The point is the seeing, the grace
beyond recognition, the ways
of the bird rising, unnamed, unknown,
beyond the range of language, beyond its noun.
Eyes open on growing, flying, happening,
and go on opening. Manifold, the world
dawns on unrecognizing, realizing eyes.
Amazeme
Commission of assisted dying – why I joined.
Posted on by James Woodward
What might it mean this Advent to follow St Benedict’s injuction to keep death daily before our eyes? Perhaps our friends might think us morbid; but we could discover in this embrace a better way to live. Keeping death daily before our eyes means thinking about how our own d
compassion
Posted on by James Woodward
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out
Christ's compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.
who died?
Posted on by James Woodward
When death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time
Laughter
Posted on by James Woodward
Laughter is a special sign of play. Laughter can be escapist, con¬trived, or cynical, but not when it is God laughing through us. Then it is simply restful celebration of the life that is. Such laughter is schoolmaster too. It teaches us humility. "It notes how far all earthly
Eutrapelia
Posted on by James Woodward
Eutrapelia is an old, neglected human virtue identified by Aristotle that can lend understanding to the quality of authentic sabbath play. It derives from eutrepo, "to turn well' It is a virtue reflecting mobility of soul, one that is able to turn to lovely, bright, relaxing th
Doing or Being? An age old question !
Posted on by James Woodward
This drivenness is deepened by what sociologists call the rapid shift from ascribed to achieved status in modern societies: the shift from sensing a givenness to who we are through family, religion, and community membership, to defining ourselves (and being defined by others)
Commission On Assisted Dying
Posted on by James Woodward
But Lord Falconer, who is chairing the Commission On Assisted Dying, said it would be "objective, dispassionate and authoritative".
It will receive evidence from experts and the public before publishing a report in December 2011.
Earlier this year the Crown Prosecution Servi
The Cathedral as ‘person’
Posted on by James Woodward
The word 'person' comes from the Latin persona, meaning mask. A mask was often worn by an actor in the theatre. It was the means of taking on a particular character. Nowadays we refer to persons in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes we simply mean individual human beings, b
Living with our selves?
Posted on by James Woodward
We often the fail to see what is truly there in front of us - because our own vision is clouded by self-obsession or self-satisfaction.
There are several variants of a story in which some young monk goes in despair to one of the great 'old men’ to say that he has consul
Colin Slee
Posted on by James Woodward
Colin was my college Chaplain at Kings College London in the 1970's - a great man - here is a flavour of his character!
The Very Rev Colin Slee obituary( The Guardian)
Colin Slee was far from pompous or solemn, relishing the absurdities of the church.The Very Rev Colin Slee,
Advent
Posted on by James Woodward
ADVENT SUNDAY
Blessed are you, Sovereign Lord, God of our ancestors:
to you be praise and glory for ever.
You called the patriarchs to live by the light of faith
and to journey in the hope of your promised fulfilment.
May we be obedient to your call
and be ready and watchful to
to express the sky
Posted on by James Woodward
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient
upward
Posted on by James Woodward
Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain
You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,
that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this
or,
the popularity of the Vicar…..
Posted on by James Woodward
Follow this link at your peril..... does it look or sound familiar? Dangerous ground!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPOZnz0Jmc4
Learning to live with others!
Posted on by James Woodward
We begin to see here the cluster of ideas generated by the apparently simple words of Antony, Living in a Christian way with the neighbour, so that the neighbour is 'won' - i.e. converted, brought into saving relation with Jesus Christ involves my 'death'. I must die to myself,
Gauguin
Posted on by James Woodward
I wrote earlier this week about the life of Paul Gauguin following a visit to the Tate to see Gauguin: Maker of Myth ( http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gauguin/ )
Gauguin had been a stockbroker and a Sunday painter before taking up art full-time after an economic downt
intersection
Posted on by James Woodward
When the familiar is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we yet have to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?
By you; by t
Love your neighbour
Posted on by James Woodward
The neighbour is our life; to bring connectedness with God to the neighbour is bound up with our own connection with God. The neighbour is our death, communicating to us the death sentence on our attempts to settle who we are in our own terms and to cling to what we reckon are