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.
Give us today our daily bread
“Earth’s the right place for love.
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better”.
Robert Frost
Image: Meg Hitchcock, Self portrait: The Lord’s Prayer
If poetry “lacks necessity”, it lacks life. “Truth’s the heart of poetry”, as it is for prayer, and if it’s in the blood, it has to be said.
“Earth is the right place”. It’s all we have. It’s everything we have.
“So be reposed and praise, praise
the way it happened, and the way it is”.
P.J. Kavanagh
Image: Meg Hitchcock, Self portrait, The Lord’s Prayer (detail)
“Living is dailiness, a simple bread
That’s worth the eating.”
Judith Wright
It’s hard to miss the echo from the wisdom of Jesus in his teaching on prayer:
“Give us today our daily bread”. For Jesus, as it was for Judith Wright, this is a world of grace, where…
“we are wound
With mercy, round and round,
As if with air”.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Image: Meg Hitchcock, Self portrait, Lord’s Prayer (detail)
The American poet, Mary Oliver’s understanding of poetry reads like a good description of prayer,
which “mirrors all of life, reporting it, questioning it”.
The images in this post are focusing further and further in on the work by Meg Hitchcock, Self portrait: Lord’s Prayer. In this image the artist has used letters cut from a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead to recreate the Lord’s Prayer in the shape of her own feet.
for a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
