There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things. Gerard Manley Hopkins We are not given our eyes just to stop us from bumping into things.Stanley Spencer Word is what is said, Spirit is the saying.Michael Downey Image: Filippo Rossi, Hidden Streets 12, 2021 Think about Spirit as wind, air, breath. Pay attention to your breathing…and […]
A symbol should go on deepening. Flannery O’Connor The world offers itself to your imagination.Mary Oliver Image: Daniel Arredondo, Hidden Below, Our Roots A sacramental universe is a symbolic one. This life, and this world says to us that the starting point for becoming who we are intended to be is not striving after another […]
Everything that meets our gaze is a parable veiling and unveiling its higher meaning. Hugo Rahner Sacramental vision is not instant photography of the world – it is something learned by patient education of our sensibility to the engagement of God with the world. Alan Ecclestone The sacramental principle means that God is present to […]
Days pass when I forget the mystery… Days pass when I forget the mystery…. The mysterythat there is anything, anything at all,let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,rather than void: and that, O Lord,Creator, Hallowed One, You still,Hour by hour sustain it. Denise Levertov Image: Caitlin Connolly (American 1986-), An Earth So Quiet She Could […]
Flawed as you are you stand on holy ground. Angela Tilby Flawed as you are you stand on holy ground.This is the ground God has cleared for you.God meets you here, and nowhere else.Angela Tilby Listen to the language of your wounds.Jim Cotter Image: Seonna Hong, In Tribute to the Gate of Heaven and Earth […]
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk” John 5: 8 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids – blind, lame and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus […]
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. Philippians 4:11 Praise is inner health made audible.C.S. Lewis If anyone should tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness, all perfection, he would tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you, and […]
our incompleteness is the empty side of our longing for God and God’s love Gerald May [The kingdom’s] a long way off, but to getthere takes no time and admissionis free, if you will purge yourselfof desire, and present yourself withyour need only and the simple offeringof your faith, green as a leaf. […]
Are you confident I can do this? Matthew 9:28 The least we can do is to give the true doctor, who dwells in each patient, a chance to be operative. Carl Jung Deep inside each organism is something that knows what that organism’s true nature and life goal is. It is as though there is […]
Our reading of the gospel story can and should be an act of personal communion with the living God William Temple William Temple, one of the great Archbishops of Canterbury in the 20th century said once that though the story of Jesus happened long ago, in it “we apprehend present fact”. This is because the […]