I listen to money singing. It's like looking down
From long French windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.
from Philip Larkin, Money
Wearing worry about money like a ha
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
CONFUCIUS ON THE LIFE-COURSE
Posted on by James Woodward
The Master said,
'At fifteen I set my heart upon learning
At thirty, I had planted my feet upon firm ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven
At sixty, I heard them with a docile ear.
At seventy, I co
Our Calling?
Posted on by James Woodward
extracts from a sermon preached at
Mattins St Georges Chapel (30 June 2013)
Words from today’s Collect:
‘hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry
they may serve you in holiness and truth’
This is a prayer
Are we ever too old?
Posted on by James Woodward
The poet Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) wasn't too old, as shown in this
poem, written when Kunitz was nearly a hundred years old:
"The Layers"
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from whi
Redesigned Web Page
Posted on by James Woodward
James Woodward
take a look : www.jameswoodward.info
Constructive feedback welcome! JW
belonging?
Posted on by James Woodward
Zygmunt Bauman believes that vagabonds or vagrants offer an apposite metaphor of the postmodernist.
What keeps vagabonds moving is their disillusionment with the last place of rest and the hope that eventually the right locale will be found to give them a long-awaited sense of
Run the course of life’s banquet – approaching old age
Posted on by James Woodward
One very old way of depicting that shape of our destiny and humanity  is to picture life as a banquet, with a succession of courses through which one proceeds —   and also, to be sure, having a stopping point beyond which the banquet cannot be prolonged without destroyin
Challenging Power?
Posted on by James Woodward
From yesterdays sermon:
(Luke 8. 26-39 )
Christians everywhere have for centuries both colluded with power and authority and challenged it by shining the light of the Gospel on it when it got out of hand. I believe we too today are called as Christians to challenge po
Hands on …….
Posted on by James Woodward
The power of touch and connection
What is the meaning of Age
Always better together
Living by the Word.....
Nurture Wisdom?
Posted on by James Woodward
And what, in practice, does that wisdom mean for us?
What does it mean to have a listening heart and an understanding mind? I believe it means the capacity to hold together two things.
On the one hand lies the ability to incorporate intricate complexity and diversity, to comp
flowering
Posted on by James Woodward
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloome
Garter Day 2013
Posted on by James Woodward
Garter Day takes place today and already the castle is full of purpose and activity! King George VI reintroduced an annual service for the Order of the Garter in 1948. Up to that year services had been held irregularly. At first glance the processions, uniforms, r
The meaning and life in our hands
Posted on by James Woodward
The power and possibility of diversity
The Wonder and wisdom of Age
The awesomeness of prayer across the generations
springtime
Posted on by James Woodward
A gentle spring evening arrives
airily, unclouded by the world.
Three times the bell tolls; it echoes like a wave.
We see heaven upside-down in the lake.
Love is a vast sea. It cannot be emptied.
And, like springtime, insight flows easily, everywh
morning rain
Posted on by James Woodward
The dawn light. A light rain.
I hear it on the treetop leaves.
Then, the mist. The morning wind
blows it and the clouds away.
Now colours deepen, and a sense of grace:
the presence of water.
And then, across the landscape
the smell of morning rain.
Embrace your weakness
Posted on by James Woodward
David Ford proposed in a Lent Book some years ago, the Christian life involves learning to be overwhelmed well, and this will mean in the company of others, in the body of a church that weans its members from an idolatrous fixation on their own virtues - that weans them, in oth
Community as a place of Hope?
Posted on by James Woodward
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What do you hope for? What holy dream keeps you searching in the midst of darkness?
I don't mean a list for Santa Claus - but we could all learn something from the earnestness and energy: of childlike anticipation. Most of us adults are too shy or fearful or even ashamed to
purple as…
Posted on by James Woodward
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a colour,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
IÂ
later life
Posted on by James Woodward
Rainer Marie Rilke's poem "The Walk" invokes an image of
later life, a time of life by which we are grasped even if we
cannot grasp it-- that "sunny hill" which belongs to old age
imagined as 'our future selves:'
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ah
curves
Posted on by James Woodward
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Later someone
told me they had found out
the universe is a kind of strip that
twists around and joins itself, and I believe it,
sometimes I can feel it, the way we are
pouring slowly toward a curve and around it
through something dark and soft, and we are bound