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# James Woodward

 

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## Posts

- [Blog: Pictures-Books-Reflections](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog-2/)
- [What does it mean to Age Well : Reading Ian Knox Finishing Well](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/what-does-it-mean-to-age-well-reading-ian-knox-finishing-well/) - Ian S. Knox Finishing Well: A God’s-Eye View of Ageing London: SPCK, 2020. Pp. xiv, 283. Pb. £9.99. ISBN 978-0-281-08349-7 Ian Knox is an experienced, wise and creative priest and evangelist. His love of people, life, scripture and learning are all present in the fourteen chap- ters of this book. His scope of reading
- [A wonder which is tender and astonishing - reading Elizabeth Strout](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-wonder-which-is-tender-and-astonishing-reading-elizabeth-strout/) - I remember exactly when I first entered Elizabeth Strout’s world: November 2020, with Olive Kitteridge, when ordinary life already felt newly fragile. Since then, her novels have not felt like books I merely read, but rooms I keep returning to — places where difficult, wounded, unshowy people are granted the dignity of being fully noticed. That
- [The Interior Silence and our journey towards the light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-interior-silence-and-our-journey-towards-the-light/) - Sarah Sands, former editor of the BBC’s Today programme, is overwhelmed by the constant rush of information and struggles to sleep. She’s tried various methods to slow down and find calm but feels many of them can lead to self-absorption rather than true peace. Her search takes a gentler turn when she explores the ruins
- [Farewell to Sarum and Welcome to a New Season !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/farewell-to-sarum-and-welcome-to-a-new-season/) - June 25th marked a significant crossroads in my working life. I stepped back from my work as Principal of Sarum College. We gathered in the Cavell Room in glorious sunshine. I was glad to see former colleagues from across my 11 years of work at 19 The Close as well as neighbours, supporters of the
- [On Sorting Books, nurturing passion for theology and Letting Go](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-sorting-books-nurturing-passion-for-theology-and-letting-go/) - Have you ever gone into someone's home and wandered over their bookshelves to see what they have collected ? We always learn something about them - their personality perhaps, their interests or even their passions. The books we read, the books we collect and the books we return to tell us a great deal about
- [On sorting out Books ! Keeping, Letting Go and Moving On](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-sorting-out-books-keeping-letting-go-and-moving-on/) - Have you ever gone into someone's home and wandered over their bookshelves to see what they have collected ? We always learn something about them - their personality perhaps, their interests or even their passions. The books we read, the books we collect and the books we return to tell us a great deal about
- [Gilbert Shaw and the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God.   Sister Susan SLG](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gilbert-shaw-and-the-community-of-the-sisters-of-the-love-of-god-sister-susan-slg/) - I have had a long association with the community of the Sisters of the Love of God east of Oxford just off the Iffley Road. My first visit was as a second year undergraduate at Kings College London in 1980. I was and continue to be drawn to their life. I have learned so much
- [Living Happily ever after - Advice from across the North Sea](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-happily-ever-after-advice-from-across-the-north-sea/) - At the end of June 2026 I am stepping out of full-time employment for what I want to call a new season. I'm hoping to reach that date, and although born in 1961, I will have completed 41 full and wonderful years of ordained ministry in the Church of England. Eleven of these years have
- [Visiting Mount Athos on Holy Saturday 2026](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/visiting-mount-athos-on-holy-saturday-2026/) - I have been journeying alongside a religious community this Holy Week. Today is that in between time : Holy Saturday as it sits between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In the Convent, bathed in silence ( though with blustery April wind) preparations are going on in order to get ready for the great festival of
- [On being nourished by curiosity and wisdom.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-being-nourished-by-curiosity-and-wisdom/) - I am all the poorer for having had this book sit on my 'waiting to read' pile on the desk for too many months. Some time away in Holy Week has offered the chance to drink from the wisdom in these nine chapters. It is a wise, honest and grounded book. There are plenty of
- [Theology and the Life of the Church : Truss on the Legacy of David Jenkins](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology-and-the-life-of-the-church-truss-on-the-legacy-of-david-jenkins/) - This book was just too personal, relevant and compelling not to engage with. David Jenkins was a fundamental part of my vocational journey. He was real, passionate, theologically lucid and a heartful encourager. Perhaps some autobiography might explain my enthusiasm! I was born in a Durham Mining Village and I'm proud of my hard-working dad
- [What is the shape of Leadership?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-the-shape-of-leadership/) - In early January I announced my intention to retire from the leadership, as Principal, of Sarum College. I am grateful for many people who have expressed appreciation of the my decade of holding the privilege of this role. It is now my responsibility to leave my desk in good order and pray for those responsible
- [The Gifts of Hamnet : No Love without Grief ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-gifts-of-hamnet-no-love-without-grief/) - The cinema was surprisingly full on the outskirts of Birmingham. It wasn't an obvious choice but the timings worked and our group of three arrived just in time. I had not read the reviews but was aware of some of the praise for the adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's poetic novel. Others involved in the crafting
- [Negotiating Transitions :some news from me](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/negotiating-transitions-some-news-from-me/) - Retirement of The Revd Canon Professor James Woodward as Principal of Sarum College A statement from the Chair of the Board of Trustees. The Chair of Sarum College Trustees, Bishop Alastair Redfern, announces that James Woodward has indicated to the Trustees his intention to retire from the role of Principal at the end of June 2026, following his 65th birthday and over 10 years
- [Is there any hope for theology in higher education?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/is-there-any-hope-for-theology-in-higher-education/) - I am grateful to Peter Kevern for drawing my attention to this book while he was teaching here at Sarum College. My search for it in Oxfords' Blackwells bookshop was worth the effort and time on a Saturday in late November. It is a robost deconstruction of the culture of Higher Education today and deserves
- [Fragments of a story : enriched by the ministry and learning of  Douglas Dales](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/fragments-of-a-story-enriched-by-the-ministry-and-learning-of-douglas-dales/) - I have spent some considerable time over the past three decades writing about building communities where age, and the wisdom of age is valued and celebrated. All of us need to both narrate our story and have it heard and even valued. Sometimes we need to tell that story to ourselves as we come to
- [Heather Waltons legacy to Theology : Grounded, Creative and interdisciplinary](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/heather-waltons-legacy-to-theology-grounded-creative-and-interdisciplinary/) - I have never met Heather Walton but her writing has had a significant influence on my teaching and ministry. Her book written in 2015 Not Eden: Spiritual Life Writing for this World published by SCM Press was transformative in the shaping of my reflective practice and indeed part of the motivation for moving more directly
- [The Questions We Ask ? What drives Human Beings? On reading Alberto Manguel.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-questions-we-ask-what-drives-human-beings-on-reading-alberto-manguel/) - I have just returned home from a weekend at Sarum College in Salisbury where a number of people from across the country gathered to explore the poetry of George Herbert. We were certainly fortunate to have as our guide Professor Helen Wilcox who is an important intellectual figure in understanding the poetry of Herbert. We
- [Finding Alice : the chaos and redemption of grief?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/finding-alice-the-chaos-and-redemption-of-grief/) - How do you manage your Netflix subscription? How does it manage you with its clever diagnostics predicting your viewing patterns, and making links with their predictions of your interests? Starved of 'nourishing'viewing I was pointed in the direction of this six part series entitled finding Alice. It was in fact made some time ago pre-and
- [Coal, Roots and the North East ? The Shadow of the Mine by Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/coal-roots-and-the-north-east-the-shadow-of-the-mine-by-huw-beynon-and-ray-hudson/) - East Hetton Pit, Kelloe, County Durham I was born in Kelloe in 1961, a mining village sitting about eight miles south east of Durham City. This was my home until I left for `University in 1979 thanks to a solid education at Spennymoor Secondary School which had managed to retain its rigorous but rather old
- [Can the process of mourning make us whole? The Dark Interval: Letter for the Grieving Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke (Bloomsbury 2018)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/can-the-process-of-mourning-make-us-whole-the-dark-interval-letter-for-the-grieving-heart-by-rainer-maria-rilke-bloomsbury-2018/) - Thursday, the 24th of July will mark the second anniversary of my father's sudden death. Though at 84 it was a good stretch of living. I have will keep that free simply to create some space to reflect on these months and remember with affection both of my parents who have in recent years died.
- [How good is your handwriting ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-good-is-your-handwriting/) - Philip Hensher The Missing Ink : The Lost Art of Handwriting ( and Why it Still Matters) Macmillan 2012 Book collectors tend to buy more books than they are able to read and I am no exception to this general rule of thumb. I entertain the slightly delusional fantasy that at some point or other
- [The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-life-old-age-and-death-of-a-working-class-woman/) - Didier Eribon I have become much more disciplined in recent times about buying new books. This is partly related to the number of books that are waiting to be read when I find the time ! I am also beginning to think about what's on my shelves and what might happen to them in future
- [Understanding Mission](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-mission/) - Being Interrupted by Al Barrett and Ruth Harley London SCM Press, xvi + 262 Pb, £25.00 ISBN 978- 0-33405-862-5 There are several interconnecting ‘disciplines’ at work in the crafting of these 16 chapters which work together in the offering of an integrated and practical theology of mission. Ecclesiology, missiology, doctrine, biblical studies, theological reflection, cultural
- [Is there a future for the Church of England ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/is-there-a-future-for-the-church-of-england/) - Present in Every Place?: The Church of England’s new churches, and the future of the parishWill FoulgerSCM Press £25(978-0-334-06203-5) 117pp I live and work in Salisbury with a population of about 70,000. There are seven benefices and at least eighteen places where Anglican worship is offered. The city is dominated by the soaring spire of
- [Wither Theological Formation for Ministry ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wither-theological-formation-for-ministry/) - Reimagining Ministerial FormationDavid HeywoodSCM Press £25 2021 xii + 181pp(978-0-334-06042-0) The middle over fast flowing river with some unpredictable storm clouds on the horizon is not the best vantage point from which to stand back to discern and evaluate. I read this third volume of Heywood’s work through the lens of leading Sarum College, a
- [Total Pain ? On reading Charlie Bell put medicine and theology to work](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/total-pain-on-reading-charlie-bell-put-medicine-and-theology-to-work/) - Light to Those in Darkness Total Pain and the Body of Christ Charlie Bell SCM Press 2023 978-0-334-06400-8 £25.00 Charlie Bell is a force of nature. Indefatigable, passionate, intelligent, and grounded are some of the virtues and characteristics that have shaped his learning. A qualified psychiatrist lecturing in medicine in the University of Cambridge he
- [Understanding Pastoral Care : Learning from Anne Holmes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-pastoral-care-learning-from-anne-holmes/) - There can be no doubt that these recent weeks have been traumatic and testing for the Church of England and for the public face of religion. Two things have occurred that bear upon the shape, processes and content of this book which make it important for these debates. The first is a serious lack of
- [In praise of Quakerism](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-quakerism/) - I have been sorting through files and bits of writing and I thought that this was worth sharing again ! The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity Benjamin Wood, John Hunt Publishing 2023 Many of the readers here will have experienced Quakerism in and through their presence of meeting houses and their active engagement in communities.
- [On the Nature of Character](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-the-nature-of-character/) - Christian B. Miller, The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (OUP, 2017) Two conversations about character and choice shaped the reading of this short and illuminating exploration of the nature of character. The first, with a High Court judge with long experience of working with families and children explored the nature of restorative justice in the light
- [Talking about Dying](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/talking-about-dying/) - Talking about Dying - Help in Facing Death and Dying Philip Giddings, Martin Down, Elaine Sugden, Gareth Tuckwell Wilberforce Publications, 2017, 182pp., pbk , £8.00 It remains somewhat of a persistent paradox that despite our faith in a crucified and risen Lord, Christians find it difficult to engage with, prepare for and reflect on death. I
- [Anxiety in Ministry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/anxiety-in-ministry/) - Andrew Roots biography reads - Andrew Root, PhD (Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is most recently the author of Evangelism in an Age of Despair and the six volume Ministry in a Secular Age series (including Churches and the Crisis of Decline, The Congregation in a
- [Why bother with Theology? Writers that changed our horizons](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/why-bother-with-theology-writers-that-changed-our-horizons/) - Many of us would do well to engage in some theological reflection on the way in which our Christian faith has been shaped and formed. Listening to the ongoing debates within the General Synod of the Church of England has been both illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. This is a legislative body and a
- [Are Health Care Chaplains Professional ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/are-health-care-chaplains-professional/) - This article first appeared in a book by Helen Orchard exploring spirituality in healthcare contexts. It draws heavily on my doctoral research. I share it here simply because I think it still has something to say as we consider the nature of ministry particularly when working in sectors outside of the Church. I seek to
- [On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation by Kim Samuel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-belonging-finding-connection-in-an-age-of-isolation-by-kim-samuel/) - Some books are best discovered by accident at this one was no exception. An unexpected visit to drop some stuff to my local charity shop took me past their second hand bookshelves. My eyes fell on this one because I assumed that the title on the spine indicated that it was a theological book! In
- [Exploring the shifting sands of Religion:  Reading Halik The Afternoon of Christianity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/exploring-the-shifting-sands-of-religion-reading-halik-the-afternoon-of-christianity/) - The title of this book is alluring. Halik offers his reader a masterful analysis of the challenges that face the Christian faith. His argument is that our present crisis is a crossroad. One road ( and perhaps the one we journey on in this country ) is leading to division and irrelevance. At the present
- [In Memoriam : Franciscus](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-memoriam-franciscus/) - As world leaders gather for the Funeral Mass at St Peters Basilica followed by his burial at Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore I share some happy memories of the hospitality of ( now HE Cardinal ) Rolandas Makrickas and the community there to journey with them during Holy Week in 2024. A wonderful week with
- [Easter 2025 : Good News for a troubled world](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-2025-good-news-for-a-troubled-world/) - Easter Day is the occasion when, year on year, Christian people throughout the world celebrate the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. It is an awesome mystery as well as conviction that we should share and show others of the wonder and love of God made real in Christ. The disciples and successive generations of Christians
- [Why Theology Matters: Reading Jack Mahoney](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/why-theology-matters-reading-jack-mahoney/) - I think many of us would do well to engage in some theological reflection on the way in which our Christian faith has been shaped and formed. Listening to the ongoing debates within the General Synod is both illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. This is a legislative body and a political body defending territory
- [Human Nature Exposed ? Watching Conclave](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/film/human-nature-exposed-watching-conclave/) - This year have been doing some work in the Diocese of Birmingham on behalf of Sarum College. It is both engaged and fascinating as with my colleagues Keith Elford we have been working with clergy and lay people across Deaneries and Oversight Areas. I prefer to arrive in good time rather than spent too and
- [The Spanish Gallery and the Auckland Project](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/art/the-spanish-gallery-and-the-auckland-project/) - I am a child of the North born and schooled in County Durham with my roots firmly embedded in the Mining Industry. My Father worked at East Hetton Pit in Kelloe and then was transferred to Easington when the Village pit was closed in 1983. I have vivid memories of his work and its
- [In Search of Patience ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-search-of-patience/) - patience An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other
- [Christmas : Light on our Lives](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spiritual-musings/christmas-light-on-our-lives/) - In years gone by I used to travel to Paris for a few days in Advent. Walking, eating, sightseeing but especially absorbing myself in the sheer wonder of its history and art. When I think of Christmas this wonderful painting by George de la Tour ‘ the Adoration of the Shepherds’ comes most immediately into
- [Reading a Building : Andrew Ziminski on Church Going](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/reading-a-building-andrew-ziminski-on-church-going/) - I am presently in Wales appreciating some rest and space. There are two features of what makes for refreshment here. The first is reading given the gift of uninterrupted time. The second is exploring places and buildings near and far. These often include Churches if I am fortunate to discover an open gate or door.
