Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,--
I'll lie here and learn
How, over their ground
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.
Louise Bogan, Knowledge
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
Transcendence
Posted on by James Woodward
God’s difference from us constitutes his transcendence. Transcendence does not - and never did in classical thought - mean spatial separation or ‘out-thereness’. Transcendence means, and always has meant, difference. God’s transcen- ( dence opposes pantheism, not intim
Annie Leibovitz
Posted on by James Woodward
I think that by now many of my FB friends and followers of this blog may well know that I spent a week in Palm Beach this January. I was very glad to get to know the work of the Norton Museum of Art and to deliver a lecture there as part of an exhibition exploring some of the asp
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 feet)
see the world as unseeable
and forget the seeming self.
I said to my heart, what a gift it is
to w
The challenges of buidling community
Posted on by James Woodward
Some fragments ofreflection on the divisions of the Church during the week of Paryer for Christian Unity.
Our experiences of moral failure, group meltdowns, personal pettiness, and partisan harshness in congregations and communities make us wonder if our efforts in buildin
Gratitude
Posted on by James Woodward
When our lives are shaped by gratitude, we’re more likely to notice the goodness and beauty in everyday things.
We are content; we feel blessed and are eager to confer blessing. We are able to delight in the very existence of another human being. In a grateful community, indi
What is Good Religion?
Posted on by James Woodward
True religion helps us to grow, but pseudo-religion hinders growth, for it creates and maintains obstacles and barriers.
Thus it is that much religion merely censors experience and does not liberate it, stifles human potential and does not allow it to blossom. Much religion is
virtue
Posted on by James Woodward
SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky—
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full
across the sky
Posted on by James Woodward
My mother holding me, looking down at me,
sometimes, smiling, she would weep.
Now, I know why. Love is strong, so strong
that it can break the cage, and for one holy moment
she disappeared from everything.
All that we do comes from that, that
taste of flying. The possibil
like cautious sunlight
Posted on by James Woodward
When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had
And be thankful??
Posted on by James Woodward
Hundreds of years ago, Thomas a Kempis worried about our tendency to overlook the small gifts on the way to wanting more, and urged those who longed to grow in Christ-likeness, “Be thankful for the smallest blessing, and you will deserve to receive greater. Value the least
AGEING AS TIMELESS
Posted on by James Woodward
How do you view your ageing?
In this culture aging is a dirty word. Youth is the thing.
Old people make themselves up to look like young people. You think
you have to do it because youth is what’s “in”. It’s a cultural
thing. Still, it’s a fact of natu
WHERE EVERYTHING IS MUSIC
Posted on by James Woodward
Don't worry about saving these songs,
And if one of our instruments breaks,
It doesn't matter.
We have fallen,
We have fallen into the place,
Where everything is music...
Today, like every other day,
We wake up empty and frightened
Don't open the door to the study
And begin re
Laughter
Posted on by James Woodward
Laughter is one of the ways we cope with the discrepancies of our lives.
There is a dream we all have for this world, and then there is, well, this world. There are expectations we have of our religions, and then there are our religions . . . Our capacity to love God, ourselves,
Faith for a New Year?
Posted on by James Woodward
Every segment of life is both gift and challenge, both endowment and responsibility.
It is the warp and wool of the fabric we call time. The delicate interplay between the two has the power to rock us back and forth between total confidence and abject despair. We lurch through
leaves
Posted on by James Woodward
The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.
Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must
Prayer and Thanksgiving
Posted on by James Woodward
How can we come towards one another, not with the aggression that alienates, but with the love that unites? There is no easy answer to this; a major part of prayer can be occupied in learning it. But one very practical thing helps: thanksgiving. Not humility—for which of us
Nativity
Posted on by James Woodward
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and
On the Mystery of the Incarnation
Posted on by James Woodward
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-lik
The east window of St Georges Chapel Windsor
Posted on by James Woodward
From my stall in the Chapel the East Window soars above drawing the eye into the detail and capturing the spiritual imagination. This is much helped by the changing time of prayer and seasons that shed light that opens up the colour and story.
The window was designed as a memor