Category: Spiritual Life
-
25. Listening and Deciding
May 2016 I’ve just had my first dose of chemotherapy. I was initially quite opposed to the idea of chemo. I consider my body to be a valued and trusted friend, and he had just gone through a hard time. He had been in pain for some months and then faced major surgery from which he seemed…
-
23. God speaks in many languages too
April 2016 God of course addresses us in an astonishing range of languages, but most of us only hear a few of them. Let us start by going back to the five ‘love languages’ we humans use. It is an obvious but often not recognised truth, that God speaks most obviously and often through the…
-
22. Languages of Love
April 1916 Some years ago I read a book that suggested that there are five different ‘languages of love’ that human beings use: five different ways of our expressing love towards another. I guess that others might come up with a different list, but it named the five as: 1] physical touch: ranging from a…
-
21. A New Vision of Christianity
December 2015 A friend of mine, Les Acklam, recently introduced me to some words by John Spong in the introduction to his most recent book “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”. I found these words compelling and have shared them with others who have also found that they speak to their experience, so I…
-
19. Feral
November 2015 On holiday in Falmouth this summer, and wandering through the town, I was irresistibly drawn to a bookshop, as I sometimes am. There on the shelf I saw a book by George Monbiot who writes for ‘The Guardian’ on environmental matters. In it he makes an eloquent plea for the re-wilding of some…
-
16.Trusting our own God-given wisdom
June 2015 The Church of England is in decline. But so are the other main-line churches in England. So its not a peculiarly Anglican problem. The same thing is happening across much of western Europe. So its not a peculiarly English problem. There’s a massive loss of confidence in institutions generally, be it the press,…
-
15. When do I worship?
May 2015 I was recently in a church for an act of worship with a small congregation, and I found myself wondering ‘At what point does this act of worship begin? And when does it end?’ Does it begin with the words of the opening prayer? Does it end with the Blessing? I wonder. Is worship…
-
14. Fatherhood
April 2015 A little over a year ago my wife and I were blessed with twins. Now we have four daughters, and I am surprised at the depth of emotion each of them evokes in me. Whereas once I scarcely felt I had enough love for just me, I now have love for five. I…
-
13. Meeting Eve
April 2015 Last week my step son, his wife and their two children came to stay with us. Their eldest child is a little boy of rising three who talks incessantly and bustles about with great energy and curiosity. His sister is only a couple of months old, so she sleeps a lot, waking to…
-
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…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 