God’s kingdom is creation healed. Hans Kung Being in touch with the magnificently rich reality of God is at the heart of our prayer for healing: imagining the depth and height and glory of what our life in God can be is a powerful, hopeful and healing antidote to the often fearful and narrow emphasis […]
Self-giving and unconditional love is the only absolute
Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction Vaclav Havel Self-transcendence is the movement from within to beyond ourselves. It is reaching out – towards the other, to all living things. It is the deeply felt and joyous need to be in harmony with what we ourselves are not….because it is the expression and affirmation […]
The other is the place of encounter with the divine
Following our extensive series Practise Resurrection that Fr Philip Carter offered for the Lent and the Easter Seasons, we return to complete the series on Becoming a Human Being. You will find the earlier posts in this series at the following links. Becoming a human being Fostering a climate where communion takes place Jesus: God’s […]
Practise resurrection: the glory of God
The glory of God is a human being fully alive Ireneaus Don’t look at your “performance” – which all too often leads to: I am not good enough. I don’t deserve to be any better etc. But ask yourself: Is my attitude towards life life-giving or death-dealing? Creative or destructive? Freeing or imprisoning? Each day […]
Practise resurrection: make life-giving decisions
To believe as against not believing is not to adopt an opinion, but to embrace a life. Herbert Hodges Image source: Macha Chmakov Consolation Look back and ask yourself about choices you have made in your life- and how you now feel about them. How free do you feel in making choices? Or are you […]
Practise resurrection: stay connected
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I knew all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking […]
Practise resurrection: listen to what you want
Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow. Barry and Ann Ulanov Facing our desires demands courage. It is in the end self-defeating to deny our desires – even our desire for the wrong things. Our desires are the […]
Practise resurrection: foster the imagination
The imagination is a discovery faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new. Thomas Merton Image source: Jae-Im Kim We Are God’s Co-workers “Imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown”. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The imagination does not explain, but evokes. What is being called out from […]
Practise resurrection: gather all the fragments
Like Jacob waking up and exclaiming: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”, helping us realise that wherever we are “this [place] is the gate of heaven”. The goal of Christian life becomes not enlightenment but wholeness- an acceptance of this complicated and muddled bundle of experiences as a […]
Practise resurrection: be gentle
Like Jacob waking up and exclaiming: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”, helping us realise that wherever we are “this [place] is the gate of heaven”. People are hungry for a different space of self-hearing and self-healing…Beyond the turmoil, a tenderness. Beyond the anger and bitterness, something akin […]