- [As 2024 closes : make friends with fire](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/as-2024-closes-make-friends-with-fire/) - Make Friends with Fire as the New Year Opens Up 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
- [Trees](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/9822/) - a tree God is a tree said Kabir a tree in the forest; when the woodsmen come to cut Him down He will not defend Himself He will not shame them. And God, he said, is the earth an endless wonder that allows Himself to be ruined by us but He
- [Making Sense and the 'Business' of the Church ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/making-sense-and-the-business-of-the-church/) - I much enjoyed reading an authorised biography of John Habgood written by David Wilbourne. It is an insightful and wise evaluation of the former Archbishop of York. Here is a link to my reflections commending the insights and wisdom of this biographical reflection. https://www.sarum.ac.uk/how-would-you-like-to-be-remembered/ While sorting through some random books for the charity shop,
- [Nick Cave : Music, Grief and Church](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nick-cave-music-grief-and-church/) - Mobility brings freedom and a certain amount of unpredictability. I spent last weekend in Birmingham engaged in a ministerial project for the Diocese. Travelling back on Sunday morning brought with it clear blue skies until I reached the Oxford bypass when rain swept in with relentless force. While some drivers seemed unaffected by the downpour my car seemed to be very sensitive to patches of surface water combined with strong crosswinds. This was the time and space into which I
- [In the midst of death, life persists -](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spiritual-musings/in-the-midst-of-death-life-persists/) - "In the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists.” - Mahatma Gandhi In my last blog, I shared some thoughts about a recent retreat at Fairacres in Oxford. https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nothing-is-secure-except-god-visiting-the-community-of-the-sisters-of-the-love-of-god/ In an attempt to tidy up the ever accumulating photographs on my mobile phone.
- [Gallery Fairacres Oxford 2025 and 2024](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gallery-fairacres-oxford-2025-and-2024/)
- [Barmouth Beach Gwynedd 18 February 2025](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/barmouth-beach-gwynedd-18-february-2025/)
- [Birmingham Cathedral January 2025](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/birmingham-cathedral-january-2025/) - Meow Gallery: The gallery is empty.
- [Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/learning-from-silence-by-pico-iyer/) - My first experience of silence ( real silence) was with the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God at Fairacres in Oxford in 1979. I was an undergraduate reading theology at Kings College London. I have an abiding memory of the intensity of the silence and worship. I have been a regular visitor
- [In Praise of George Gently](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-george-gently/) - Inspector George Gently is a crime drama that ran over seven series. Set in the North East of England in the 1960s it centres on Newcastle, Northumberland and County Durham. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby take the lead roles as Inspector and Detective Sergeant supported by Simon Hubbard and Lisa McGrillis as police constables. The death
- [Adrian Cadbury and his legacy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/adrian-cadbury-and-his-legacy/) - Book tokens are always a welcome opportunity to see what has been recently published and secure an adventure of discovery! Participating in a recent Church Times debate on assisted dying offered me the chance to secure a copy of this biography of Adrian Cadbury. My connections with Adrian go deeper than my sweet tooth !
- [What makes a good Church for you ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-makes-a-good-church-for-you/) - ordinary is far more extraordinary than we think. 2. Each might recognise the complex nature of truth, dislike anything that smacked of exclusiveness, and value words like ‘inclusive’, ‘speculative’ and ‘non-judgemental’. 3. Each is open to thoughtful enquiry and to a wide range of opinion, aware that truth is often to be found lurking in both extremes.
- [Creative Repair :  on empowering care and creativity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/creative-repair-on-empowering-care-and-creativity/) - Anne C. Holmes SCM Press £25 (978-0-334-06176-2)
- [Retreat Reading - McLaren on Wisdom and Courage](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/retreat-reading-mclaren-on-wisdom-and-courage/) - One of the more challenging decisions that needs to be made in preparation for a few days away on retreat is what one might read. In the throes of a busy term and new academic year my pile of books waiting to be read sit as an invitation to open, ingest and learn. At the
- [The Stories we tell ourselves?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/) - Keeping tidy has always been an aspiration. One of the downsides of this mild, but I hope, healthy obsession is that on the whole I can find things when I need to but certainly when they go astray mostly they are lost forever. In recent weeks, my bookshelves have been undergoing some attention. Being sensible
- [Gifts and Graces](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gifts-and-graces-2/) - I have come to admire the way different individuals function in their profes­sional roles. Yet finally I represent the role my way, in my person, in terms of my gifts and my graces. These “gifts and graces,” as the Methodists put it, are not better or worse. They simply are different. Dif­ferent gifts, different graces;
- [And so the season changes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry/and-so-the-season-changes/) - Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day. Emily Brontë
- [The Shrine of St Melangell - a thin place of pilgrimage](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-shrine-of-st-melangell-a-thin-place-of-pilgrimage/) - A hidden place in Wales, where a Celtic saint gave her protection to the hare, Pennant Melangell is situated at the head of the Tanat Valley, not far from Llangynog on the main Oswes­try – Bala road. This church is the only one which is dedicated to Melangell. It is an ancient church and the
- [Prayer and Intercession ( Mother Mary Clare)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/prayer-and-intercession-mother-mary-clare/) - These words from Mother Mary Clare SLG are worth pondering as we enter into a new season 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
- [Forming a new generation of Ministers : On reading Reverence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/forming-a-new-generation-of-ministers-on-reading-reverence/) - Some of my readers will know that at Sarum College we form and train women and men for authorised lay and ordained ministry for the Church of England. They come to us from across the region and each have their own story to tell. They bring into our learning and formation space a very wide
- [A Man Called Otto: Grief, Society and Kindness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-man-called-otto-grief-society-and-kindness/) - # Netflix doesn't always yield the browsing results that it claims! That is partly dependant on its view of the subscribers viewing history combined with drawing us into their top ten lists. If it is popular then I should watch it ? After a couple of frustrating visits to the site and seeing a recommendation
- [How to write History ? On watching Firebrand](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/film/how-to-write-history-on-watching-firebrand/) - I first came across the Midland Art Centre in 1987 through my Birmingham MPhil supervisor, Professor Stephen Pattison, who lived nearby in Mosley. It was a good place to walk after supervisions to ingest both the intensity of feedback and quality of conversation which is always a characteristic of Stephens engagement. It was crystal clear
- [All Christians are Monks - Parish and the Religious life on Renewal](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/all-christians-are-monks-parish-and-the-religious-life-on-renewal/) - I was recently engaged in a fascinating conversation about the prospects for the church in the West. My conversation partner wondered why it was that fewer people were forming a commitment to a local church. She reckoned that the slow decline could be dated as far back as the 1950's. We agreed that the public
- [And into the next decade ? On finding independence and purpose in age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/older-people/and-into-the-next-decade-on-finding-independence-and-purpose-in-age/) - A short reflection on reading Dr Angela Robertson's book 'Changing Gears: Entrepreneurs @ 50+'
- [Mark Santer : Bishop, Theologian, Pastor 1936-2024](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/mark-santer-bishop-theologian-pastor-1936-2024/) - This week, the family of Mark Santer, announced his death Our beloved father, Mark Santer, died at home on Wednesday 14th August. Over the last years and months, his numerous health issues were catching up with him. He died peacefully at home with all of us at his side. He bore these last difficult days
- [Reading Keir Starmer : Reform, Politics and  Power](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/reading-keir-starmer-reform-politics-and-power/) - I first met Kier Starmer in 2011 when he offered advice to Lord Falcolners Commission of Assisted Dying supported by Demos - see: https://demos.co.uk/research/the-commission-on-assisted-dying/ At that time he was Director of Public Prosecutions. His evidence was admirably clear amidst a range of questions. What became clear was that the the law from his perspective was
- [The invitation to be surprised? Art that touches the pulse.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/art/the-invitation-to-be-surprised-art-that-touches-the-pulse/) - I first came across the work of Barbara Hepworth in 1980 during a visit to Aldeburgh. I had gone on a weekend party to a friend’s house on Crag Path which is the sea front road that’s offers an uninterrupted view of the North Sea. The town became famous because of its connection with Benjamin
- [In praise of Anne Lamott ( Somehow: Thoughts on Love)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-anne-lamott-somehow-thoughts-on-love/) - I wish I could remember who it was who recommended the work of Anne Lamott ! I may have picked up a quotation from a website, a colleague or even on Amazon! Whatever the answer her work is vast, persistent, challenging, humane and so very very real. There is a quality of empathy and a
- [Inhabiting RS Thomas on his own soil](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/inhabiting-rs-thomas-on-his-own-soil/) - It is a long way from Salisbury to the Llyn Peninsula. This was a pilgrimage of sorts to the RS Thomas Poetry Festival. https://rsthomaspoetry.co.uk/ The slow and wet journey north was worth every turn in the road and queue ad a number of speakers broke open the words for the gathered pilgrims. RS Thomas
- [The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts  by Edmund de Waal](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-white-road-a-pilgrimage-of-sorts-by-edmund-de-waal/) - After an unexpected day of sun over a bank holiday weekend the rain has returned. Deciding to do some thinning of shelves for a visit to my local charity shop I came across this book. I have tried to 'get into' on two or three times. Don't ask me why but now the
- [Our complicated love affair with Work ? Reading Changing Gear by Hall and Stokes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/our-complicated-love-affair-with-work-reading-changing-gear-by-hall-and-stokes/) - I wish that booksellers wouldn't tempt their readers to a three for the price of two offer especially while waiting for another delayed train on Waterloo Station. We all love a bargain - thank you Foyles - your stock are always carefully and enticingly packaged and set out. If I had my way I would
- [Nothing is Secure, Except God : visiting the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nothing-is-secure-except-god-visiting-the-community-of-the-sisters-of-the-love-of-god/) - I was first introduced to the Sisters of the Love of God by Geoffrey Connor, the Vocations advisor in the diocese of Durham in the late 1970s. I visited first the Convent during my first year as an undergraduate at Kings College London. These months of study were both exhilarating and challenging. Sometimes I struggled
- [Lessons from a day of celebration at Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum/lessons-from-a-day-of-celebration-at-sarum-college/) - Yesterday was the Sarum College 2024 Ceremony for the Presentation of Academic Awards. The days running up to this event, make many demands on a range of people working across the college. The choreography of our movement from College to St Thomas's Church in the centre of town; the careful production of the service,
- [Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/faith-hope-and-carnage-by-nick-cave/) - Our lives are fragile, unpredictable and always deeply bound up with the unpredictable shapes of pain and grief. Even at our most complete and contented we live with the roars of fear, insecurity, regrets and limitations. Making sense of this and embracing the shapes and colours of living is a life long task. Perhaps only
- [Reading Such a Long Journey : A biography of Gilbert Shaw, Priest](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/older-people/reading-such-a-long-journey-a-biography-of-gilbert-shaw-priest/) - I believe that I may have had at least two copies of this book written by Rod Hacking ( now a neighbour in Salisbury but then an incumbent in rural Ely) and published by Mowbray in 1988. What happened to them I know not - beware of lending books out - they have a habit
- [Saving Time by Jenny Odell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/saving-time-by-jenny-odell/) - I doubt very much, indeed, if anybody who has the time to read this book about time, would confidently be able to say that they had enough time! I have occasionally come across people who feel that they have too much time on their hands, particularly in older age. I have most often come across
- [Awe explored by Dacher Keltner](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/awe-explored-by-dacher-keltner/) - When was the last time that you were simply lost for words? A moment that took hold of you by surprise ? The glorious blue light that marks the beginning of a new day with the stars and moon beginning to shift? The majesty of a tree, rooted and standing tall? The smell and beauty
- [Try Softer ? In praise of grounded advice from Kolber.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/books/try-softer-in-praise-of-grounded-advice-from-kolber/) - Where do you pick up recommendations for books these days? Half an hour on Waterloo station yesterday yielded a couple of books from Foyles, tempted of course by their buy one get the other half price offer! A trusted source is the Marginalian ( take a look- https://www.themarginalian.org/ ) which is broad, grounded and
- [On Digging Deep - a cluster of Books from Sacristy Press](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-digging-deep-a-cluster-of-books-from-sacristy-press/) - Perhaps you have some awareness of both the problems and possibilities that emerge from the way we articulate the shape and meaning of our religious convictions. What do you understand by God? How do we convey the presence, rationality and engagement of God amidst the complexities of this new year? We see and hear minute
- [Home Sweet Home?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/home-sweet-home-2/) - 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 or seemingly ill-considered their architecture,
- [On interrogating the self - May on Politics and Power](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/on-interrogating-the-self-may-on-politics-and-power/) - I guess that most of us wonder what this one life is about and particularly how we are living it. They are questions perhaps for those of us firmly in third age but shared by other generations too. If I had one regret ( or to name one here ) it might simply be
- [In Praise of Quakerism in the uncertain terrain for Religion](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/in-praise-of-quakerism-in-the-uncertain-terrain-for-religion/) - John Hunt Publishing 2023 Many of the readers here will have experienced Quakerism in and through their presence of meeting houses and their active engagement in communities. Quakers are people living integrity with a single minded, focus on the tradition and disciplines of the spiritual life. I lived for some time in Bournville – that
- [Advice in Time ? Inter-generational Wisdom.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/advice-in-time-inter-generational-wisdom/) - Now here is a confession! Not all of the books on my shelves either at home or here in my study at Sarum College have been read from cover to cover. You might be familiar with the dilemma. You buy a book on a recommendation. You hear the author at a writers festival. Amazon delivers
- [Sermons in time and place?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/books/sermons-in-time-and-place/) - I am writing this on a rainy Sunday afternoon somewhat typical of November. Some of you may have been to Church this morning and experienced listening to a sermon. I wonder how it took hold of you ( if at all) and what you heard? At what point did your attention stray ? What were
- [Handling our disappointments : Rory Stewart reflects on politics](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/handling-our-disappointments-rory-stewart-reflects-on-politics/) - Over the years I have absorbed myself in the world of political biography and autobiography. It is a strange and intriguing world. When I moved to Salisbury I was glad to offload many of these volumes. It wasn't difficult to choose which writers or politicians to hang onto. This genre of writing is fraught with
- [Patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry/patience-8/) - patience An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no
- [of grief .... and getting past it](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry/of-grief-and-getting-past-it/) - but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings, dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again; and you watch
- [In Memoriam - Colin Woodward : Dad](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-memoriam-colin-woodward-dad/) - Colin Campbell Woodward 10th December 1937 - 24th July 2023 Funeral Address 16th August 2023 given by James Woodward Durham Crematorium 11.30am As we gather today to make our farewells to Colin - a much-loved father, grandfather, colleague, neighbour, and friend – there are so many feelings and thoughts in our hearts and minds. I
- [The Shrine Church of Saint Melangell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wales/the-shrine-church-of-saint-melangell-2/) - Some places are etched into our lives in a way that draws us back. The Pennant Melangell valley is one of those spaces that has drawn me back for over two and a half decades. It is a liminal space with a tangible sense of the other and the spiritual. In all weathers and across
- [Patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry/patience-7/) - An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness
- [Re-reading - Transitions and the Life-course :Challenging the Constructions of ‘Growing Old’ by Amanda Grenier](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/re-reading-transitions-and-the-life-course-challenging-the-constructions-of-growing-old-by-amanda-grenier/) - Transitions and the Lifecourse Challenging the Constructions of ‘Growing Old’ Amanda Greener 256 pages, pbk £26.99, Policy Press 2012, ISBN 978 1 84742 691 8. I have been glad to revisit this book that explores the way we narrate age. It has helped me ( again ) to think about how we frame age.
