let me be the thinking heart Etty Hillesum Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam, died in Auschwitz on 30th November, 1943. Throughout the descent into Nazism she kept an extraordinarily moving diary, addressing “that deeper and wider part (of myself) in which I repose….what I call God”. In the concentration camp women and girls […]
This ineffable moment Mary Austin How long this ineffable moment lasted I never knew. It broke like a bubble at the sudden singing of a bird, and the wind blew and the world was the same as ever – only never quite the same. Mary Austin If you’ve had such an experience (‘a moment in […]
The sudden illumination T S Eliot During what seemed like months of rain I was carrying a tray load of food to a wormy litter of pups down at the kennels when I slipped and fell on my back, dog dishes shooting in all directions. I lay where I had fallen, half-blinded by rain under […]
‘The most surprising, precious moment’ Ruth Cracknell ‘Something you somehow haven’t to deserve’ Robert Frost It is the most precious moment I have known; it is the most surprising moment because entirely unexpected. And if this moment I can keep, then nothing more do I need, now or ever. We are not, you see, and […]
Struck by grace Paul Tillich Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the bible contains the truth. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness….when we walk through the […]
Significance of trivial things James Joyce There are moments when the outer world is seen with an almost pristine wonder….Sudden brilliance of the chestnut tree across the road. Bright yellow leaves in the sun. How enlivening, inspiriting they are in those unexpected shafts which strike into the heart from them outside world. Philip Toynbee Ian […]
Grandly related Henry Thoreau 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 loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. […]
Truly being here is glorious Rainer Maria Rilke Now – Here Learning to be present Grace is the courage to be at home in the moving resonance of the present Everyone needs to feel at home, to feel earthed, for it is impossible to say, ‘Who am I?”’ without but asking, ‘Where am I?’ ‘Whence […]
He had the beauty of himself alive in the only moment of his life. Wendell Berry My mind becamebeautiful by the sight of him. He had the beautyof himself alive in the only moment of his life. Wendell Berry in a poem about a yellow-throated warbler Image: Makoto Fujimura, Golden Sea God’s first gift to […]
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. Nietzsche …behind and beneath the smooth wheels of the socially constructed world are two abiding facts: unreconciled pain and unexhausted compassion, the history of men and women and the history of God with us. Rowan Williams In the beginning when God created […]