When you make a speech, you are attempting an embrace – you are saying to your listeners – you and me both. Don Watson Don Watson, in a book called Death Sentence (on the decay of public language), says that when you make a speech, you are attempting an embrace – you are saying to […]
“The slow fire of the impossible is lit….by the imagination” Emily Dickinson We are made in God’s image – and are image bearers and image makers. We grasp or deal with reality through our imaginations. The power of our imaginations can “release the emotions and move us to action”. “Images are forms of transport. They […]
Every person is already radically open [to God] in the very core of his or her being. Richard McBrien In prayer we discover what we already have. You stand where you are, you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it, […]
We were conceived in the mind of God as the partner in a dialogue. Hans Urs von Balthasar Dialogue demands that I leave the place I dwell – the landscape of feelings and thoughts that seem important to me – in order to dwell with your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, fears, hopes. I must deny myself […]
We begin 2022 with a series of Fr Philip’s meditations based on the writings of Julian of Norwich, (1342?-1420), the most popular of the English mystics. As an anchoress she lived in a cell attached to a Norwich church and engaged in prayer and spiritual guidance. I was born a man (woman), but now my […]
Fr Philip and I have enjoyed sharing this blog with you over the past year. We will be taking a sabbatical over the month of January and will look forward to meeting you online again in February of next year, 2022. What is the greatest gift?…That you have a soul – your own, no one […]
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thingI know, that the soul exists, and that it isbuilt entirely out of attention. Mary Oliver ______________________________________ Attending to soul is about noticing and appreciating what is, as opposed to approaching reality with pre-conceived ideas or illusions. It is about openness, awareness, and the savouring of reality. […]
Nobody knows what the soul is Mary Oliver Nobody knows what the soul is. It comes and goeslike the wind over the watersometimes, for days,you don’t think of it. Mary Oliver Image: Kim En Joong, Huile 1877_01 Thomas Moore says we connect with the soul through our complaints. The symptoms of emptiness, meaninglessness, disillusionment, loss […]
Is the soul solid, like iron?Or is it tender and breakable….? Mary Oliver Living soulfully is not about striving, being driven, or searching for perfection. It calls out from us that which lies hidden within: a capacity for openness, wonder and awe. It asks us to attend to everything that is, with patience, sensitivity and […]
My soul is a strange country Randolph Stow Soul language is slippery. “My soul is a strange country” (Randolph Stow) and is impossible to define. It bears out what Erasmus said: that “every definition is a misfortune”. I am trying to keep a soul alive in times not hospitable to the soul.J.M. Coetzee No-one can […]