- [Does Belief change in Old Age?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/does-belief-change-in-old-age-2/) - On re-reading - Belief and Ageing :Spiritual pathways in later life Peter G. Coleman (Editor) Paperback, 192 pages Policy Press Bristol 2011 I agreed to offering a session at this years Sarum Centre for Formation in Ministry on what the Bible might show us about flourishing in older age. I grabbed a few books
- [What kind of leadership ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leadership/what-kind-of-leadership-3/) - In the unchartered waters in which the Church finds itself a key responsibility of any leader is to be one who questions; a person who asks questions – of God, the Church and of the wider community. Any leader at this time, but perhaps especially in the Church will be aware of the
- [Seeing beyond the immediate: listening and learning alongside older people](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/older-people/seeing-beyond-the-immediate-listening-and-learning-alongside-older-people-2/) - From 1998 through to 2009, I had the privilege of working with many hundreds of older people in an Almshouse charity. We lived together in rather splendid seventeenth-century buildings which were surprisingly adaptable for modern use. It was an intentional community with a Church, primary school and a community of older adults living together. I
- [Space, Colour and Form in Kettles Yard : Reading Ways of Life by Laura Freeman](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/space-colour-and-form-in-kettles-yard-reading-ways-of-life-by-laura-freeman/) - This book was a present from a friend who had seen that I had visited Kettles Yard some few months ago. I have been hanging onto to it so that I can read slowly and carefully without interruption. What a treat it is ! I should say that I need no convincing of this space
- [Tell Me the Good Things : On Love, Death and Marriage  by James Runcie](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/tell-me-the-good-things-on-love-death-and-marriage-by-james-runcie/) - There are, I confess, on my bookshelves a number of books that have been waiting to be read for some time. I bought this book last year after a rather arresting radio interview with James Runcie. There were a couple of connections that moved me into 'I don't need any more books, but this one
- [Reading Scripture : On seeing and not seeing ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/reading-scripture-on-seeing-and-not-seeing/) - Do Small Groups Work? Biblical engagement and transformation Anna Creedon SCM Press 2021 The 2023 July Session of the Church of England
- [The Shaping of a Soul by Richard Harries](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-shaping-of-a-soul-by-richard-harries/) - Richard Harries John Hunt Publishing £18.99 (9781803411620) I have read and now write about a man and his story from a privileged position. I worked with Richard as his first domestic chaplain from 1987 to 1990 and now my life is enriched beyond measure by our friendship. He is the most significant of
- [Resourcing Ministry with Older Adults : BRF and Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/older-people/resourcing-ministry-with-older-adults-brf-and-sarum-college/) - If I have time on a Sunday morning it is (usually) good to catch up with the religious news of the week with the Sunday Programme. This was followed by a superb act of morning worship that marked the music of William Byrd on the 400th anniversary of his death. Just as I moved towards
- [To Rest or not to Rest : Reading Alex Sooting-Kim Pang](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-rest-or-not-to-rest-reading-alex-sooting-kim-pang/) - I was introduced to the book by Gillian Strain ( do take a look at her work www.gohealth.co.uk) and so ( albeit) reluctantly picked it up - mainly on Gillians recommendation rather than an enthusiasm to explore my own patterns of work/life balance. It is a clear, persuasive and challenging book. It was like being
- [The Lessons of Life ?  Inciting Joy by Ross Gay](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-lessons-of-life-inciting-joy-by-ross-gay/) - What do you think holds us together ? What should be our attitude to these moments of living? What are we struggling with? Where is 2023 taking us - these moments of 'post pandemic weariness' ? Is the future welcoming ? Jurgen Moltmann, in Theology and Joy wrote “We may have fun,
- [Space and Time : Heschel on The Sabbath](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/space-and-time-heschel-on-the-sabbath/) - Many books that we buy or borrow age. They have a shelf life. I have aways been interested in other peoples shelves - how they organise their books. This becomes especially acute when we age - which inevitably, for most means downsizing. What remain on that small bookshelf that fits so well between table and
- [Burkeman on the lessons of Time](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/burkeman-on-the-lessons-of-time/) - Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count Vintage 2022 What is your relationship to time ? How long is that To Do list ? And what about those good intentions we start any day with? This Saturday started quite well – an early start and off to
- [Transgressive Devotion : radical, original, unsettling theology at its honest best](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/transgressive-devotion-radical-original-unsettling-theology-at-its-honest-best/) - I remember one of my university teachers sitting in on a seminar that I was leading some 20 years ago. He was attentive and appeared to be making careful notes. On the feedback form his only comment was, ‘clearly expressed and excellent engagement with the group, but I wanted to hear and learn something arresting
- [From the Shores of Silence - Learning from feminist voices in Practical Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/from-the-shores-of-silence-learning-from-feminist-voices-in-practical-theology/) - SCM Press £30.00 (ISBN 9780334060963) Practical theology has had a slow journey into securing some significance in the academy. There have been landmark books, institutions and academics who have contributed to its growth and agency. Birmingham and Nicola Slee stand out as key elements in the tradition and its development. These essays have been
- [Close ( Film 2022)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/close-film-2022/) - Gustav De Waele and Eden Dambrine as Rémi and Léo On my post Easter travels I was glad to reaquaint myself with The Midland Arts Centre (https://macbirmingham.co.uk/) - a place of regular visits over twenty years of living in Birmingham.Based in Canon Hill Park, Edgbaston and opposite the Warwickshire Cricket ground it was a happy
- [Reading David Whyte - Consolations](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/reading-david-whyte-consolations/) - We live in strange times. Listening to this mornings news adds to the complexity and anxiety. The junior doctors strike which informs us to avoid being ill this week. The advance of AI and its implications for our knowing and understanding. The preparations for the visit of President Biden to Ireland as they mark the
- [What shall we make of a frail old age ? On watching Allelujah](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-shall-we-make-of-a-frail-old-age-on-watching-allelujah/) - If I had taken any notice of the reviews then I should certainly not have parted with £12 for a cinema ticket to see this film. Based on the play by Alan Bennett, this slow, intentional and warm the film explores age and care and human nature in the face of pandemic, NHS resources and
- ['Bedtime' Reading : Super- Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bedtime-reading-super-infinite-the-transformations-of-john-donne/) - Being confined to quarters while a bout of flu ( or something - I have never been very good at diagnosis ) and amidst cancelling appointments ( sorry ) and searching for paracetemol brings some gifts. Determined to leave the e mails to answer themselves ( wouldn't that be nice) I decided to have a deep
- [In Praise of Living](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-living/) - From time to time most of us, wonder how our lives might be brought to an end. This isn't morbid or odd, but part of what it means to think about being human and reflecting on the shape and possible end of this one life of ours. Of course, I don't feel particularly old,
- [Listening to your Soul Julia Mourant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/listening-to-your-soul-julia-mourant/) - Canterbury Press 2022 ISBN-13 9781786223364 Pb 144pp In these strange and unpredictable post lockdown days of uncertainty and weariness who do you turn to for support? Who listens to us ? How do we listen to ourselves ? At any point on our life journey how might we 'make meaning'? This book opens up
- [Leslie Houlden 1929- 2022 : Sacerdos, amator Dei, Quaerēns](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leslie-houlden-1929-2022-sacerdos-amator-dei-quaerens/) - A Sermon delivered at the Funeral Eucharist of Leslie Houlden at the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin Temple Balsall 21st December 2022 at 12.30pm Leslie left clear and detailed instructions for his funeral. From time to time, they were updated - always with the heading: LH Funeral - no date assigned. It was
- [The abiding significance of sacred space](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-abiding-significance-of-sacred-space/) - I wonder where your favourite space is in Salisbury? A visitor said to me recently – ‘I love Sarum College – it is a space where I can breathe and relax and think’. We all need space. Some spaces can feel like a home from home. I wonder which place gives your precious space? A
- [PRACTICES FOR THE SOUL : FINDING MEANING IN OUR STRANGE NEW WORLD ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/practices-for-the-soul-finding-meaning-in-our-strange-new-world-2/) - The Power of Ritual : Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices Casper Ter Kuile William Collins 2020 reposted from 6th April 2021 — What allegorical images, stories, songs, or metaphors show up for you? — What experiences have you had in your own life that come to mind? — What action are you being called
- [A Day that left its imprint on us all - The Funeral of HM The Queen](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-day-that-left-its-imprint-on-us-all-the-funeral-of-hm-the-queen/) - On the day after the funeral I write this feeling a certain kind of disorientation. Bank Holidays often bring that disruption to the week that leaves one wondering what day it is but this ‘day after’, might we experience a deeper shift that brings some questions to attend to? Few are left unmoved by
- [Waking up to God - Exploring faith by asking the right questions?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/waking-up-to-god-exploring-faith-by-asking-the-right-questions/) - Waking Up to God: Rediscovering Faith in Post-Pandemic Times by Neil Richardson Sacristy Press 2022 Neil Richardson has had a long and distinguished ministry as a Methodist theologian. This has included serving as the British Methodist President in 2003 and leading Wesley College, Bristol, as Principal. In eight chapters he tackles head-on with
- [Coping with the Uncertainty of these Present Times](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/politics/coping-with-the-uncertainty-of-these-present-times/) - I have just returned for leading a retreat for twenty women and men supporting them as they prepare for their life as clergy. They talked about their communities and families. They shared the stress and strain and anxiety that many are feeling in their families and communities. The future feels fragile – a change in
- [ON FAILURE – HOW TO SUCCEED AT DEFEAT](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/on-failure-how-to-succeed-at-defeat/) - Since then I have become rather captivated ( and enlarged) by The School. I love the way ideas are communicated and how they land for the listener or reader. The books are (probably) written by a Team but the style is clear and always well organised. Simple but never lacking sophistication, nuance or some provisionality.
- [DIPPING INTO THE MIDDLE AGES](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dipping-into-the-middle-ages/) - Hidden Hands : The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers by Mary Wellesley ( RiverRun 2021) Subsequent chapters narrate the stories of the artisans, artists, scribes and readers, patrons and collectors who made and kept the beautiful, fragile objects that have survived the ravages of fire, water and deliberate destruction to form a picture
- [IN PRAISE OF THE CATHOLIC HERITAGE OF ANGLICANISM](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-the-catholic-heritage-of-anglicanism/) - On Reading A Life-Long Springtime: The Life and Teaching of Fr George Congreve SSJE by Luke Miller (Sacristy Press 2022) Alfred Hope Patten and the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham by Michael Yelton (Sacristy Press 2022) I remember my first encounter with Walsingham. As a sixth form student I spent the May Bank holiday
- [What does it mean to Journey? Reading  Crossroad by Moseley](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-journey-reading-crossroad-by-moseley/) - Charles Moseley is a Cambridge scholar, teacher and English writer. I took this book with me to the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales last weekend while present at a conference exploring the poetry of RS Thomas. This book was a perfect accompaniment in my lodgings in Aberdaron. As I looked out over to Bardsey Island
- [In memory of Ruth Innes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-memory-of-ruth-innes/) - I first came across Ruth at St George's, Windsor, when she came one year on a clergy conference. It was an intensive 10 days of learning, reflecting and getting to know the ups and downs of ministry across the church. I was getting ready for the consultation and walking between buildings in the castle when
- [Finding hope in the eternal values of truth and justice](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/finding-hope-in-the-eternal-values-of-truth-and-justice/) - The situation in Ukraine makes us feel so helpless. What can we do? Add this to our weariness and anxiety about the pandemic, climate change and the economy and we are left wondering what the future looks like for us and future generations. These images of warfare haunt us: damaged buildings; families struck dead as
- [Sunday Afternoon Cinema - The Duke](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-afternoon-cinema-the-duke/) - I wonder where you consider home to be? And if you are a long way away from that place do you ever feel homesick? That strange longing for the places, the people, the language and particularities that formed you ? Home for me is the north-east – so I should add that I was
- [Cambridge February 2022](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/cambridge-february-2022/)
- [Hearing God in Poetry by Richard Harries](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/hearing-god-in-poetry-by-richard-harries/) - Hearing God in Poetry Fifty Poems for Lent and Easter Richard Harries SPCK 2022 This is the time of the year when some turn to the possibility of taking something up for the season of Lent as part of a pilgrimage of disciplined and intentional spiritual learning. Some will join a Lent course. Others
- [Befriending the elderly stranger in us](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/befriending-the-elderly-stranger-in-us/) - The Three Ages of Man or Reading a Song is a 1500-1501 is a painting by Giorgione which is presently displayed in the Galleria Palatina in Florence. It has stimulated some further thoughts especially around a recurring comment that has found expression in recent conversations about the future of the Church in these post pandemic days. We know
- [Dealing with the loose ends of life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dealing-with-the-loose-ends-of-life/) - Grain in Winter: by Donald EadieEpworth Press 1999 (ISBN 0-7162-0524-6) xv1+171pp, £7.95 pbk There has long been an association between Christianity and health. The association is an ambiguous one. While, for example, Christians were involved in hospitals for many centuries, some would argue that religion has been harmful in its approach to health and wholeness. A
- [What shall I pray for ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-shall-i-pray-for/) - I wonder if you pray how do you go about this activity either for public worship or private devotion? In the middle of a recent conversation, I was invited by another person to pray with them. This often happens - I am a priest ! I willingly agreed but in the moment of pause wondered
- [Made in the image of ....?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/made-in-the-image-of/) - Global Images of Christ: Challenging Perceptions at Chester Cathedral The latest exhibition at Chester Cathedral due to end this month (October 2021) is a diverse, innovative and challenging invitation to the ways in which we represent Christ. In this black history month were taken into a deeper intentional examination of our limitations and prejudices as
- [Listening Differently ?   On being agents of change by Nancy Kline](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/listening-differently-on-being-agents-of-change-by-nancy-kline/) - I first encountered this book through a conversation with a colleague at Sarum College about pastoral supervision.I was aware of Nancy Kline and her transformative Book Time to Think. My first encounter with her thinking was through Christopher Spence with whom she produced A Hundred Principles of Love. Both Christopher and Andrew Henderson profoundly shaped
- [Terry Frost - his skill and artistic legacy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/terry-frost-his-skill-and-artistic-legacy/) - I cannot now remember when I first encountered a piece of art by Frost. I do remember the vibrancy of the colour and the freedom of the form. Here - I sensed - was energy and life. His pictures of the sea and boats inspired by Cornwall remain iconic images of British modern art. This
- [The price of life?   Worth by Max Borenstein](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-price-of-life-worth-by-max-borenstein/) - I wonder what were the things that got you through Covid and especially your lockdown evenings? I was glad of Netflix and their extraordinary range of (possibly eccentric) choices that seek to influence my viewing ! When this film was suggested I wasn't immediately clear what it was about but complied and was not disappointed
- [We See You: Slavery and Salvation by Alastair Redfern](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/we-see-you-slavery-and-salvation-by-alastair-redfern/) - This is a short, readable, challenging and deeply transformative book. The author is Rt Revd Dr Alastair Redfern, who chairs the Clewer Initiative, and the Sarum College Trustees, and is a theological educator of significant skill and generativity. Organised into four parts, the book explores the theme of slavery and salvation within our Scriptural and
- [How to share the Story ? On reading Dear England by Stephen Cottrell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-to-share-the-story-on-reading-dear-england-by-stephen-cottrell/) - This is an appealing and fluent book with a story and a purpose. I read it in one siting on a train from Durham to London and as I passed through York (just under half way through the book) I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the 98th Archbishop of York and this book.
- [Naughty but never Wicked -  Miriam Margolyes shares her life (in full)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/naughty-but-never-wicked-miriam-margolyes-shares-her-life-in-full/) - I have recently invested in a Kindle as part of an aspiration to travel a bit more lightly. The conversion will take some time but here is the first marker - this memoir is the first that I have read on the 'neat' and 'light' tablet. A great start helped by an amazing story vividly
- [Rediscovering Barbara Pym - the transformation of the ordinary](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rediscovering-barbara-pym-the-transformation-of-the-ordinary/) - Most of us live ordinary lives making the best of time and circumstance. We do our best. We sometimes fail. We deal with whatever the days of work bring. We dream. We hope. We cry. We wonder about roads not taken. We (mostly) do our best. We look forward to holidays and try to keep in
- [Late Summer Theological Reading- Dominic White, Ann Loades, Douglas Dales, Tim Gibson.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/late-summer-theological-reading-dominic-white-ann-loades-douglas-dales-tim-gibson/) - How do I Look? Theology in the Age of the Selfie Dominic White SCM 2021 £25 Grace is not Faceless: Reflections on Mary, Ann Loades DLT 2021 Ann Loades is a theologian of rare skill. Her career has been characterised by a commitment to scholarship and learning. At a time when I am ready to thin out
- [A Grounded and  Hopeful celebration of what matters in Pandemic times](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-grounded-and-hopeful-celebration-of-what-matters-in-pandemic-times/) - I have had a busy week at Sarum College catching up with students, moderating assignments, a meeting of my body of Trustees as well as the usual range of unpredictable listening, mediating and resolving. Not all questions or difficulties move too quickly into the resolving zone ! I read for a small part of the
- [Chosen : Lost and Found between Christianity and Judaism         Giles Fraser      Allen Lane 2021](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chosen-lost-and-found-between-christianity-and-judaism-giles-fraser-allen-lane-2021/) - James James Woodward reviews Giles Fraser, Chosen - Lost and Found between Christianity and Judaism ( Allen Lane 2021) and discovers a rich treasure of narrartive theology.
