My hopes and fears are the core of my unknowing. My hopes maybe are vain, my fears groundless, but they keep me from letting God be my only hope and fear. Coming to wisdom, as I am doing, rather than by way of disillusionment, I come to the thought of hopes and fears being ‘’met’’ […]
Windsor Conference on the Environment
Posted on by James Woodward
Windsor Conference on the Environment – Many Heavens: One Earth by the Bishop of London I was breasting a hill near to the coast. When I reached the summit and saw the fields stretched out below and a village nestling in a hollow and beyond, the sea, such a weight of glory overwhelmed me that […]
Leo the Great
Posted on by James Woodward
St. Leo the Great was born in Tuscany. As deacon, he was dispatched to Gaul as a mediator by Emperor Valentinian III. He reigned as Pope between 440 and 461. He persuaded Emperor Valentinian to recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in an edict in 445. The doctrine of the Incarnation was formed […]
Go Deeper – the search for wisdom
Posted on by James Woodward
I set out my pilgrimage , hoping to learn how to conjoin seeing and feeling, to conjoin knowing and loving – this conjoining is what I am going to call ‘’wisdom’. It is what I find in the places I visit, in the things I experience there, in the guises in which I meet the […]
Remembrance
Posted on by James Woodward
The following poem was written in 1999 in connection with the conflict in Kosovo. In 2005 the author decided that it was not a good idea to have written the poem in such a negative form, soit was re-wrote it as There will be peace. Readers can choose which version they prefer. The new […]
Where is true religion to be found?
Posted on by James Woodward
It may indeed be phantasy, when I Essay to draw from all created things Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ; And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie Lessons of love and earnest piety. So let it be ; and if the wide world rings In mock of this belief, […]
Rain
Posted on by James Woodward
Rain The monotone of the rain is beautiful, And the sudden rise and slow relapse Of the long multitudinous rain. The sun on the hills is beautiful, Or a captured sunset sea-flung, Bannered with fire and gold. A face I know is beautiful– With fire and gold of sky and sea, And the peace of […]
in a different light?
Posted on by James Woodward
towering of shadows of clouds From the tawny light from the rainy nights from the imagination finding itself and more than itself alone and more than alone at the bottom of the well where the moon lives, can you pull me into December? a lowland of space, perception of space towering of shadows of […]
Richard Hooker
Posted on by James Woodward
Richard Hooker was born in March 1554 in Exeter. He was educated in Exeter until he was sent, with Bishop Jewel as his patron, to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He graduated MA in 1577, and became a fellow of the college in the same year. He became assistant professor of Hebrew at the University, and […]
What future for Anglicanism?
Posted on by James Woodward
I am no scholar of Church history or skilled commentator on the Church. The conversations that continue over the recent action of Rome offering a ‘home’ to Anglicans remain divisive and distracting. While fellow priests consider their position, spent inordinate amounts of time on the internert making judgements about other positions the Church is damaged […]
All Saints
Posted on by James Woodward
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, today we rejoice in the holy men and women of every time and place. May their prayers bring us your forgiveness and love. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who live and reigns with you and Holy Spirit One God, forever and ever, Amen. O Almighty […]
Martin Luther
Posted on by James Woodward
Martin Luther (1483-1546) Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben. His father was a copper miner. Luther studied at the University of Erfurt and in 1505 decided to join a monastic order, becoming an Augustinian friar. He was ordained in 1507, began teaching at the University of Wittenberg and in 1512 […]
A Mission Shaped Church for Older People
Posted on by James Woodward
I travelled down from Windsor to London yesterday to share in a conference run by the Church Army and the Leveson Centre to promote our publication A Mission Shaped Church for Older People at St Michaels Chester Square. (available from the Leveson Centre – www.levesoncentre.org.uk) This event was specifically intended for those with a passion […]
James Hannington
Posted on by James Woodward
Precious in thy sight, O Lord, is the death of thy saints, whose faithful witness, by thy providence, hath its great reward: We give thee thanks for thy martyrs James Hannington and his companions, who purchased with their blood a road unto Uganda for the proclamation of the Gospel; and we pray that with them […]
State visit of the President of India
Posted on by James Woodward
British pomp and pageantry was on full display today as the Queen welcomed the Indian president toWinsor Castle today. Pratibha Patil – India’s first female president – was greeted by the Monarch and Duke of Edinburgh on a royal dais in the centre of the Berkshire town as a thunderous royal salute was fired nearby […]
those things that don’t flower?
Posted on by James Woodward
self-blessing The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until […]
Alfred the Great
Posted on by James Woodward
King of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex and one of the outstanding figures of English history, as much for his social and educational reforms as for his military successes against the Danes. He is the only English monarch known as ‘the Great’. Alfred was born at Wantage in Oxfordshire in 849, fourth […]
The Bible
Posted on by James Woodward
The disappearance of the Bible from European culture is self evident: once it was part of the intellectual and imaginative make up of poets, novelists and artists. Even if only a few knew the original languages in which the Bible was written, there was for the English speaking community the King James’ Bible – ‘That […]
Rome and Canterbury
Posted on by James Woodward
I am, of course, not alone in feeling dismayed by the recent announcement by our sister church, Rome, about the deal to offer Anglican a way into a move to Rome. It feels like an act of aggression at worst – at best, a rather predatory move. It leaves me with al kinds of questions: Will Anglicans […]
Lawyers?
Posted on by James Woodward
I have always felt a certain amount of ambivalence towards lawyers – based on experience and a little envy at the sheer injustice of a society that pays them so much for their work! Imagine then the circumstances whereby I choose to buy a lawyers memoirs! Putting money in the direction where none is needed! […]