unfurling like a green prayer, or a question mark
in a world of answers, or a poem in a world of prose,
cramming his vamped exuberance like a camel
through the eye of a needle, which Jesus thought unlikely,
but not inconceivable, at least for a miracle-worker like himself,
who
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
as dew clarifies air
Posted on by James Woodward
They say eyes clear with age,
As dew clarifies air
To sharpen evenings,
As if time put an edge
Round the last shape of things
To show them there;
The many-levelled trees,
The long soft tides of grass
Wrinkling away the gold
Wind-ridden waves--all these,
They say, come back to f
Questions and Answers?
Posted on by James Woodward
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
hopeful green
Posted on by James Woodward
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of
Surrender of Self?
Posted on by James Woodward
In his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff captured a major cultural theme of the last five decades of the twentiÂeth century.
Therapy’s triumph in an age of radical individualism has enriched our lives in numerous ways. Almost every facet of our liv
The sacrament of Art
Posted on by James Woodward
David Jones Artist 1895-1974
Art for David Jones is a sacramental process – the record of interface with God.
Artworks are the fragments of traces left over from this colloquy. These residues are in exact remains and it is their very imperfections that compel artists obse
Indra's net
Posted on by James Woodward
Buddhism uses a similar image to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena. It is called Indra's Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be th
TELL ME WHO I AM
Posted on by James Woodward
Stories are ways of telling others who I am. But are
there limits to narrative?
"You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who
you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify
you?
That brings us to the second problem. Although in th
thorn
Posted on by James Woodward
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread:
you put this rather beautifully,
and gave me leave to sing my work
until my work became the song.
In sorrow shalt thou eat of it:
a line on which a man might ring
the changes as he tills the ground
from which he was t
The Reverend Jeremy Sampson
Posted on by James Woodward
(from The Church Times Obits)
SAMPSON. -
On 11 July, the Revd Jeremy John Egerton Sampson: Vicar of North Perak, Malaya (1951-52); Priest-in-Charge of Johore Bahru (1952-57); Vicar of St John the Divine, Ipoh (1957-62); Killingworth (1962-76); Consett (1976-90); Rural De
Clergy work in St Georges House
Posted on by James Woodward
A Church in Bavaria
Everything bends
                to re-enact
            the poem lived,
                            lived, not written,
the poem spoken
             by Christ, who never
  Â
flint
Posted on by James Woodward
An emerald is as green as grass;
A ruby red as blood;
A sapphire shines as blue as heaven;
A flint lies in the mud.
A diamond is a brilliant stone,
To catch the world’s desire;
An opal holds a fiery spark;
But a flint holds fire.
Christina Rossetti, Jewels
St. Peter and the Angel
Posted on by James Woodward
Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained--
unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening--
out!
And along a long street's
majestic emptiness under the moon:
one hand on the an
ribbon
Posted on by James Woodward
The curl of the ribbon by
leaves of the reeds, the grasses
paint peeling on the wet clapboards
like the curl of the flat ribbon
pulled by the blade of scissors
wrapping a package in gold
moving in the autumn breeze
bathed in a puddle of light
grasses above the m
rosemary
Posted on by James Woodward
Beauty and Beauty's son and rosemary -
Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly -
born of the sea supposedly,
at Christmas each, in company,
braids a garland of festivity.
Not always rosemary -
since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently.
With la
How do we speak about God? Where is the spiritual pulse?
Posted on by James Woodward
How do we speak about God?
As a pastor over the past thirty years, what I’ve seen again and again is people who want to live lives of meaning and peace and significance and joy—people who have a compelling sense that their spirituality is in some vital and yet mysterious w
opening and upward
Posted on by James Woodward
here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
and to your(in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain
and here’s to silent certainly mountains; and to
a disappearing poet of always, snow
and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful
Disturb us….
Posted on by James Woodward
This is a wonderful prayer attributed to an early Anglican explorer, Sir Francis Drake, whose chaplain held an Anglican service on the shores of the West Coast in 1579.
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true bec
Colours
Posted on by James Woodward
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dream
a sheet of interrupting water
Posted on by James Woodward
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
And that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
Of interrup