- [In praise of Evensong](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-evensong/) - This is an illuminating, thoughtful and carefully researched book that holds history, theology, spirituality and mission in skilful synergy ! Its focus is Choral Evensong - one of our national treasures - and these ten chapters celebrate its place in our Anglican ecology. It combines scholarship with nourishing insight. Although an easy read and short
- [Outcome orientated chaplaincy – perceptive, intentional and effective caring](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/outcome-orientated-chaplaincy-perceptive-intentional-and-effective-caring/) - by Brent Peery, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2021, 121 pp., £18.99 (PBK), ISBN 9781785926822 This is a well-researched, grounded, and passionate text that makes a persuasive case for Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy (OOC). This process embraces a methodology of care that articulates the difference that a chaplain can make to patients, their families and the health
- [What shapes Faith ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-shapes-faith/) - This is a gentle, modest and humane book by one of the leading theologians in the UK today. It absorbed a Sunday and stimulated, encouraged and challenged. The flow of the book is hugely helped by the careful fluency of the text and its skilled organisation of themes, ideas and influences. In particular the memoir
- [Send my Roots Rain : A Poetry Retreat](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/send-my-roots-rain-a-poetry-retreat/) - Sarum College seeks to offer space and learning to nourish the human spirit. As we find our way out of lockdown we shall need time, refreshment, space and (perhaps) words to help us fathom the ambiguities and paradoxes of these days. We are glad to sponsor this event with a wonderful group of creative reflectors
- [A Writers Life ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-writers-life/) - Bird by Bird : Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott Google informs me that around 4,500 books are published each day across the world. This is daunting, by any account, for both reader and writer! How do we make what we write count, be read and make any kind of difference? For those
- [Theology for Pandemic Times](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology-for-pandemic-times/) - Honest Sadness Lament in a Pandemic Age John Holdsworth Sacristy Press 2021 Many of my friends have commented on their weariness with these weeks of lockdown. Government heralds progress with statistics about vaccinations delivered and the reducing infection numbers - and all that is all good - but these months have taken their toll. Uncertainty,
- [Understanding how decisions are Made?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-how-decisions-are-made/) - What Does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain, by Suzanne Heywood (Collins 2021) In these days of zoom TV interviews it is not unusual to see the learned and powerful sitting in front of (usually) tidy rows of books. It is impossible to not to notice what these shelves hold and
- [Practices for the Soul :  Finding Meaning in our strange new World ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/practices-for-the-soul-finding-meaning-in-our-strange-new-world/) - The Power of Ritual : Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices Casper Ter Kuile William Collins 2020 I am indebted to my friend Jane Shaw for pointing me in the direction of this rather stimulating and wonderful book. It came out of a conversation about what learning might look ( and feel ) like at
- [People who changed the course of Covid 19](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/people-who-changed-the-course-of-covid-19/) - More than 80 years ago, in Greece, 60 thousand Jews lived peacefully in Thessaloniki. It was a vibrant and valuable community, with most of these Jews working in the port. So much so that the port of Thessaloniki was even closed on Saturday, Shabbat. There also lived and studied great rabbis emeritus. Everyone hung out
- [Priests in Secular Work -Participating in the Missio Dei  by  Jenny Gage](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/priests-in-secular-work-participating-in-the-missio-dei-by-jenny-gage/) - Sacristy Press 2020 (207 pages) 978-1-78959-142-2 £14.99 Sacristy Press has established itself as an innovative publishing house with a diverse, engaging and ground breaking list. Natalie Watson, Richard Hilton, Eric Sharman and Thomas Ball are a strong team. This book is an example of the good judgement and outward facing learning ecology of its the
- [Listening and Learning from the journey of Jonathan Herbert : Accompaniment,Community and Nature (JKP 2020)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/listening-and-learning-from-the-journey-of-jonathan-herbert-accompanimentcommunity-and-nature-jkp-2020/) - This is a book that has taken a long time in the reading. Why? It is so rich, so searching, so challenging that I had to keep putting it down to ingest the questions, stories and wisdom that is captured so simply in these eight chapters. A phrase here, a question there, an idea or
- [Does Faith help us Age Well?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/does-faith-help-us-age-well/) - Finishing Well - A God's Eye view of Ageing by Ian Knox ( SPCK 2020) Ian Knox is an experienced, wise, creative priest and evangelist. His love of people, of life, of Scripture and learning are all present in the fourteen chapters of this book. His scope of reading and listening to a range of
- [Lessons in Ministry : Reflections on fifty years of Ministry, Paul Beasley- Murray DLT 2020](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/lessons-in-ministry-reflections-on-fifty-years-of-ministry-paul-beasley-murray-dlt-2020/) - Nothing much stands still these days except perhaps weekends in Lockdown. I have been to Church (online of course) and my usual catch up with friends or trip out of Salisbury have been properly curtailed. The opportunity to catch up on some reading before my mandatory exercise. Walking requires some decisions. Where am I now
- [Being Reverend - A Diary Matt Woodcock CHP 2020](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-reverend-a-diary-matt-woodcock-chp-2020/) - At Sarum College a significant part of our work is in the formation of women and men for lay and ordained ministry ( see a little of our work here https://www.sarum.ac.uk/ministry-training). I enjoyed Matts last book (Becoming Reverend) which charts his progress, survival and flourishing amidst the ups and downs of theological College in Durham.
- [On writing Autobiography](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-writing-autobiography/) - Lessons from the 44th President of the United States of America I have spent far too much time with my head buried in the pages of political memoir for good and less good reasons! As a genre they are complex, contradictory and (on the whole ) much given to short term judgments that seek to
- [Thinking Again Jan Morris Faber & Faber 2019](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thinking-again-jan-morris-faber-faber-2019/) - An observant friend taking note of the small pile of 'books being read or (being attempted) to be read' saw a copy of Jan Morris' earlier volume In My Minds Eye A Thought Dairy on my table and thoughtfully produced this book for a Christmas present. So those days between Christmas and New Year were
- [Spirit of Place Susan Owens Thames & Hudson 2020](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spirit-of-place-susan-owens-thames-hudson-2020/) - As adventures in reading go this wonderful volume is a sheer delight. Skilfully researched and lucidly written the author inhabits the space with creative care. The passion and love of the subject matter shine through the text as each chapter inhabits history, place, art and writers across the centuries. These past months have imposed upon
- [In Praise of the Oak Tree](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/8593/) - The Glorious Life of the Oak John Lewis-Stempel Doubleday 2018 As the 'hibernation' ( see my post 22 December) continues helped by persistent rain I turned my attention to this book recommended by the sister of a friend and colleague. It followed my use of the image of the Oak Tree( In Windsor Great Park)
- [In My Minds Eye : A Thought Diary  by Jan Morris (Faber & Faber 2018)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-my-minds-eye-a-thought-diary-by-jan-morris-faber-faber-2018/) - Pre Christmas hibernation has started with a necessary limitation of Covid 19 travel. So being nourished by some good writing seems a pre requisite of survival and even a little flourishing. This collection of random, reflective, thoughts written over 188 days are delightful. They are honest, skilfully crafted pieces form a writer who knows herself,
- [Gratitude](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gratitude-2/) - ‘The trouble with you is that you are never grateful,’ was the heartfelt challenge from parent to child. It made me wonder : Are we grateful? In these dark days of winter and with all the anxieties of the pandemic let us remind ourselves about gratitude. Gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is an acknowledgment of a
- [The Gift of a Good Teacher](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-gift-of-a-good-teacher/) - Many years ago, I was asked by one of my teachers to look after his papers. I am working through a number of boxes. Each box ( carefully organised) contains dated collections of papers. They are lectures, draft book proposals, book reviews, talks and sermons. They are an extraordinary collection of a lifetime’s work committed
- [The storied self: a narrative approach to the spiritual care of the aged](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-storied-self-a-narrative-approach-to-the-spiritual-care-of-the-aged/) - by Bruce A. Stevens, London, Lexington/Fortress, 2019. This volume stands in a tradition that has had an international influence on our understanding of the nature and practice of spiritual care in older age. The author succeeded Elizabeth MacKinlay as the second Wicking Professor of Ageing and Practical Theology and director of the Colloquium for Ageing
- [On Waiting with Hope](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-waiting-with-hope/) - A sermon for Advent Sunday 29th November 2020 Windsor Great Park It is very good to be with you this morning. I am recording this homily in Salisbury (Cathedral). I moved from Windsor some five years ago to be Principal of Sarum College in the Cathedral Close. From the windows of the college, I look out
- [The Gospel of Eve           Rachel Mann  (DLT 2020)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-gospel-of-eve-rachel-mann-dlt-2020/) - So the rain pours (and pours) in Salisbury and what better escape than to read the fabulous writer Rachel Mann. Two declared spoilers as I offer this review - first I am a great admirer of Rachel. She is a wonderful writer and teacher and at Sarum College we are delighted that she is one
- [Now close your eyes and imagine what Utopia might look like ......](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/now-close-your-eyes-and-imagine-what-utopia-might-look-like/) - In lockdown 2 work at Sarum College continues with online teaching and preparing for the coming months of recovery but I am determined to catch up on some reading. Do you have a pile of books by your bedside that you have dipped into, put down and picked up again? Perhaps you are a one
- [Writing history ? Elizabethans by Andrew Marr ( Collins 2020)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/writing-history-elizabethans-by-andrew-marr-collins-2020/) - So - tasked with the opportunity of exploring and writing history - which period would most capture your imagination ? In the execution of this (perhaps labour of love) what would your choice be - broad and long or short and deep? The mastery of primary and secondary information requires skill and stamina. Analysis and
- [Rachel Waterhouse](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rachel-waterhouse/) - We are touched by many lives that enrich, challenge and enlarge us. My own time in Birmingham (1990 through to 2008) with the privilege of ministries across the conurbation brought me into contact with many and varied people. Rachel Waterhouse was a towering spirit - a person of substance, learning and an independence of spirit.
- [Stonehenge - Story & Power](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/stonehenge-story-power/) - The happy appearance of uninterrupted Sun last Sunday took me off to Stonehenge. It was my first visit – despite living here since 2015 – though I had glimpsed the stones on car journeys. An early ticket and an intriguing walk through woods and fields was a reminder of the glory of Salisbury Plain and
- [Ernest Bevin - a democrat, a collectivist and a socialist who left a radical legacy.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ernest-bevin-a-democrat-a-collectivist-and-a-socialist-who-left-a-radical-legacy/) - What makes for a good politician ? What might the history of politics and politicians show those seek power? Andrew Adonis has produced masterful biography of Ernest Bevin who he describes as Labour’s Churchill. I was glad to be reminded of both the man, the story and the legacy having spent much time in my
- [Understanding Place, History    and Soil](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-place-history-and-soil/) - Where do you come from? Where is home and where do you feel most alive? What places have shaped your growing, your choices and held the ups and downs of your journey? Do we really know where we live and what has shaped the soil, its history and buildings? These are some of the questions
- [Behind the Polished Door](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/behind-the-polished-door/) - I have been reading political biographies for longer than I care to remember––and although they are entertaining, sometimes psychologically fascinating– there persists in the world politics an extraordinary mixture of of light and darkness, of naked ambition and human vulnerability, of strength and weakness. How could it be otherwise? Politicians are after all flesh and
- [Loss, grief and uncertainty - on knowing the power of Lament](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/loss-grief-and-uncertainity-and-on-knowing-the-power-of-lament/) - I am listening to the BBC News as I share this post - and aware of how uncertain and fragile our life continues to be. Changes in infection rates, uncertainty in the jobs market and chaos with our holiday plans continue. Here are some thoughts on recent months: I wonder how you are and how
- [Let the music tell the story](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/let-the-music-tell-the-story/) - Beethoven : A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge Viking 2020 I have steered away from musical biography - often impenetrable, for insiders who know the language, the history and the details of the music. These 230 pages are quite different from the pen of the Oxford University Professor of Music. It is refreshing,
- [Loneliness - friend or foe?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/loneliness-friend-or-foe/) - So what is loneliness? Loneliness has been defined in different ways. A common definition is “A state of solitude or being alone”. The other definition is “Loneliness is not necessarily about being alone. Instead, “it is the perception of being alone and isolated that matters most” and is “a state of mind”. “Inability to find
- [David Sheppard : is leadership taught, caught or inherited ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/david-sheppard-is-leadership-taught-caught-or-inherited/) - I first met David Sheppard sometime in the early 80s just after my ordination. He was present with his wife Grace at an opening of an exhibition in Liverpool city centre. It was held at the Diocesan Church House - now a popular Tapas bar ! The artist had completed some of the pieces while
- [Being Human: Embracing Vulnerability](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-human-embracing-vulnerability/) - As a young man in my early 20s I wanted to change the world! Becoming a priest was part of a passion of aspiring to build a better world by nurturing communities and people where all flourish. That we should be happy and enjoy ourselves – is deep within God’s purpose for each of us. In
- ['Its not about me'  :  Reading Cottrell On Priesthood over a lockdown weekend](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/its-not-about-me-reading-cottrell-on-priesthood-over-a-lockdown-weekend/) - I wonder what you are finding absorbs your time and attention during these strange hours and days? My table at home is gathering some small (and neatly organised) piles of books. Some associated with work and lectures to prepare. Some for pleasure and others (I hope) for self-improvement ! Stephen Cottrell’s book (On Priesthood : Hodder
- [Sarum Pause for Reflection : Goodness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-pause-for-reflection-goodness/) - While the physical buildings of Sarum College have been closed for some few weeks our life and work goes on. We are continuing to teach and support ministry students in their formation. The work of our postgraduate theological study through our MA offer also continues online rather than in the physical space of the college.
