the sensation of life
How’s it going in surrendering yourself to the Mystery that has intimately accessed your heart and has brought you to this place that it might translate you into itself?James Finley If you ask me just precisely how one is to go about doing the contemplative work of love, I am at a complete loss. All … Continue reading 8 ways to be with thoughts in prayer
The truth is that we are always home. On this retreat day, we will explore coming home to our bodies, to ourselves, to the present, our own presence and The Presence, and to our place and purpose in the world. I will offer what I consider to be some important landscapes for exploration, but the … Continue reading Retreat day: Coming home (last call)
When we take up occupation of the site of our bodies in stillness before God, we are granted a place to be, simply in virtue of being there as material beings made by God. Rowan Williams: Lear and Eurydice The truth is that we are always home. On this retreat day, we will explore coming … Continue reading Retreat Day: Coming Home
Sunday morning: sitting, praying. I have taken to moving my chair to face the window so I look out on the simple morning light. I tend to alternate between journaling and a still and silent awareness of being this body. I say ‘praying’ but really I am pondering what I want to do today: what … Continue reading Coterminous
It is Saturday morning. There is nothing I have to do – or nothing urgent. I sit at the open window in my pyjamas with the sunshine, the trees now in full leaf, the early morning birdsong, the air touching my face. This is what I want to do. This is how I want life … Continue reading The Kingdom of Heaven
Then sigh not so, but let them go,And be you blithe and bonny,Converting all your sounds of woeInto hey nonny, nonny.Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing People will often say that they can't pray. When asked they will say that they are unable to make their minds still or empty of thoughts. Somehow they have acquired … Continue reading Sigh no more
A couple of years ago I wrote this blessing. It garnered significantly more interest than anything else I have written here. Strictly speaking, I didn't write it. It was given to me early one Monday morning, not long after Easter, and I wrote it down. The week before I had been away for a week’s … Continue reading Appledore
I am so distant from the hope of myself,in which I have goodness, and discernment…Mary Oliver, When I am among the trees Forgiveness is not a contract. We do not forgive because someone has said sorry or because reparation has been exacted. The Crucifixion is not a cosmic trade-off. God does not need to forgive … Continue reading For
I think that … that you work on the thing that's eating away at you. And I think that the performers that we feel are wrestling with something significant are the performers that hold … they hold our attention. Why couldn't people take their eyes of Brando? Something was always eating at him. I don't … Continue reading What’s eating away at you?
In recent years I have twice become deeply bitter about how I have been treated by others. I was certainly not without fault – and I was treated unjustly and with a lack of kindness that hurt deeply. In both situations I became angry, and the hurt and anger transmuted into resentment and bitterness… Resentment … Continue reading Embattled, not embittered