Fr Philip Carter offers a ministry of spirituality, with a series of meditations on some questions that we may ponder as we consider our life in God.
You will find here his reflections and questions for meditation, images, music and poetry to enrich your life’s journey.
It is on the level of disposition and desire that we need help most.
Michael Paul Gallagher
Attention animated by desire is the whole foundation of religious practices.
Simone Weil
The wisdom of discernment is choosing life-giving habits of the heart.
Loving must be learnt by heart
If it is to be any good.
It isn’t in the flash of thunder,
But in the silent power to give –
A habit into which we live
Ourselves, and grow to be a wonder.
James McAuley
Our most important choice is about the disposition we want to have before God. True discernment and choosing lies in our “reposing in oneself”. Do we want to be open, generous and courageous before God or closed, mean and fearful? Our choices come down to one choice: “learning in faith what it means to be chosen”.
Alan Jones
That part of myself, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is what I call “God”.
Truly, my life is one long hearkening unto myself and unto others, unto God. And if I say that I hearken, it is really God who hearkens inside me. The most essential and deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential and deepest in the other. God to God.
Etty Hillesum
The saint is the person who has discovered his/her deepest desire. They then “do their own thing” which is also God’s thing. Their will and God’s will are in harmony, so that their lives are characterised by a continuous peace, tranquility, freedom and joy, even – perhaps especially – in crisis and suffering.
Discernment is about noticing and learning to make choices in freedom so that we are no longer hijacked by any disordered love or attachment, and begin to accept, welcome and desire whatever God wants.
This post begins a new series for the Easter season, Choosing Life. the images used throughout the series will be of artists described as ‘land artists’ or ‘earth artists’, who use objects found in nature to create their work.
The images in this post are by Winston Plowes, who lives and works in Yorkshire.
266 HIVE – Lock 7, Rochdale Canal, Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire.
Quince Rings. 19th December 2023
“The fallen hazel-nuts, Stripped late of their green sheaths, The grapes, red-purple, Their berries Dripping with wine, Pomegranates already broken, And shrunken fig, And quinces untouched, I bring thee as offering.“
– Hilda Doolittle
These images were taken on the day I made the piece, after 10 days, 18 days and finally after 26 days this week after the slugs and snails have been feasting and the rings of quince have changed from yellow, through orange to a shrivelling brown.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