- [Sarum Pause for Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-pause-for-reflection/) - While the physical buildings of Sarum College have been closed for some few weeks our life and work goes on. We are continuing to teach and support ministry students in their formation. The work of our postgraduate theological study through our MA offer also continues online rather than in the physical space of the College. Like many others
- [Picturing Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/picturing-easter/) - The forty days of Easter: 12th April (Easter Day) through 21st May (Ascension Day ) 2020 I don’t know about you but these early days of Covid 19 have been some of the busiest hours I can remember in recent years. Amidst the challenges of lockdown, working with colleagues and trustees to secure and develop our work
- [To Sleep - perchance to Dream?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-sleep-perchance-to-dream/) - How much sleep do you need? Do you instinctively know when you wake whether you have had a restful night? Perhaps you Fitbit reveals your patterns of sleep ( REM, Light, Deep) ? And for those who us who wake in the middle of the night – what races through our minds? Do we turn
- [How would you like to be remembered ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-would-you-like-to-be-remembered/) - On Reading the Authorised Biography of John Habgood, Archbishop of York,1983 -1995. (David Wilbourne SPCK 2020) The wonderful thing about Sarum College Bookshop is the unexpected discovery or something that you just can't resist buying! This biography was one of those encounters and gladly I purchased it and brought it home to read! It is
- [Take this Journey with Rohr](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/take-this-journey-with-rohr/) - Richard Rohr The Universal Christ SPCK 2019 ( £9.99) It is an often stated conviction expressed by a wide variety of individuals and groups that the Church, Organised Religion and (important for us here at Sarum College) Theology are in decline. The statistics certainly bears this assertion out. However this should not be our final
- [In Praise of the larger book ( all 1100 pages ) Churchill by Andrew Roberts](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-the-larger-book-all-1100-pages-churchill-by-andrew-roberts/) - Well three months later and I actually finished it - though some chapters were given more attention that others. A kind present from a friend following a bereavement this heavyweight acted as a kind of self improving distraction for which in the end I am grateful. I have dipped in and out of modern
- [Back to my Roots? The legacy of Brooke Foss Westcott](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/back-to-my-roots-the-legacy-of-brooke-foss-westcott/) - I finished reading Isabel Hardman on turned to thoroughly researched life of Westcott. There were many resonances and connections. As the son of a miner the title was arresting. Ordained in Durham after theological studies at Westcott House Cambridge there were further connections. I have a copy of his commentaries on Hebrews and St Johns Gospel and
- [Christmas Reading - what kind of politicians do we have or need?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-reading-what-kind-of-politicians-do-we-have-or-need/) - I wonder what you will dip into over this holiday season by way of escape or relaxation? I took a risk with this book. The title was arresting and the author the recognisable voice of BBC Radio 4s Westminster Hour. Of course we live in a complex and contested world and one where the quality
- [Christmas 2018](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-2018/) - I wonder what kind of year that you have had? What do we bring into the coming days - our memories, our hopes, our frustrations and disappointments? The picture of the Quaker tapestry reflects the fragmentedness, richness and complexity of all of our lives. When we turn to the Christmas story we discover a similar
- [Getting Ready for Christmas ? Gratitude and Light !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/getting-ready-for-christmas/) - Last week I travelled to the Midlands for meetings in Birmingham. Walking through the centre later in the day I appreciated the lights and colour and smell of the German market. It was great to see families browsing, eating, drinking and laughing. It was also very good to hear German stallholders enjoying theirBrummie customers. Three preachers
- [A Shaking Reality - a new book for Advent from Peter Price](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-shaking-reality-a-new-book-for-advent-from-peter-price/) - A Shaking Reality : Daily Reflections for Advent Peter B Price DLT 2018 Sometimes even the the most faithful of hearts might wonder how our religious words, images and metaphors make a difference. How do they shape our understanding of the world, God and the practice of believing ? If we desire God to shake and change us
- [Spirituality in Hospice Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spirituality-in-hospice-care/) - Spirituality in Hospice Care How Staff and Volunteers Can Support the Dying and Their Families Edited by Andrew Goodhead and Nigel Hartley Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017, 240pp (pbk) ISBN: 9781785921025 £19.99 The concepts of spirituality and spiritual care are complex. This book makes a distinctive and important contribution to the growing literature in this
- [In a Glass Darkly: The Bible, Refection and Everyday Life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/in-a-glass-darkly-the-bible-refection-and-everyday-life/) - In a Glass Darkly: The Bible, Reflection and Everyday Life Zoe Bennett, Christopher Rowland SCM Press £25 (978-0-334-05422-1) Moments of honesty and candour can be both refreshing and threatening in equal measure. I recently heard an intelligent and energetic parish priest make a passionate plea for Christians to be more honest about change and
- [Still Growing : The Creative Self in Older Age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/still-growing-the-creative-self-in-older-age/) - Still Growing The Creative Self in Older Adulthood Donald Capps The Lutterworth press 2015, PB 208pp, 9780718893910, £16.50. This is the most delightful of books in its thoroughness, scholarship and creativity. It has all the potential to transform the readers understanding of the nature of age. In our functional and reductionist world that over
- [What are older People for ? Reflecting on Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-are-older-people-for-reflecting-on-care/) - ‘It’s no fun getting older – just you wait’ was the challenge posed by a woman who in her 80s was embracing some slowing up and her need for help. She had spent four decades teaching children and now felt vulnerable and marginalised. ‘I feel invisible, overlooked and misunderstood’ was how she expressed the challenge
- [Chaplaincy in the Workplace](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chaplaincy-in-the-workplace/) - Fiona Stewart-Darling, Multifaith Chaplaincy in the Workplace: How Chaplains Can Support Organizations and their Employees (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2017); As we continue to debate the effects of secularism on the life of faith with, at least, statistical evidence to suggest steady decline, this book begins with the premise that faith and religion are still
- [Not for Profit - what kind of education will equip us for the future ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/not-for-profit-what-kind-of-education-will-equip-us-for-the-future/) - Looking backwards and wondering ‘what if’ is an exercise that requires care and some measure of wisdom. However, we need to engage in the ‘what if’ questions to nurture reflexivity and so challenge ourselves to be energised by the possibilities of change. So here is a question – if you could turn the clock back
- [Reminiscence Work with Older Adults](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/reminiscence-work-with-older-adults/) - The Multi-Sensory Reminiscence Activity Book 52 Weekly Group Session Plans for Working with Older Adults Sophie Jopling and Sarah Mousley Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 ISBN: 9781785922398 There are few of us in early middle age who do not know someone who is living with some of the opportunities and challenges of growing older. Sadly
- [Poetry and Dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry/poetry-and-dementia/) - Poetry and Dementia: A Practical Guide John Killick Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 ISBN: 9781785921766 £16.99 I wonder what your relationship to poetry is? I have met some people that simply do not get this way of expression; others who simply haven’t got the time or the inclination to attend very closely to the
- [Holiday reading (1) Gordon Brown   My life, Our Times   Bodley Head 2017.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holiday-reading-1-gordon-brown-my-life-our-times-bodley-head-2017/) - Having successfully downsized my living and therefore 'storage' arrangements I think twice about buying a book! I was, however, immediately drawn to this political autobiography, not least because on the two occasions I met Gordon Brown I found him humane, reflective and generous. Retired politicians, we are told, are generally more attractive than
- [Bradbury on Practical theology and Pierre-Andre Liege : Book Review](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bradbury-on-practical-theology-and-pierre-andre-liege-book-review/) - Practical theology and Pierre-Andre Liege : Radical Dominican and Vatican II Pioneer Nicholas Bradbury AshGate 2015 £65.00 ISBN 9781472418708 This is giant of a text from the priest with long experience of ministry, learning, leadership and reflective practice. The coherence and authority of this experience and skill as a reflective practitioner is demonstrated through
- [Conundrums in Practical Theology : Book Review](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/conundrums-in-practical-theology-book-review/) - Conundrums in Practical Theology. By Joyce Ann Mercer and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Boston: Brill, 2016. 320 pages. $76. (PBK). ISBN 978-90-04-32423-7. Reviewed by: James Woodward, Principal of Sarum College, Salisbury and Visiting Professor of Theology, the University Winchester UK All those engaged in learning and teaching will have a system for organising books
- [Advent Offers an Invitation to Wait and Hope](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-offers-an-invitation-to-wait-and-hope/) - We are midway through the season running up to Christmas, which is called Advent. One of its key themes is the importance for us to see the possibilities that waiting might bring or us. I overheard a child in Tesco this week say to her brother, "I can't wait for Christmas". In her eyes,
- [A crisis of Care ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/society/a-crisis-of-care/) - Contrast two scenes. The first is a restaurant – where the food is carefully prepared and warmly served in an atmosphere which seeks to delight its customers. The second is a hospital. Parking the car is nearly impossible – the long impersonal corridors where people avoid eye contact. The noisy ward – the short temered
- [Please pray for me](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/people/please-pray-for-me-2/) - As a priest, I should not be surprised at how often sometimes perfect strangers ask me to pray for them. Sometimes it is related to a specific difficulty or crisis – more often than not people understandably take comfort from the reality of being prayed for. Intercession, prayer that is to ask God for
- [Waiting and Wondering](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/books/waiting-and-wondering-2/) - I find myself along with others caught up in quite absurd activity as ‘ the Christmas rush’ bears down. I discover that in this maddness I have no evenings free before Christmas and wonder how much of this is of my own making! An early flurry of sleet and the promise of snow for some tomorrow
- [Visiting the Memory Café ; Embracing better Dementia Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/visiting-the-memory-cafe-embracing-better-dementia-care/) - Visiting the Memory Café and other Dementia Care Activities Evidence-based Interventions for Care Homes Edited by Caroline Baker and Jason Corrigan-Charlesworth. Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017, ISBN: 9781785922527 £16.99 They can be few families who are not affected by an individual who is engaging with some degree of significant memory loss. For some the prospect of
- [Enlarging our Hearts at the Cinema with Paddington2 and Wonder](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/film/enlarging-our-hearts-at-the-cinema-with-paddington2-and-wonder/) - The Salisbury Odeon is one of the oldest buildings in town with an impressive mediaeval hall which leads into four or perhaps five screens. Friends will know that it is a favourite haunt of mine – sometimes just a very helpful release from work – at other times important for us all to see beyond
- [Where do we look for treasure ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-do-we-look-for-treasure/) - THE RABBI OF KRACOW There once was a pious rabbi, Eisik of Kracow, capital of Poland, who had a dream in which a voice told him to go to far-off Prague, where under the great bridge to the royal castle he would discover a hidden treasure. This same commanding dream was repeated twice. He
- [The Moral Heart of Public Service](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-moral-heart-of-public-service/) - The Moral Heart of Public Service - Edited by Claire Foster Gilbert Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2017) ISBN 9781785922558 £18.99 Westminster Abbey takes its location to serve our national life with utmost seriousness. As well as attracting visitors from across the world the Abbey also seeks to engage with a range of major institutions and public
- [Sunday Pause for Thought Trinity 15 : God has No Favourites](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought-trinity-15-god-has-no-favourites/) - Sunday 24 September 2017 The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity Common Worship Lectionary Proper 20 Exodus 16.2–15 The Lord sends manna from heaven Psalm 105.1–6, 37–45* God’s faithfulness to Israel Philippians 1.21–30 Living is Christ and dying is gain: live worthy lives Matthew 20.1–16 Parable of the labourers in the vineyard Discipline is the
- [On Inhabiting Creation Tide ( on taking notice)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-inhabiting-creation-tide-on-taking-notice/) - Almighty God We stand before the mirror of your eternity, within the radiance of your majesty. Through your Holy Spirit, enlighten the darkness of our minds, challenge the comfort of our perception, giving us a right faith, a firm hope, and a perfect love; that the world may behold your glory through Jesus Christ our
- [Poetry on Sunday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poetry-on-sunday/) - a lyrical manifesto for large-hearted living. Walk through life Beautiful more than anything Stand in the sunlight Walk through life Love all the things That make you strong, be lovers, be anything For all the people of Earth You have brothers You love each other, change up And look
- [Lingering Ghosts and the challenges of Public Art](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/lingering-ghosts-and-the-challenges-of-public-art/) - For those of you who know Sarum College you will be aware that we have a long tradition of exhibiting Art. At the moment we are showing some arresting and disturbing portraits crafted by Sam Ivin (pictured above) Sam Ivin is a photographer whose work focuses on social issues and the people connected with
- [Padre Addison VC and Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-college/padre-addison-vc-and-sarum-college/) - It was a great pleasure and privilege yesterday for us to welcome guests to Sarum College to mark the centenary of the award of the Victoria Cross to one of our former students ( The Reverend William Addison ) William Addison Addison's Medals (VC far left) Here are my opening remarks Memory and
- [Sunday Pause for Thought - The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/sunday-pause-for-thought-the-fourteenth-sunday-after-trinity/) - The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Common Worship Lectionary Proper 19 Exodus 14.19–31 Israel saved by Moses parting the waters Psalm 114 or Israel fled from Egypt to sanctuary in Judah Canticle: Exodus 15.1b–11, 20, 21 Moses’ song after the Exodus Romans 14.1–12 Do not judge, for we are all accountable to God
- [Sunday Pause for Thought - The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/sunday-pause-for-thought-the-thirteenth-sunday-after-trinity/) - The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity Common Worship Lectionary Proper 18 Exodus 12.1–14 Instructions for celebrating the first Passover Psalm 149 God is on Israel’s side Romans 13.8–14 Awake from sleep – put on the armour of light Matthew 18.15–20 Reprove sinners; bind and loose on earth and in heaven We all
- [Sunday Pause for Thought - The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought-the-twelfth-sunday-after-trinity/) - The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity Common Worship Lectionary Proper 17 Exodus 3.1–15 God reveals the divine name to Moses at the burning bush Psalm 105.1–6, 23–26, 45b* Seek the Lord, make known his deeds Romans 12.9–21 Let love be genuine; overcome evil with good Matthew 16.21–28 Jesus predicts his death; ‘Take up your
- [Sunday Pause for Thought - The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/sunday-pause-for-thought-the-eleventh-sunday-after-trinity/) - The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity Saying yes to Jesus leads straight into a practical role. Peter, the rock, signifies the church in its day-to-day life – its ultimate victory on behalf of God is sure. We are reminded in the Old Testament readings that the greatness of God dwarfs us all and that we are
- [Sunday Pause for Thought - Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2017](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought-tenth-sunday-after-trinity-2017/) - These lectionary resources were originally written for RSCM Sunday by Sunday magazine and are reprinted here with their permission. For further information about their work do visit Sunday by Sunday https://www.rscm.com/music-and-resources/our-magazines/planning-worship/sunday-by-sunday-magazine/ Sunday 20 August The Tenth Sunday after Trinity/The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost/The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Common Worship Lectionary Proper 15
- [Sunday Pause for Thought : Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2017](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought-ninth-sunday-after-trinity-2017/) - These lectionary resources were originally written for RSCM Sunday by Sunday magazine and are reprinted here with their permission. For further information about their work do visit https://www.rscm.com/music-and-resources/our-magazines/planning-worship/ Sunday 13 August 2017 The Ninth Sunday after Trinity Common Worship Lectionary/Revised Common Lectionary Proper 14 Genesis 37.1–4, 12–28 Joseph dreams he
- [](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/7972/) - Confused Angry Anxious? Why working with older people in care can be really difficult and what to do about it Bo Hejlskov Elven, Charlotte Agger and Iben Ljungmann Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 192pp ISBN: 9781785922152 Positive Communication Activities to reduce isolation and improve the well-being of older adults Robin Dynes Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 200pp
- [God Curious & the Importance of Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/god-curious-the-importance-of-theology/) - God Curious: Exploring Eternal Questions Stephen Cherry JKP 2017 Over 30 years ago I trained for Ministry alongside Stephen at Westcott House in Cambridge. There were three particular things that I remember about Stephen. The first was his reflective intelligence. The second was his readiness always to look beyond the immediate into a broader
- [A Cry of Absence ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/a-cry-of-absence/) - A Cry of Absence Reflections for the winter of the Heart Martin E. Marty W IPF 1983 This narrative emerges out of a particular experience, that of the death of the author’s wife, Elsa, from cancer. Marty narrates the life changing trauma at the opening of the book in the preface and then
- [Embracing our Mortality ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/embracing-our-mortality/) - Marion Carter Helping children and adolescents think about death, dying and bereavement Jessica Kingsley publishers 2016 £16.99 ISBN 9781785920110 Carlo Leget Art of Living, Art of Dying Jessica Kingsley publishers 2017 £14.99 ISBN 9781785922114 In the UK in recent weeks there has been a great deal of discussion about the ‘British stiff
- [Understanding the Spiritual Shape of Older Age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/understanding-the-spiritual-shape-of-older-age/) - The Spiritual Dimension of Ageing Elizabeth MacKinlay Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 £19.99 With a background in nursing and specialisation in gerontological nursing much of McKinley's focus over the past years has been on age and spirituality. Her preparation for Ministry nurtured priest and nurse in a commitment to deepening our understanding of the ageing
- [Sarum College Presentation Day 4th March 2017](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-college/sarum-college-presentation-day-4th-march-2017/) - (my opening remarks at the Ceremony) It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all this morning to this ceremony for the presentation of academic awards for Sarum College. Thanks to St Thomas Church for hosting us and to a former student, Roger Wilcock who is playing the organ. It is good to see so
- [The Age of Potential](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/older-people/the-age-of-potential/) - An address given to the pupils and Staff of Bishop Wordsworth School Salisbury Cathedral Shrove Tuesday 28th February 2017 I wonder what your perfect age is? What number would be your choice? Perhaps that number – your ideal age - uniquely individual as it will be reflects something of your relationship to time, your priorities
- [Lent Books 2017](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/books/lent-books-2017/) - Here is my wander through a number of Lent books offering you a little glimpse into some of what is available. Justin Welby, Dethroning Mammon. This short book well organised into six chapters and offers the possibility of a basis for lent study on the challenging question of what might a Christian make money and
- [Relationship-Based Research in Social Work](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/relationship-based-research-in-social-work/) - Relationship-Based Research in Social Work : Understanding Practice Research Edited by Gillian Ruch and Ilse Julkunen Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016, I write this short notice after a brief look over the Sunday newspapers. Misunderstanding, disconnection, prejudice and sometimes sheer blindness seem to characterise our human relationships. The information technology revolution does not seem to have
