the sensation of life
Thursday 2nd or Saturday 4th December 2021 If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road pregnant with the holy, and say, “I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.” St John of the Cross Advent is a time of waiting. A birth is due … Continue reading Retreat days for Advent
Years ago, I dipped into Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was hit between the eyes by this sentence: Only basic goodness gives life to technique.p. 21 I am not good, but I’d like to be, and this sentence has stayed with me as a standard to live up to. It … Continue reading Only basic goodness gives life to technique
In case you haven’t guessed, I am a big fan of Ignatian Spirituality. And with that couplet is the genesis of a problem. By using the phrase ‘Ignatian Spirituality’, I am already creating something that I’m not sure has much substance. I’m a fan of God and Jesus. I’m a fan of prayer. I’m a … Continue reading Ignatian Scaffolding
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking Many of us long to know what we should do with our lives and how we should live on a day by day basis. Those of us with a religious bent want … Continue reading Retreat Day: “What do You want me to do?”
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
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. Mary Oliver: In Blackwater Woods I was listening to Radio 3 over breakfast on Wednesday. Bryn Terfel was interviewed and … Continue reading Lass auch Dir die Brust bewegen, Liebchen, höre mich!
By their fruits ye shall know them. Matthew 7.16 A person is walking along the street and a thought comes to her: “I ought to phone my Auntie Julie. I know it is boring, and I never know what to say, but she must be lonely stuck in her flat with no visitors.” Another person … Continue reading It’s only your imagination
There a just a few tickets left on the Retreat Day: Lent in lockdown. I am offering it on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th February. Please contact me if you would like to come. Here are a few more details. The shape of the day 0930 Arrival, housekeeping, and introduction1000 Prayer 1: Home1200 Prayer 2: … Continue reading Retreat Day: last call
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world … Continue reading Retreat Day: Lent in lockdown
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.Luke 12.6–7 If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save … Continue reading Spiritual direction at the end of the world (3)
