Can I hope that I am now in a new area, traveling more securely, and that my commitment to the hermit life will be something more than a comic gesture? Is the whole thing just a fantastic private comedy? I question myself and my whole life very seriously. The real absurdity of it all! The … Continue reading Clinging to the Invisible God
The Discontents of Empire (IV)
It may help to think that what [St Mark] does is to help us see events [of the Passion] strictly from the perspective of the victim. When the victims of totalitarian violence and tyranny in our own age tell their stories, as many have, they sound very much like this. Victims typically don’t really know … Continue reading The Discontents of Empire (IV)
The Discontents of Empire (III)
Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotised by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, … Continue reading The Discontents of Empire (III)
Journalling Bible
One of the things I like to say in this writing is that God draws each of us to Her/Himself in different ways. There is no one correct way to pray and no wrong way to pray: there is only your way. Some months ago I stumbled upon this post by Rebecca at Grace and … Continue reading Journalling Bible
The Discontents of Empire (II)
Here is something I wrote in my journal nearly 17 years ago. At the time I was living in a large, Victorian, short-life house (council housing, unfit for council tenants, leased to a housing co-operative) close to the Brixton Road. I don’t think I’d change a word today. What troubles me is that I’ve been … Continue reading The Discontents of Empire (II)
The Discontents of Empire (I)
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and why do you labour for that which does not satisfy? Isaiah 55.2 In the recent months I have found myself working more, and praying and writing less. I have wondered at the reasons. Several occur to me: I'm anxious about money; I … Continue reading The Discontents of Empire (I)
I am Trump
I think President Donald J. Trump is the apotheosis of our system. He is not mad or bad. He is ourselves writ large. He shows us what we have become. When we demonise him, we are decrying what is wrong in ourselves. I think that all the protests – the protests against Trump and against … Continue reading I am Trump
What’s eating away at you?
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?
Only
Real conversion is centred on God: it results from a deeper turning towards Him rather than a closer inspection of ourselves. … Conversion, at its root, is not the action performed but the source of that action, the experience of being loved.Dyckman & Carroll, Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet, 9 I am faced with … Continue reading Only
Sermon to self
Prayer is subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime… [As we pray,] slowly but surely, not culture, not family, not government, not job, not even the tyrannous self can stand against the quiet power and creative influence of God's sovereignty. Every natural tie … Continue reading Sermon to self