- [Living with Dementia :People rarely remember what we said but often don’t forget how we made them feel.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dementia/living-with-dementia-people-rarely-remember-what-we-said-but-often-dont-forget-how-we-made-them-feel/) - First published in the Salisbury Journal 2 February 2017 At Sarum College we are interested in engaging with and reflecting on what makes for human flourishing. You will have a sense of what it is that helps you to live what inspires your enthusiasm for life. Being able to remember is one of those dimensions
- [The Montgomery Trust](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-montgomery-trust/) - Invite a Montgomery Lecturer to speak at your event Through the Montgomery Trust you can invite nationally renowned lecturers in apologetics to speak at your event free of charge. The Montgomery Trust was set up by Sir Alexander Montgomery to promote lectures ‘in explanation and defence of Christian religion with a view to remove difficulties
- [Positive Psychology Approaches to Dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/positive-psychology-approaches-to-dementia/) - Positive Psychology Approaches to Dementia Edited by Chris Clarke and Emma Wolverson. Paperback 2016, 288pp ISBN: 978-1-84905-610-6 £24.99 This is a surprising book in so far as it, at first glance, appears to be a technical collection of essays written by experts in the field of dementia and psychology. It makes a distinctive contribution to
- [T2](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/film/t2/) - T2 Trainspotting A Saturday afternoon and a day off might not entirely be the right combination for a visit to screen three in the Salisbury Odeon to watch the new Trainspotting sequel. The seats were filled and lager and popcorn sustained many of my neighbours during an epic revisiting of Edinburgh and four characters –
- [Leadership Learning at Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/sarum-college-2/leadership-learning-at-sarum-college/) - Learning for Leadership “Real leadership is about getting alongside people and helping them achieve things themselves.” The Revd Becky Roberts grew up in a church family in the Diocese, at St Mary’s, West Moors. She is now the vicar of Harnham in Salisbury. “I was an altar server from the age of 11. Before the
- [A Monster Calls : Redeeming Stories?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/film-reviews/a-monster-calls-redeeming-stories/) - One of the great advantages of living in Salisbury is the availability of a well-run mainstream cinema. Friends will know that I enjoy a regular visit to the big screen. Like you I am sometimes captivated by the trailer but in the end disappointed by the film! Last night rather put off by the trailers
- [Sarum Centre for Formation in Ministry (Reviewing Becoming a Reverend)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-centre-for-formation-in-ministry-reviewing-becoming-a-reverend/) - There persists a certain curiosity about clergy with some fixed stereotypes about what kind of people we are or should be. The language, structure and culture of ‘Church’ remains persistently inaccessible and sometimes just incomprehensible. Matt Woodcock is a wise, honest, amusing and candid writer who puts all of his journalistic experience to work in
- [Too Old?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/too-old/) - And I thought that the Lib Dems were the nice lot in politics? All of us should take an interest in what has happened to Sir Menzies Campbell because deep down there is some shameful ageism at work. If we do not tackle it then we will suffer from the way our society views and
- [What shapes us for happiness?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-shapes-us-for-happiness/) - These bricks form part of the place where I live – well over 300 years old – and in need of some repair – history is fascinating. Imagine what life and change they have experienced! Andrew Marr has turned his pen to writing history A History of Modern Britain ( Macmillan 2007). The pages are
- [Wise Politicians?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wise-politicians/) - ( ) Most biography falls into the danger of self justification as we attempt to explain, defend or excuse ourselves. Only the very honest or deluded dare to tell it as it is! An official biography must attempt some balance and objectivity and that can be a problem when the subjest is still alive! Kenneth
- [Atonement](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/atonement/) - At a birthday lunch today I announced to a nieghbour my excitement at my Weblogging adventure. ‘ What is the point ‘ she asked – a fair challenge I decided not to rise to. I’ll try another way next time!! I went off to the cinema last weekend ( the Autumn is my film watching
- [A Christmas Reflection  2016](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-christmas-reflection-2016/) - The Christmas story contains so much. Angels, animals, shepherds, an unmarried mother and an older father, people filled with expectation, hopeful, but also consumed with political cynicism. It is all in the story – and if you pause to think about some of the story of 2016 – we might see it in our lives
- [Between Dark and Daylight by Joan Chittister](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/between-dark-and-daylight-by-joan-chittister/) - Between Dark and Daylight by Joan Chittister I am busy at the moment embarking upon a major exercise of downsizing in preparation for my move to Sarum. This must include books! The process is illuminating. What do we attach ourselves to? All this ‘stuff’ faces me with the paradoxes and contradictions of living and even
- [Writing Methods in Theological Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/writing-methods-in-theological-reflection/) - Writing Methods in Theological Reflection Heather Walton, London: SCM Press, 2014 Most readers of this journal will be book collectors. They are necessary tools of our trade as teachers, seekers after wisdom, researchers and writers. Having recently moved house the task of downsizing a library is certainly a demanding judgement. For example it was relatively
- [Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/chaplaincy-ministry-and-the-mission-of-the-church/) - Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church Victoria Slater, SCM Press 2015, 160 pages, pbk There are three distinctive and attractive characteristics of this book. The first is the authors’ skilful ability to open up her research in an accessible and stimulating way. The second is the quality of theological reflection based, thirdly, in
- [How Do We Access the Spiritual?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/how-do-we-access-the-spiritual/) - How Do We Access The Spiritual Edited by Jonathan Pye, Peter Sedgwick and Andrew Todd, Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015; 280 pages; £19.99 I review this book (the second week of July 2016) when two particular conversations were at the forefront of my mind. The first was the smooth transition between Cameron and May into 10
- [Andrew Walker, Notes From A Wayward Son: A Miscellany](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/andrew-walker-notes-from-a-wayward-son-a-miscellany/) - Andrew Walker, Notes From A Wayward Son: A Miscellany, ed. by Andrew D. Kinsey (Cascade, 2015) This is an intriguing, stimulating and rewarding book that offers a space within which Andrew Walkers rather original and distinctive voice can be heard. Some will know Walker through his groundbreaking study of the 1970s and 80s house church movement
- [Loving Later Life An Ethics of Ageing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/loving-later-life-an-ethics-of-ageing/) - Loving Later Life An Ethics of Ageing Frits de Lange Eerdmans, 2015, 169 pages, pbk, £12.99 If asked to name one of the urgent ethical priorities for academics and practioners working across a number of sectors it would be to deal with this question ‘what are older people for?’ We are all familiar with the demography
- [Understanding Spiritual Accompaniment](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/understanding-spiritual-accompaniment/) - Spiritual Accompaniment and Counselling: Journeying with psyche and soul Edited by Peter Masden Gubi Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015 paperback 192 pages £16.99 Here at Sarum College (www.sarum.ac.uk) our two year certificate in spiritual direction is very popular to a wide variety of individuals who wish to build upon, reflect and improve their practice. In a world dominated
- [Vulnerability and Care: Christian Reflections on the Philosophy of Medicine](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/vulnerability-and-care-christian-reflections-on-the-philosophy-of-medicine/) - Vulnerability and Care: Christian Reflections on the Philosophy of Medicine Andrew Sloane, T and T Clark, 2016, 211pp, hbk, £84.99 I have recently seen at close hand the work a busy acute hospital having to deal with an older person suffering multiple challenges to well-being caused in the main by intense confusion as a result
- [Amazing Love : Theology for understanding Discipleship, Sexuality and Mission](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/amazing-love-theology-for-understanding-discipleship-sexuality-and-mission/) - Amazing Love: Theology for understanding Discipleship, Sexuality and Mission Andrew Davison, DLT 2016, 114pp pbk This book has been with me over the past few weeks and my reading of it has been shaped by a number of events and experiences. First I attended a celebration of 35 years of a LGBTI support group that
- [Understanding Dementia (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/book-reviews/understanding-dementia-jessica-kingsley-publishers/) - I am gathering together a small collection of books all published by Jessica Kingsley who is certainly one of the most innovative and ground-breaking publishers working in this field. Their list covering a range of books on dementia is well worth examining. These first two books handle at first hand the experience of living with
- [Good Disagreement? Grace and Truth in a Divided Church](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/good-disagreement-grace-and-truth-in-a-divided-church/) - Good Disagreement? Grace and Truth in a Divided Church Andrew Atherstone and Andrew Goddard (Editors) Lion Hudson 2015 There is a little bit of the playground and its visceral realities still in all of us. We prefer to get our own way and sometimes go to some lengths to achieve that. We easily dismiss, obstruct, even
- [Performing Pastoral Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/performing-pastoral-care/) - Making the case for the relevance of pastoral care today, this book explores the role of pastoral care through the prism of music. Using musical analogies, the author provides a new way of understanding and practising pastoral care, grounded in practical theology. Challenging overemphasis on mission, he shows that pastoral care remains essential to the
- [Better Disagreement? Public Debate and Dialogue](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/better-disagreement-public-debate-and-dialogue/) - Towards Better Disagreement: Religion and Atheism Paul Hedges JKP 2016 I happen just to have returned from the Swindon office of BBC Wiltshire where I was tasked to review the Sunday papers. I turn now to catching up on some pieces of writing but especially book reviews that have been sat on my desk for
- [Bishop Michael Perham](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bishop-michael-perham/) - It will be a great privilege to welcome guests to the Sarum College Bookshop for the launch of Michael Perham’s latest book, The Way of Christ-Likeness. This practical and theological companion to Lent, Holy Week and Easter offers advice on creatively using the church’s most dramatic and transformative liturgies. It explores how commemorating Jesus’ death
- [Blessed are the Poor? By Laurie Green](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blessed-are-the-poor-by-laurie-green/) - It has taken me some time to digest this book and so commend it to others for both reflection and action. Laurie Green has established a well-deserved reputation for his ministry amongst the poor and voiceless but also for his ability to think theologically. The book took me backwards into my story but also catapulted
- [Blessed are the Poor ? By Laurie Green](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blessed-are-the-poor-by-laurie-green-2/) - It has taken me some time to digest this book and so commend it to others for both reflection and action. Laurie Green has established a well-deserved reputation for his ministry amongst the poor and voiceless but also for his ability to think theologically. The book took me backwards into my story but also catapulted me forwards ainto
- [Vulnerability and Care: Christian Reflections on the Philosophy of Medicine by Andrew  Sloane](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vulnerability-and-care-christian-reflections-on-the-philosophy-of-medicine-by-andrew-sloane/) - I have recently seen at close hand the work a busy acute hospital having to deal with an older person suffering multiple challenges to well-being caused in the main by intense confusion as a result of the Alzheimer's disease. The result was shocking and frustrating. Although,of course, a one-off situation which was intensified by my
- [Going Deeper for Truth and Freedom](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/going-deeper-for-truth-and-freedom/) - A Sermon preached at Westminster Abbey on Sunday 25th September 2016 at Evensong (John 8, 31- 38,48 – end) John 8;32,33 ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ If you visit Birmingham Cathedral what will strike you
- [Spiritual Care: luxury or necessity?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spiritual-care-luxury-or-necessity/) - Spiritual Care in Practice : Case studies in Healthcare Chaplaincy Edited by George Fitchett and Steve Nolan Paperback 2015, 320pp, ISBN: 978-1-84905-976-3 It seems as if English bank holiday weekends bring out the some of the more gloomy of stories in our newspapers. I imagine journalists finishing their holidays in France have left some
- [Nurturing Imagination ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nurturing-imagination/) - Here at Sarum College our aspirational strapline is Learning to nourish the human spirit ( see something of our work at www.sarum.ac.uk) and as I complete the first year of my presence, engagement and leadership of the College I have been much intrigued about what it is that enables such nourishment and learning to take
- [Longing for a deeper Church ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/longing-for-a-deeper-church/) - Andrew Walker, Notes From A Wayward Son: A Miscellany, ed. by Andrew D. Kinsey (Cascade, 2015), 322pp. no price marked. ISBN 978 – 1– 62564 – 161 – 8. This is an intriguing, stimulating and rewarding book that offers a space within which Andrew Walkers rather original and distinctive voice can be heard. Some will
- [How do we access the spiritual?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-do-we-access-the-spiritual-2/) - Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015; 280 pages; £19.99 ISBN 9781849054973 I review this book (the second week of July 2016) when two particular conversations were at the forefront of my mind. The first was the smooth transition between Cameron and May into 10 Downing Street and the office of Prime Minister. What followed was much speculation
- [Improving our understanding of Dementia ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/improving-our-understanding-of-dementia/) - I am gathering together a small collection of books all published by Jessica Kingsley who is certainly one of the most innovative and ground-breaking publishers working in this field. Their list covering a range of books on dementia is well worth examining. ( www.jkp.com ) These first two books handle at first hand the
- [Spiritual Accompaniment](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spiritual-accompaniment/) - Spiritual Accompaniment and Counselling: Journeying with psyche and soul Edited by Peter Masden Gubi Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015 paperback 192 pages £16.99 Here at Sarum College ( www.sarum.ac.uk ) our two year certificate in spiritual direction is very popular to a wide variety of individuals who wish to build upon, reflect and improve their practice. In a world
- [Performing Pastoral Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/performing-pastoral-care-2/) - Making the case for the relevance of pastoral care today, this book explores the role of pastoral care through the prism of music. Using musical analogies, the author provides a new way of understanding and practising pastoral care, grounded in practical theology. Challenging overemphasis on mission, he shows that pastoral care remains essential to the
- [Facilitating Spiritual Reminiscence for People with dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/facilitating-spiritual-reminiscence-for-people-with-dementia/) - A Learning Guide by Elizabeth MacKinlay and Corrine Trevitt Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015 I have recently experienced the hospitalisation of a close relative and, once again, have been surprised by the culture of care in our Hospitals. There is a kind of functionalism that serves to depersonalise an individual, their family and their well-being. This
- [Sarum College: A Brief History](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-college-a-brief-history/) - From the early Middle Ages, Salisbury was an important centre for theological training, its great cathedral and Close attracting students and scholars from the whole of Europe. The history of theological study begins with St Osmund and the completion of the first cathedral at Old Sarum in 1092. After Old Sarum was abandoned in favour
- [What kind of leadership??](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-kind-of-leadership-2/) - Crucible : The Journal of Christian Social Ethics April 2016 Editorial What kind of Leadership? The four articles that follow in this edition of Crucible all take leadership as a starting point to reflect upon the nature of the Church and its exercise of power and authority in changing and complex times. This
- [Sarum Lectures 2016 Renewing Hope - Pray, Serve, Grow.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-lectures-2016-renewing-hope-pray-serve-grow/) - The Sarum lectures have a long and distinguished history in the life of the Cathedral Close. They are a partnership between Sarum College and the Cathedral and this year we are looking forward to four lectures from our Diocesan Bishop, the Right Rev Nicholas Holtham. Here is an outline of the lectures. Renewing Hope -
- [Gravity, Context and Choice](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gravity-context-and-choice/) - Ministry in an Urban Context. The photograph above is one of the many aerial views of the city of Southampton available via Google images. A large group of our ministry students have just left the College after a weekend exploring the context and challenge of urban ministry. We gathered on Friday and looked at
- [Ageing - an inner and outer journey](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ageing-an-inner-and-outer-journey/) - TO SEE THE FLOWERS Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of
- [Learning: enlivening and enlarging?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/learning-enlivening-and-enlarging/) - Sarum College is now almost empty with our third-year students from our Ministry programme having returned back to their homes and families. I have to say a rather wonderful silence has fallen over the building! This has been a busy and demanding weekend for all of us - but I'm glad of some space to think
- [On Reaching a Certain Age !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-reaching-a-certain-age/) - 'Middle age starts much later than previously thought - at the age of 55, research suggests' - this is the rather helpful advice sent to me by a friend on this my 55th birthday. Born on 23 February 1961 is no arguing any more with the realities of time and age and numbers. For the
- [Jim Birren](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/jim-birren/) - REMEMBERING JIM BIRREN One of the towering figures in gerontology has died : James E. Birren, founding Director of the Andrus Gerontology Center, at the University of Southern California, died at the age of 97. His achievements were extraordinary Foremost among these, is creation of the Andrus Gerontology Center at USC, as well as the Leonard
- [What kind of Ministry? Chaplaincy as Mission](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-kind-of-ministry-chaplaincy-as-mission/) - Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church Victoria Slater, SCM Press 2015, 160 pages, pbk, no price marked, ISBN 978 0 334 05315 6 There are three distinctive and attractive characteristics of this book. The first is the authors’ skilful ability to open up her research in an accessible and stimulating way. The
- [Sarum College – an enriching and enlarging place](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-college-an-enriching-and-enlarging-place/) - I have had somewhat of a break from WordPress and decided on this first day of Lent to reconnect with this medium by way of re-engaging and reflecting on what had been very demanding but stimulating past few months. During the early part of 2015 I engaged in a discernment process which led to my
- [The Quest for meaning in later life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-quest-for-meaning-in-later-life/) - P. G. Coleman, D. Koleva and J. Bornat, eds., Ageing, Ritual and Social Change: Comparing the Secular and Religious in Eastern and Western Europe. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Pp. xviii, 283. Pb. £19.99. ISBN 978-1-4094-5215-7. This volume is a compelling and authoritative contribution to the literature that seeks to understand our quest
- [CONFUCIUS AT SEVENTY](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/confucius-at-seventy/) - "At fifteen I was committed to learning. At thirty I took my rightful position. At forty, I was no longer totally perplexed. At fifty, I began to understand the unfolding of my true nature. At sixty, I was in harmony with contradictions and ambivalence. A seventy, at long last, I may follow my heart's
- [Looking your Age??](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/looking-your-age/) - DO YOU LOOK YOUR AGE? Last month my wife and I were on a Road Scholar trip in Europe and we were having dinner with a Japanese woman. We got to talking about age and she asked how old I was. "Seventy" I replied, thinking of Gloria Steinem's apt phrase, "This is how 70
- [We need each other](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/we-need-each-other/) - The truth is that we shall only understand the balance of severity and confidence, of the strenuous and the relaxed, in the context of the common life. Every believer must have an urgent concern for the relation of the neighbour to Christ, a desire and willingness to be the means by which Christ's relation with
