sliver of light before the final darkness. But…
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116. ‘Into My Arms’
December 2022 A friend of mine, John Walker, was recently telling me about his son Jonny: a gifted musician…who founded the Keep Streets Live Campaign, to advocate for public spaces for people and against the criminalization of homelessness and street culture. Jonny once said: “Buskers act as civic lighthouses. We give directions, we break up fights, we…
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115. Incarnations
January 2023 One of the joys of being feral is the freedom to think & explore. These thoughts have been buzzing round in my head recently. There’s nothing new about them. Others have been articulating them far better than me for centuries. But only now have they fallen into place for me. I find them to…
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114. Charlie Mackesy
January 2023 A couple of years ago I read and enthused about a book ‘A Boy, a Mole, a Fox and a Horse’ by Charlie Mackesy, and gave copies to friends as Christmas presents. This Christmas there was a film version of the story on BBC 1, and an audio version on BBC Sounds. Even…
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110. Jesus died for God
September 2022 I have never found the idea of Jesus’s death being a sacrifice a meaningful one. Quite the contrary. What sort of God needs to sacrifice his child in order to be at peace with what He has created? That sounds barbaric to me. I can understand why the first Jewish Christians understood Jesus death in those terms.…
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107. Everything
June 2022 I was recently in conversation with a friend and we were both feeling depressed and angry over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then I remembered a poem by a Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, entitled ‘Everything’ and I read it to him. It moved us both deeply. Here it is: “Everything has been plundered, betrayed,…
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106. Clemency Burton Hill
January 2022 I quoted Clemency Burton-Hill from her excellent book ‘Another Year of Wonder’ in a recent post entitled ‘Year of Wonder’ [the title of her previous book]. In it I quoted some lovely words of hers for the beginning of the year. Both her books offer a piece of classical music, together with a…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 