From the vantage point of youth, sorrows in later life
seem so relentless that we cannot imagine living through them.
We watch elders lose friends and relatives, give up beloved
houses, and relinquish cherished involvements. It an seem that
later life is composed of inter
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
very intense
Posted on by James Woodward
I am not lazy.
I am on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the windows.
Recovering our Mission? Turning outwards…..
Posted on by James Woodward
Desmond Tutu's dream is founded in the image of the reign of God, the full dignity of all humanity, and an insistence that all God's children are made to dwell together in peace, with justice. He has nation and of the world, and to make their methods seem absurd or ridi
Waiting
Posted on by James Woodward
Waiting is not a passage of time to be traversed but a condition of our being. In waiting, time enters our bodies; we are the time that passes. We wait even if we are not aware that we are waiting. The instrumental nature of ordinary waiting - where we usually wait for somethin
iris
Posted on by James Woodward
Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,—
An iris bloomed—blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
Fr
a crowd of stars
Posted on by James Woodward
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or
Seeing and Looking
Posted on by James Woodward
The art critic Roger Fry, writing in 1919, discussed two lands of seeing - or, rather, as he put it, the difference between seeing and looking. Seeing is a useful skill that nature has given us. It has to do with the use that appearances have for the business of living.
Secrets of Leadership?
Posted on by James Woodward
Ten outstanding high achievers were asked to sum up their particular approach to leadership - the core message that they wanted to share with others and this is what emerged:
the images might ground the snippets!
1. The great don’t need to play games
2.Leadership comes thr
Balance
Posted on by James Woodward
So much struggling –
realising that I need a balance
between reaching out and reaching in.
I need to do some things just for me,
like paint and play,
and read and build sandcastles.
I need to stop
for a long time,
to think about that.
Where did I miss it? Lose it?
For joy is
upside down
Posted on by James Woodward
let us lie upon the sky
and look upon the grass
where the rain drops grow
and the dew drops listen
on the newly mown clouds
falls the shadow of the hills
where the white flowers fly
and the black birds blossom
the roots of the apple tree are waving in
In Praise of …..
Posted on by James Woodward
The essay was originally published in 1933. The English translation was published in 1977.
Much shorter than the author's novels, this book is a small meditative work of 73 pages, of which 59 are the essay itself.
The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss tradi
delight
Posted on by James Woodward
All the others translate: the painter sketches
A visible world to love or reject;
Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches
The images out that hurt and connect.
From Life to Art by painstaking adaption
Relying on us to cover the rift;
Only your notes are pure c
the swan
Posted on by James Woodward
we stumble through the pain of every day
knotted with need to get things done
doing the clown walk, like a walking swan.
and death, our falling off
the earth we walk on every day
is the swan's apprehensive flop
into the water that is his home. It t
Pentecost
Posted on by James Woodward
ACTS 2:1-21
Our Reading Today is taken from the Book of The Acts of
The Apostles. It records how God's Spirit - which gave new life
to Israel when they were in captivity - was poured out upon the
church - in accordance with the promise of the prophet Joel and
our Lord Jesus C
Love – free and untroubled?
Posted on by James Woodward
If loving means going out to things, and knowing means taking things in, then there is “a circle in the acts of the soul,” as Aquinas says, there is a knowing that comes of loving and there is a loving that comes of knowing.
It is like the great circle of love coming from
Home, sweet Home!
Posted on by James Woodward
This is a very good book! We know our homes and make choices in relation to them but this book will change how you think about almost every aspect of your home!
“Our houses and homes,” Heathcote writes, “no matter what style they are realised in, no matter how modest o
veins
Posted on by James Woodward
the sunlight
moving through it,
illuminating, holding the flower open like a high
clear note, an ecstatic
widening
which arrives, arrives.
sunlight, like vision,
making clear the tiniest
hidden veins.
From Kate Northrop,
to fly towards a secret sky
Posted on by James Woodward
This is love: to fly towards a secret sky
to open the curtains, again and again.
to let go of life.
How do you find it? Easy.
Take just one step (but don't move your
dandelion
Posted on by James Woodward
How I loved those spiky suns,
rooted stubborn as childhood
in the grass, tough as the farmer's
big-headed children—the mats
of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe.
How sturdy they were and how
slowly they turned themselves
into galaxies, domes of ghost stars
ba
History from a different angle!
Posted on by James Woodward
Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household by Kate Hubbard
A walk from the shops in Windsor into the Castle and my home in The Cloisters always takes one past a statue of Queen Victoria. Perhaps it is the most foolish of historians that can ever take thei