- [The Look](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-look/) - the look "The World is not something to look at, it is something to be in." Mark Rudman I look and look. Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes dig and burrow into the world. They touch fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
- [What is Age?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-age/) - "Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age... We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at
- [A prayer of Lancelot Andrewes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-prayer-of-lancelot-andrewes/) - A prayer of Lancelot Andrewes Guard Thou my soul, Strengthen my body, elevate my senses, direct my course, order my habits, shape my character, bless my actions, fulfil my prayers, inspire holy thoughts, pardon the past, correct the present, prevent the future …… AMEN
- [The Windows](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-windows/) - The Windows Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word? He is a brittle crazie glasse: Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace. But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie, Making thy life to
- [Seeing beyond the immediate: listening and learning alongside older people](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seeing-beyond-the-immediate-listening-and-learning-alongside-older-people/) - From 1998 through to 2009, I had the privilege of working with many hundreds of older people in an Almshouse charity. We lived together in rather splendid seventeenth-century buildings which were surprisingly adaptable for modern use. I remember meeting one frail older woman on her admission for care into our community. This move was for
- [understanding people ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-people/) - Affinity Consider this man in the field beneath, Gaitered with mud, lost in his own breath, Without joy, without sorrow,... Without children, without wife, Stumbling insensitively from furrow to furrow, A vague somnambulist; but hold your tears, For his name also is written in the Book of Life. Ransack your brainbox, pull out the drawers
- [Glass](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/glass-2/) - glass It is like the light coming through blue stained glass, Yet not quite like it, For the blueness is not transparent, Only translucent. Her soul's light shines through, But her soul cannot be seen. It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, childlike, wise And noble. Joyce Kilmer
- [Sarum College Bookshop : Book of the Month](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sarum-college-bookshop-book-of-the-month/) - 'Between Dark and Daylight' by Joan Chittister I am busy at the moment embarking upon a major exercise of downsizing in preparation for my move to Sarum. This must include books! The process is illuminating. What do we attach ourselves to? All this ‘stuff’ faces me with the paradoxes and contradictions of living and
- [Praying for Peace](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/praying-for-peace/) - and listening to the voices ...... Erich Fried When we were the persecuted I was one of you How can I remain one when you become the persecutors? Your longing was to become like other nations who murdered you Now you have become like them You have outlived those who were
- [Trinity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/trinity-2/) - St Augustine wrote of God in his 'Confessions': "You, my God, are supreme... You are the most hidden from us and yet the most present amongst us, the most beautiful and yet the most strong, ever enduring and yet we cannot comprehend you. You are unchangeable and yet you change all things. You are never
- [Miro on Ageing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/miro-on-ageing/) - PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN When artist Joan Miro was 24 years old, he predicted that he would do his best work in old age. The exhibition, "Joan Miro: Instinct and Imagination," documents the work he did in his 70's and 80's. In keeping with the idea of positive aging, Miro described
- [empty hands](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/empty-hands/) - they go there with empty hands What do they do, The singers, tale writers, dancers, painters, Shapers, makers? They go there with empty hands, into The gap between. They come back with things in their hands. They go silent and come back with words, with tunes. They go into confusion and come back with
- [Compassion ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/compassion-2/) - compassion A friend told me of visiting the Dalai Lama in India and asking him for a succinct definition of compassion. She prefaced her question by describing how heart-stricken she'd felt when, earlier that day, she'd seen a man in the street beating a mangy stray dog with a stick. “Compassion,” the Dalai
- [Tulip](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tulip/) - tulip Perhaps the tulip knows about impermanence and that is why, on a green stem it carries a wine cup in the wilderness Hafiz, (re)transl. Tom Davis
- [Learning from Self !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/learning-from-self/) - There is a famous story that Gandhi told of himself and the girl who was addicted to eating sweet foods. The story goes that a troubled mother one day came to Gandhi along with her daughter and explained to Gandhi that her daughter was in the habit of eating far more sweet food than was
- [Where do we look for God?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-do-we-look-for-god/) - And so it is with the glory of God expressed in human creation. It is not only in the ardent lover, the faithful friend, the wise counsellor, the trusting child that we see God's glory. There is glory also in the anger of the oppressed, the pain of the wounded and the loneliness of the
- [Discovery](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/discovery-3/) - Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- [From Windsor to Sarum](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/from-windsor-to-sarum/) - By way of completing the circle of communication I can see that social media has its advantages by way of sharing information! So after six years here in Windsor I am looking forward to the challenges and opportunities of a new phase of my work and life. Here is the Press Release - so the
- [In the End -  our choice for Love ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-the-end-our-choice-for-love/) - You see, only love can move across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, like a great river and water itself. When you
- [Light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/light-3/) - light O splendour of what is, by which I saw the high delight, the true communion: please show me how to say all I could see. Up there there is a light. The light is God. Creation contemplates its own creator, and only in that seeing is there peace. It stretches in a circle
- [Compassion and Patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/compassion-and-patience/) - Compassion and patience are the absolutely unique characteristics of true spiritual authority, and without any doubt are the way both Francis and Clare led their communities. They led not from above, and not even from below, but mostly from within, by walking with their brothers and sisters, or “smelling like the sheep, as Pope Francis
- [Blossom](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blossom-2/) - blossom There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. From Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms
- [people vote for different reasons!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/people-vote-for-different-reasons/) - crystal I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute — he pets his fancies — Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
- [Air Forces Memorial, Runnymede](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/air-forces-memorial-runnymede/) - The Air Forces Memorial, or Runnymede Memorial, in Englefield Green memorial dedicated to some 20,456 men and women from air forces of the British Empire who were lost in air and other operations during World War II. Those recorded have no known grave anywhere in the world, and many were lost without trace. The name
- [Spiral](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spiral/) - spiral wine the colour of day wine the colour of night wine deep purple o topaz blood wine: starlit son of earth wine, smooth as a golden sword wine like a spiral seashell wondrous loving marine unconfinable in one glass or one song, or drunk alone: choral, gregarious and always shared from Neruda, To wine,
- [Writing the Self: David Lodge](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/writing-the-self-david-lodge/) - ‘Quite a good time to be born’ – by David Lodge As an avid reader of biography and autobiography it is intriguing, I think, to wonder about the criteria of choice at work in the writing of such texts. Put simply, what you put in and what you leave out? What might any of
- [Hughenden Manor](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/hughenden-manor/) - The manor of Hughenden is first recorded in 1086, when formerly part of Queen Edith's lands it was held by William, son of Oger the Bishop of Bayeux, and was assessed for tax at 10 hides. Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1868 and 1874–1880, and Earl of Beaconsfield 1876), whose father rented a house
- [Strange Glory :  A life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/strange-glory-a-life-of-dietrich-bonhoeffer/) - ‘Strange Glory’ by Charles Marsh It is always extraordinary to be reminded about the gaps – and sometimes very significant indeed – in our knowledge. The life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of these areas. Born in 1906 and executed by the Nazi regime in 1945, this is the story, the
- [Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-4/) - a stone at dawn cold water in the basin these walls’ rough plaster imageless after the hammering of so much insistence on the need for naming after the travesties that passed as faces, grace: the unction of sheer nonexistence upwelling in this hyacinthine freshet of the unnamed the faceless Amy Clampitt
- [Easter eve](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-eve-2/) - Glorious Collect for Easter Eve Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection ;
- [Holy Saturday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holy-saturday-3/) - When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snap the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step
- [Sunday pause for Thought](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/) - thorn In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which
- [what we need is here](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-we-need-is-here-2/) - what we need is here Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye,
- [PABLO CASALS ON AGEING](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pablo-casals-on-ageing/) - On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old. At
- [THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MEMORY](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-moral-significance-of-memory/) - "Nothing holds firm. Everything is here today and gone tomorrow. But the good things of life-- truth, justice, and beauty-- all great accomplishments need time, constancy, and memory, or they degenerate. The man who feels neither responsibility towards the past nor desire to shape the future is one who forgets. And I do
- [](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/6452/) - the endless knot The endless knot is one of the eight fortunate symbols in Tibetan Buddhism. It has many meanings. It is a pattern that is closed in on itself with no gaps, signifying the interrelatedness of everything. It shows that the apparent disharmony and contradictoriness of the world we see is, seen properly,
- [morning rain](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/morning-rain-3/) - morning rain 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. Du Fu (712-770 AD)
- [Together?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/together/) - veins Look: how they grow to be each other. In their veins there is only God. Each other's axis, a shimmering shape that glows, like fire, a rapture, a delight. They thirst, and are each other's wine; see, how they are each other's seeing. Let us let each rejoice into the other: outlasting self,
- [HEALTHCARE, WHOLENESS & HEALING Saturday, 7th March 2015](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/healthcare-wholeness-healing-saturday-7th-march-2015/) - Diocese of Bath and Wells Diocesan Healing Group event HEALTHCARE, WHOLENESS & HEALING Saturday, 7th March 2015 Healthcare is increasingly driven by clinical outcomes, budgets, targets and political constraints. This is at the expense of whole-person care and personal well-being – for both healthcare professionals and patients alike. Could the Church
- [who died?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/who-died-3/) - who died? When death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more
- [Auckland Castle](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/auckland-castle/) - I have very vivid memories of visiting Auckland Castle as a sixth form student beginning to wonder about my vocation to the ordained ministry in the Church of England. At a young people's gathering in the Throne room of this imposing building I remember the Bishop of Durham, John Habgood, addressing us in a simple
- [Sermon for Christmas eve St George's Chapel Windsor 2014](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sermon-for-christmas-eve-st-georges-chapel-windsor-2014/) - St George’s Chapel Windsor Castle Christmas Eve Communion 2014: The Christmas Truce This evening I want to remind you of something very remarkable that happened exactly 100 years ago to this day. The world was at five months into an armed conflict that ended the lives of fifteen million people. On the western front German,
- [The Christmas Story from NZ](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-christmas-story-from-nz/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWq60oyrHVQ
- [into His Peace](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/into-his-peace/) - And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.
- [The Christmas Truce](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-christmas-truce/) - The Christmas Truce One hundred years ago the world was at war - it was a conflict that changed the world for ever and at this anniversary we have been remembering its impact upon the families and communities in our country. In particular we remember with sorrow our human capacity for conflict injustice and destruction.
- [The twenty third day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-twenty-third-day-of-december/) - O come, O come, thou calling child: the creatures, those both tame and wild, the weak and pow’rful, coax along and change their trembling into song. Rejoice! Rejoice! The vuln’rable shall make us all insep’rable Jim Cotter Expectant : Verses for Advent
- [The twenty- first day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-twenty-first-day-of-december/) - O Come, O come, thou shaft of fire, to lead us on through dark and mire; through desert bare thou moving cloud protect and guide, fulfil what's vowed. Rejoice! rejoice! Our God afresh the covenant shall soon enflesh Expectant : Words for Advent Jim Cotter
- [Understanding Age? Face the Future....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/understanding-age-face-the-future/) - It has been a great pleasure to offer a Forward to this stimulating contribution the literature on old age by the delightful William Cutting Foreword - (Face the Future. Book 2. Challenges, Joy and Faith for Seniors) Like many of you reading this book I am thankful for my satellite navigation system. It is
- [What is illusory?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-illusory/) - focus Walking, snow falling, it is possible to focus at various distances in turn on separate flakes, sharply engage the attention at several spatial points: the nearer cold and more uncomfortable, the farther distanced and almost pleasing. Living, time passing, it is preferable to focus the memory in turn upon the more distant retrospects
- [Radiant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/radiant-5/) - radiant this blessing God's love calls us to that elsewhere world which only lovers eyes alight, eyes aflame can see at all. only those who have self surrendered: once, they were flecks of fire; now, they are the radiant sun. Rumi
- [to love and obey](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-love-and-obey/) - The French scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sums it up nicely in his book “The Divine Milieu.” He writes: “God obviously has no need of the products of your busy activity since he could give himself everything without you. The only thing that concerns him, the only thing he desires intensely, is
- [Feast on your life?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/feast-on-your-life-2/) - Love After Love 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 heart
- [intricate](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/intricate-3/) - intricate Intricate and untraceable weaving and interweaving, dark strand with light: designed, beyond all spiderly contrivance, to link, not to entrap: elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined; shaking, changing, forever forming, transforming: all praise, all praise to the great web. Denise Levertov, Web
- [Each minute the last minute.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/each-minute-the-last-minute/) - delicate The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day. A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for
- [unspoken.....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/unspoken/) - unspoken Autumn The black moon turns away, its work done. A tenderness, unspoken autumn. We are faithful only to the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. What holds you to what you see of me is that grasp alone. from Denise Levertov, Everything That Acts Is Actual
- [the right word at the right time!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-right-word-at-the-right-time/) - acting with no expectations Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child's? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you
- [Dressing Up?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dressing-up/) - We all have an ambiguous relationship with Authority or power and so we should as Christians. I wonder when you last felt powerless? To be powerless is something we all fear briefly clothed, but God laughs when we take it too, so we anxiously remind ourselves of all our virtues and capabilities. Our instinct as
- [Silence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/silence-7/) - ‘Silence’, said Seraphim, ‘is the cross on which man must crucify his ego’; ‘Silence transfigures a man into an angel; it is the spiritual practice which most surely preserves inner peace.’ He was constantly repeating the words of St Ambrose, ‘I have seen many who were saved by silence but none who were saved by
- [Writers Rooms : David Starkey](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/writers-rooms-david-starkey/) - Starkey offers this commentary: The room is in an 18th-century house and was fitted out by one of the more bizarre figures of mid-20th-century British public life, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen. Hugessen retired here in disgrace to write his family memoirs. He did so in this room, and I have a copy of the
- [Writers Houses : Karen Blixen](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/writers-houses-karen-blixen/) - Karen also known by her pen name Isak Dinesen was born at Rungstedlund in Denmark on 17th of April 1885 as the second child of Wilhelm and Ingeborg Dinesen’s five children. She came to Africa in 1914 to marry her half cousin and carry out dairy farming in the then British Colony of Kenya. Her
- [Surprise](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/surprise-2/) - surprise Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given out Take only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart Or greater than a star; Tame wild disappointment With caress
- [opening](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/opening/) - opening The Opening and the Close Of Being, are alike Or differ, if they do, As Bloom upon a Stalk. That from an equal Seed Unto an equal Bud Go parallel, perfected In that they have decayed. Emily Dickinson, The opening and the close
- [Peace](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/peace-2/) - The peace of wild things When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the
- [water !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/water-4/) - water If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water. Going to church Would entail a fording To dry, different clothes; My litany would employ Images of sousing, A furious devout drench, And I should raise in the east A glass of water Where any-angled light Would congregate endlessly.
- [Don't tame me !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dont-tame-me/) - the shout The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. from Walt Whitman, Song of myself
- [awakening](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/awakening-2/) - awakening 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 burns
- [eternity .....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/eternity/) - wild flower To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. From William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
- [you will greet yourself.....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/you-will-greet-yourself/) - LOVE AFTER LOVE 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
- [wondering](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wondering/) - wondering I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
- [The genious of Gormley](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-genious-of-gormley/) - I was determined to make a significant detour during August to see some public sculpture on Crosby beach and this short piece gives me an opportunity to show off some of my photographs. The journey to Liverpool was not in vain and I was able to glimpse again at first hand the sheer genius of
- [THE ASTONISHMENT OF AGE - learning from Jung](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-astonishment-of-age-learning-from-jung/) - When my friend's mother developed dementia, he was discouraged that each day she seemed to be losing so much. Then he remembered a saying from Taoism: In the way of learning, each day we gain more and more. In the way of the Tao, each day we have less and less. So often
- [Never standing still !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/never-standing-still/) - (taken by JWW Savill Gardens June 2014) tree not even for a moment do things stand still: look at colour, in the trees Seiju, his death poem (d. 1776, age 75)
- [Smile](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/smile-3/) - smile Then new events said to me, ‘Don’t move. A sublime generosity is coming towards you.’ You are the fountain of the sun’s light. I am a willow shadow on the ground. You make my raggedness silky. The soul at dawn is like darkened water that slowly begins to say Thank you, thank you.
