Look at love...
how it tangles
the lover and the beloved
look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad?
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown mer
Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections
Verses for Advent – twenty third day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
 O Come, O Come, thou calling child:
                      the creatures, those both tame and wild,
                      the weak and powerful, coax along,
                      and change their t
Verses for Advent – the twenty second day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O Come, O Come, thou shaft of fire,
                     to lead us through dark and mire;
                      through desert bare thou moving cloud
                       protect and guide, fulfil what's
A Christmas Carol
Posted on by James Woodward
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Thank God, thank God, we do believe,
Thank God that this is Christmas Eve.
Even as we kneel upon this day,
Even so, the ancient legends say
Nearly two thousand years ago
The stalled ox knelt, and even so
The ass knelt full of praise, which they
Could not express, while we c
luminous
Posted on by James Woodward
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All existence
Is a sea, abundant with life.
For instance:
In a handful of ocean water
You couldn't even count all the first class
Musicians
Intelligent, sane, and
Utterly in the groove
Extremely sweet
And wild.
In a handful of the sky and earth,
In a handful of Go
Advent Calendar
Posted on by James Woodward
 He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
inner light
Posted on by James Woodward
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already i can see that sunlit hill
although my journey hardly has begun;
how what we cannot hold, can hold us with
its inner light, however far away,
and changes us, though we are nowhere near,
to something that we hardly know we are.
A sign speaks, and a sign in us
Verses for Advent – the sixteenth day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O come, O Come, thou morning star,
                 a point of light so singular,
                 an unexpected hope so bright
                that puts our grey despair to flight.
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Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Posted on by James Woodward
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Christ in the House of His Parents ('The Carpenter's Shop') 1849-50 Sir John Everett Millais, Bt 1829-1896
Combining rebellion, beauty, scientific precision and imaginative grandeur, the Pre-Raphaelites constitute Britain’s first modern art movement.
The exhibitionat the
Three Poems of Incarnation
Posted on by James Woodward
Who stands at my door in the storm and rain
On the threshold of being?
One who waits till you call him in
From the empty night
Are you a stranger, out in the storm,
Or has my enemy found me out
On the edge of being?
I am no stranger who stands at the door
Nor enemy come in th
Verses for Advent – the ninth day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O Come, O Come, thou wounded stag,
                     at home on rugged ridge and crag
                     guide us who cut our feet on stone,
                    and bring us hope, whose bodies groa
wheel
Posted on by James Woodward
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It is a wheel, the rays
Around the sun. The wheel survives the myths.
The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.
To think of a dove with an eye of grenadine
And pines that are cornets, so it occurs,
And a little island full of geese and stars:
It may be the ignoran
where the moon lives
Posted on by James Woodward
From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me
into December?
The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
The Fifth Day of December – Advent verses
Posted on by James Woodward
O Come, O Come, thou David's key,
                    unlock the gates and set us free.
                    Descendant of the King of Old,
                     release us from opression's hold.
       Â
Shadows in the Water
Posted on by James Woodward
In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.
Thus did I by the
Verses for Advent – the third day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O Come O Come, Adonai
                   in burning bush, on Sinai,
                   the flame that holds us still in awe,
                   to etch in flesh the living law.
              Â
Verses for Advent – the second day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O come, O come, thou wisdom strange
                    from deep within God's womb to range
                    the earth at midnights hour of fears
                    to make us wise beyond our years
Verses for Advent – the first day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O come, O come, thou living word,
                 and pierce our hearts with healing sword,
                 from God's own mouth proceeding far
                 to lance the fest'ring wounds of war.
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Immortal Autumn
Posted on by James Woodward
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I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.
I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.
I praise the fall: it is the human season.
impermanence
Posted on by James Woodward
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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.