Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I cal
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
watchful
Posted on by James Woodward
If you value yourself
watch that self, carefully
the wise should be watchful.
Self must govern self
Who else would do this work?
If the self is well controlled
you have found a good master.
It is your self that does wrong
it is your self that suffers
it is your self th
impermanence
Posted on by James Woodward
have you not noticed
what the world is
really like?
it is like moonlight
shining in dewdrops
shaken, flying,
from the beak of a crane.
Dogen
Ageing is no accident!
Posted on by James Woodward
Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human
condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic
of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we
become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years
have a very important purpose: the f
On Anglican Piety
Posted on by James Woodward
“Her intellectual temper,” W H Auden said, “is summed up in a remark by one of her bishops, ‘Orthodoxy is reticence”
Auden believed that “at its best,” Anglican piety “shows spiritual good manners, a quality no less valuable in the religious life than in s
Love After Love
Posted on by James Woodward
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your hea
awakening
Posted on by James Woodward
Enter the turret of your love, and lie
close in the arms of the sea; let in new suns
that beat and echo in the mind like sounds
risen from sunken cities lost to fear;
let in the light that answers your desire
awakening at midnight with the fire,
until its magic bu
Living with Disagreement
Posted on by James Woodward
It is impossible to build community if people are not willing to stay in conversation or “at the table” during times of significant disagreement. Our inclination may be to shut down or shut out those who challenge us at tender or important places, but we cannot find resolut
your sleeping head
Posted on by James Woodward
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The ent
INTERCESSION by Mother Mary Clare
Posted on by James Woodward
PRAYER in its wholeness is relationship with God. Our part in all prayer is to be the ‘good ground’ out of which the seed can grow and, if we will let it, be multiplied a hundredfold by our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. We must not break up the acti
The métier of blossoming
Posted on by James Woodward
If humans could be
that intensely whole, undistracted, unhurried,
swift from sheer
unswerving impetus!
If we could blossom
out of ourselves, giving
nothing imperfect, withholding nothing!
From Denise Levertov, The métier of blossoming
Easter Wings
Posted on by James Woodward
Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With Thee
O let me rise,
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day Thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age
Easter
Posted on by James Woodward
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy
At the Easter vigil
Posted on by James Woodward
This new fire of Easter ignites the whole creation into praise. I want to sing you a song! The song has four notes: four notes ofEaster joy. But lest this music sounds too sweet – too confident, unrelated or disconnected from what we know to be true in our own hearts and exper
back to social media…..
Posted on by James Woodward
Lent moves into Holy Week and now on Holy Saturday I turn myself to some words for our Vigil this evening. This morning in St Georges Chapel I was again full of gratitude for this bit of sacred space - and especially its tomb like quality in the early morning light.
Some of my
Remixing The Church
Posted on by James Woodward
Doug Gay, Remixing The Church: Towards an Emerging Ecclesiology, London (SCM Press) 2011, 133 pp., ISBN 9780334043966, £17.99
There can be little doubt that church attendance is in decline and over the past two decades in the UK significant resources have been invested in a
The necessity of Age!
Posted on by James Woodward
OLD MASTERS
How long does it take to become an Old Master? Longer than
one might think:
Louise Bourgeois, a great experimental sculptor, once declared
'I am a long-distance runner. It takes me years and years and years
to produce what I do." Bourgeois made her greatest wor
make friends with fire
Posted on by James Woodward
I look at my heart, such as it is,
so much lower than what language can do;
but yet: the heart is itself what is, is all that is,
it is all that is disguised by speech.
How many words will you speak today?
Too many; much too many.
How much will you be burned by love
burn
Live the Questions
Posted on by James Woodward
I beg you ... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you w
The Strange Problem of Entitlement
Posted on by James Woodward
Years ago, Paul Tournier observed that “no gift can bring joy to the one who has a right to everything.”
While there is a healthy interpretation of entitlement that is tied to a sense of dignity and equality, when it is exaggerated, it brings continual dissatisfaction a