- [Vacation Suprises (5) Llanyblodwel Church](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vacation-suprises-5-llanyblodwel-church/) - On the road out of Oswestry travelling up the Tanant valley you will find a small village, Llanyblodwel, and tucked away the church of St Michael and the Archangel. It is beautifully kept and open each day for visitors. The church is believed to have been erected after the arrival of the Normans and its
- [Vacation Surprises (4) Aberystwyth](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vacation-surprises-4-aberystwyth/) - Aberystwyth is the principal holiday resort and administrative centre of the west coast of Wales. It is also home to the University of Wales Aberystwyth and the National Library. This excursion was especially worth the long journey across the hills through the rain to be greeted by wonderful blue skies. This brief piece gives me
- [Vacation Suprises (3) Richard Herbert](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vacation-suprises-3-richard-herbert/) - A bright day took the car South and West towards Montgomery and the glad open door of St Nicholas Parish Church built in the early 13th century. You can see the effect of the blazing sun on this Welsh Shropshire border town! The most conspicuous object in the south transept is the splendid Elizabethan canopied tomb
- [Vacation Suprises (2) Blackberries](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vacation-suprises-2-blackberries/) - Late August, given heavy rain and sunFor a full week, the blackberries would ripen.At first, just one, a glossy purple clotAmong others, red, green, hard as a knot.You ate that first one and its flesh was sweetLike thickened wine: summer's blood was in itLeaving stains upon the tongue and lust forPicking. Then red ones inked
- [Vacation Surprises : (1) Craigie Aitchison in Glass](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vacation-surprises-1-craigie-aitchison-in-glass/) - I travelled up to London during my summer holiday to attend a wonderful celebration of marriage of Robin and Sezgi Amos at St Mary the Bolton's in Chelsea. It was a sunny day and I managed to arrive at the church early to catch up with friends. As I wandered around the church building
- [close enough](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/close-enough/) - close enough O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot
- [the choir and music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-choir-and-music/) - the choir and music Silence is a great blue bell Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing, In measure's pleasure, and in the supple symmetry of the soaring of the immense intense wings glinting against All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their
- [Love ..............](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-2/) - in a glass darkly Though I spake with the tongues of men and angels and yet had no love, I were even as sounding brass: or as tinkling cymbal. And though I could prophesy and understood all secrets and all knowledge: yea if I had all faith so that I could move mountains out of
- [intricate](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/intricate-2/) - intricate Intricate and untraceable weaving and interweaving, dark strand with light: designed, beyond all spiderly contrivance, to link, not to entrap: elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined; shaking, changing, forever forming, transforming: all praise, all praise to the great web. Denise Levertov, Web
- [roses in sunlight](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/roses-in-sunlight/) - roses in sunlight Our sense of these things changes and they change, Not as in metaphor, but in our sense Of them. So sense exceeds all metaphor. It exceeds the heavy changes of the light. It is like a flow of meanings with no speech And of as many meanings as of men. We
- [Peter Lanyon](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/peter-lanyon-2/) - I love surprising discoveries. As a very enjoyable lunch last week in a London restaurant in Notting Hill this particular picture captured my imagination. I was sitting opposite it and amazed at its rhythmic and soothing effect. Painted by a Cornishman, influenced by American abstract Expressionists (especially Jackson Pollock) Lanyon is rooted in the Cornish
- [Peter Lanyon](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/peter-lanyon/) - I love surprising discoveries. As a very enjoyable lunch last week in a London restaurant in Notting Hill this particular picture captured my imagination. I was sitting opposite it and amazed at its rhythmic and soothing effect. Painted by a Cornishman, influenced by American abstract Expressionists (especially Jackson Pollock) Lanyon is rooted in the Cornish
- [discovery poetry?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/discovery-poetry/) - wildflower Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don't see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes in its odd color or the way its leaves grow in splayed rows down the whole length of the page. In fact the very
- [wrought flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wrought-flower-3/) - wrought flower I believe the earth exists, and in each minim mote of its dust the holy glow of thy candle. Thou unknown I know, thou spirit, giver, lover of making, of the wrought letter, wrought flower, iron, deed, dream the ordinary glow of common dust in ancient sunlight. Be, that I may
- [Love, thou art high](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-thou-art-high/) - oddity Love, thou are deep: I cannot cross thee. But, were there Two Instead of One -- Rower, and Yacht -- some sovereign Summer -- Who knows, but we'd reach the Sun? Love, thou are Veiled: A few behold thee, Smile, and alter, and prattle, and die. Bliss were an Oddity, without thee,
- [Psalms Redux & Prayers for the Day by Carla Grosch-Miller](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/psalms-redux-prayers-for-the-day-by-carla-grosch-miller/) - Here is a wonderful book to look out for from a skilled and humane theologian and my commendation for my friend Carla Psalms Redux & Prayers for the Day by Carla Grosch-Miller We human beings become so easily distracted and even bored with the familiar. The comfort of the ‘well-known’ so easily can
- [the golden moon](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-golden-moon/) - blue sky and the golden moon The moon is a curving flower of gold, The sky is still and blue; The moon was made for the sky to hold, And I for you. The moon is a flower without a stem, The sky is luminous; Eternity was made for them, To-night for us. Sara
- [Charity and Freeedom](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/charity-and-freeedom/) - Charity and freedom are inseparable. Love must be free. Only charity is perfectly free. Love is loved for itself, not determined by anything else outside itself. It is not drawn by the satisfaction of anything less than itself. Only in charity, that is disinterested love, is love perfectly spontaneous. All love that is less
- [torso](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/torso/) - torso We cannot know the indescribable face Where the eyes like apples ripened. Even so, His torso has a candelabra's glow, His gaze, contained as in a mirror's grace, Shines within it. Otherwise his breast Would not be dazzling. Nor would you recognize The smile that moves along his curving thighs, There where love's
- [luminous](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/luminous-3/) - luminous the day is remarkable luminous, joyful so easy, to live with the taste of colour love makes me laugh and, at the last moment, I open my eyes. Paul Eluard, Serie
- [Rublev for Trinity Sunday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rublev-for-trinity-sunday/) - Rublev One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe, slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped, said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth. I said, Here is the blood of all our people, these are their bruises, blue and purple, gold, brown, and pale green wash of death. These (god) are
- [thy fearful symmetry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thy-fearful-symmetry/) - angel tiger Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry ? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? When the stars threw down their
- [You are..........](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/you-are/) - crystal You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, and the marsh birds suddenly in flight. From Billy Collins, Litany.
- [looking](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/looking/) - white flower He said, I am with you always. That means, when you look for God That God is the looking itself, Yes, and the thought of looking And the you that thinks the thought Always, already, all of it; There is no outside. A white flower grows in the silence Let your
- [Roses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/roses/) - roses my love in secret sent this secret to me give me your self give me your all go like a wanderer take to the road walk calmly into the flames burn without burning burn, burn, as the fire becomes roses my blasphemies are what god is watch the glow of god: see
- [Memories](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/memories-2/) - We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes
- [Baddesley Clinton](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/baddesley-clinton/) - Baddesley Clinton , is a moated manor house, located just north of Warwick ; the house was probably established during the 13th century when large areas of the Forest of Arden were cleared and eventually converted to farmland. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the Hall is a Grade I listed building.
- [Remembering Maya Angelou](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/remembering-maya-angelou/) - I started my blogging life in 2008 partly as a way of capturing my experience of a sabbatical in America. In the spring of that year I spent a month in Washington DC followed by three months in Chicago. It was a rejuvenating and very significant time. I managed to get over to Washington
- [A Tree....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-tree/) - a tree telling of Orpheus he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots out of the earth, into my bark out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
- [the costs of trying to avoid the inevitable](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-costs-of-trying-to-avoid-the-inevitable/) - From todays Church Times James Woodward on the costs of trying to avoid the inevitable Should We Live Forever? The ethical ambiguities of aging Gilbert Meilaender Eerdmans £11.99 HUMAN beings generally desire life. Most of us are grateful for the good gift that is our life. Like other animals, we pass through a life-cycle from
- [Tredegar House](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tredegar-house/) - Tredegar House is a 17th-century Charles II country house mansion in the city of Newport that for over five hundred years was home to the Morgan family, later Lords Tredegar; one of the most powerful and influential families in the area. Described as "The grandest and most exuberant country house" in Monmouthshire and one of
- [her great shining](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/her-great-shining-2/) - The moon is a sow and grunts in my throat Her great shining shines through me so the mud of my hollow gleams and breaks in silver bubbles She is a sow and I a pig and a poet When she opens her white lips to devour me I bite back and
- [For the small things - Thankfulness?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/for-the-small-things-thankfulness/) - Praises I praise those things I always take for granted:- The tap my sister turns on for my bath Every time I stay, the safety pin – And who invented it? I do not know – The comb, the piece of soap, a shoe, its shine, The name tape and the string, a
- [Words?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/words-2/) - Oranges Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, sometimes they swarm like insects and leave not a sting but a kiss. They can be as good as fingers. They can be as trusty as the rock you stick your bottom on. But they can be
- [Image of the Week : Henry Moore - Uprightinternal/External Form](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/image-of-the-week-henry-moore-uprightinternalexternal-form/)
- [dahlia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dahlia/) - They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia, Opulent, flaunting. Round gold Flung out of a pale green stalk. Round, ripe gold Of maturity, Meticulously frilled and flaming, A fire-ball of proclamation. From Amy Lowell, Autumn
- [petals](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/petals/) - somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as
- [Let us return?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/let-us-return/) - ultimate blue Let us return to imperfection's school. No longer wandering after Plato's ghost, Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless, We must at last renounce that ultimate blue And take a walk in other kinds of weather. From Adrienne Rich, Stepping backward
- [Image of the week : Black on Maroon by Rothko](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/image-of-the-week-black-on-maroon-by-rothko/) - This painting comes from one of three series of canvases painted by Rothko in 1958-9 in response to a commission for murals for the small dining room of the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York. The Four Seasons, one of the smartest restaurants in the city, is in the Seagram Building, a celebrated classic modern
- [English Cathedrals : Portsmouth](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/english-cathedrals-portsmouth/) - The Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, commonly known as Portsmouth Cathedral, is the cathedral of the Diocese of Portsmouth, England and is located in the heart of Old Portsmouth. Around the year 1180, Jean de Gisors, a wealthy Norman merchant and Lord of the Manor of Titchfield, gave land in his new
- [Image of the week: A Busy Life by Dubuffett](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/image-of-the-week-a-busy-life-by-dubuffett/) - Painted in August 1953. It is one of the series of paintings known as 'Beaten Pastes' (Pâtes battues) executed between March and December 1953 of which Dubuffet has written: 'These paintings are done with a smooth light coloured (almost white) paste, fairly thick, spread unevenly and rapidly with a plasterer's knife over layers already
- [A Holy Saturday walk - Windsor Great Park](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/an-easter-morning-walk-windsor-great-park/) - Windsor Great Park welcomes over two and a half million people every year. Windsor Great Park, the only Royal Park managed by The Crown Estate, was once part of a vast Norman hunting forest which was enclosed in the late 13th century. The 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres) of parkland, which includes a Deer Park, is
- [Easter – and the possibilities of transformation?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-and-the-possibilities-of-transformation/) - When we read when we read the Gospel accounts of the resurrection we note how varied these experiences were. There is always a mystery, a greater depth, new things to uncover about the transformation possible because of Easter. If we delve beneath the surface of these Easter encounters, we do not find human strength
- [Here on the Cross is Love and Life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/here-on-the-cross-id-love-and-life/) - Jesus final words finished. His life is finished. His ministry is finished. The scriptures are finished. The reconciliation of God and creation is finished. This is good news – everything is lost except the heart of God laid bare. We might just get close enough to glimpse that sacred heart laid bare. And we might
- [Love and Light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-and-light/) - fresh life and then my heart pulled itself apart and, filled to the brim with a new light, overflowed with fresh life. now even the heavens are thankful that because of love i have become the giver of light Rumi
- [watchful](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/watchful-2/) - watchful 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
- [reflected](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/reflected/) - Love there is enough magic here inside this one word to change our world forever mountain snow lying across life's pasture a shadow reflected over stone moss forest dream man's ability to under stand nature's living need green comet seen in the sky time's gift, another universe visiting our earth there
- [Where everything is Music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-everything-is-music-2/) - 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 reading. Take down a
- [Feast on your life !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/feast-on-your-life/) - Love after Love 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 heart
- [Sometimes best to admit : mystery ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sometimes-best-to-admit-mystery/) - Wherever we go exploring in the world around us, we find mysteries. Our planet is covered by continents and oceans whose origin we cannot explain. Our atmosphere is constantly stirred by poorly understood disturbances that we call weather and climate. The visible matter in the universe is outweighed by a much larger quantity of dark
- [HumanBeing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/humanbeing/) - We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience -Teilhard de Chardin
- [Always Growing and Moving?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/always-growing-and-movin/) - Generous orthodoxy is aware of the need to keep listening and learning in openness to the Spirit and to the world for the sake of the gospel, it seeks to keep conversations going and not to end them. Generous ortho­doxy does not so much specify a particular point or posi­tion as it establishes a spacious
- [HAPPINESS AND ITS DISCONTENTS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/happiness-and-its-discontents/) - In our era, the idea that we should lead happy, balanced lives carries the force of an obligation: We are supposed to push aside our anxieties in order to enjoy our lives, attain peace of mind, and maximize our productivity. The cult of "positive thinking" even assures us that we can bring good things into
- [Love - always Love?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-always-love/) - eyes Love is the cure. Your pain will keep giving birth to more pain. Just let your eyes breathe out love as easily as a flower breathes out its sweetness. Rumi, Love is the cure
- [Gifts and Graces](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gifts-and-graces/) - I have come to admire the way different individuals function in their profes­sional roles. Yet finally I represent the role my way, in my person, in terms of my gifts and my graces. These “gifts and graces,” as the Methodists put it, are not better or worse. They simply are different. Dif­ferent gifts, different graces; one
- [Long Dark Days](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/long-dark-days/) - fall, leaves, fall Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day. Emily Brontë
- [The sacred](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-sacred/) - The sacred is the interference of the uncreated in the cre­ated, of the eternal in time, of the infinite in space, of the supraformal in forms; it is the mysterious introduction into one realm of existence of a presence which in reality contains and transcends that realm and could cause it to burst asunder in
- [](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/6003/) - The beautiful changes The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows. Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They
- [New Books on Poetry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-books-on-poetry/) - Making Nothing Happen Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, UK, Eleanor Nesbitt, University of Warwick, UK, Mark Pryce, Diocese of Birmingham, UK, Ruth Shelton, Director of Emmanuel House Day Centre, UK and Nicola Slee, Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological
- [Ministry: Seeing and Serving](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ministry-seeing-and-serving/) - Ministry is about a way of seeing and a way of serving. That is to say, it is a way of giving attention to God and his creation, to yourself and to others, in order to learn to love them; and it is a lifelong commitment to that kind of service of others who
- [New Year Resolution: Silence and Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-year-resolution-silence-and-reflection/) - cushion it's possible to sit in meditation until the cushion is worn flat and never know the thing that is. let me tell you about that thing. it's inside you (and me) already right here yay end of. Lu Tung Pin
- [New Year Resolutions : Dig deeper into God](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-year-resolutions-dig-deeper-into-god/) - a tree God is a tree said Kabir a tree in the forest; when the woodsmen come to cut Him down He will not defend Himself He will not shame them. And God, he said, is the earth an endless wonder that allows Himself to be ruined by us but He
- [New Year Resolution: Embrace Change](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-year-resolution-embrace-change/) - hammered gold and gold enamelling An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the
- [New Year resolution: Follow the heart](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-year-resolution-follow-the-heart/) - make friends with fire 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
- [New Year resolutions : attention.....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/new-year-resolutions-attention/) - The métier of blossoming 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
- [Christmas prayers for those in Pain](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmads-prayers-for-those-in-pain/) - Lord God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, understood people's fear and pain before they spoke of them, we pray for those in hospital; surround the frightened with your tenderness; give strength to those in pain; hold the weak in your arms of love, and give hope and patience to those who are recovering; we ask this
- [Christmas prayers for Syria](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-prayers-for-syria/) - A Prayer for Peace in Syria Spirit of wisdom and grace, the power of truth and judgement; we pray for all who are working for peace in the tangled conflict of Syria today. For international leaders holding a thread of control, for the politicians holding a thread of power, for the religious leaders holding a
- [Christmas prayers for the homeless](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-prayers-for-the-homeless/) - God of compassion, your love for humanity was revealed in Jesus, whose earthly life began in the poverty of a stable and ended in the pain and isolation of the cross: we hold before you those who are homeless and cold especially in this bitter weather. Draw near and comfort them in spirit and bless
- [Christmas prayer for reconciliation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-prayer-for-reconciliation/) - Lord God of compassion, whose will is for peace built on righteousness, we pray for peace in Gaza: for an end to hostilities, for comfort and help for all who suffer, and for reconciliation between Palestine and Israel, through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
- [Christmas makes a diffrence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christmas-makes-a-diffrence/) - People often complain that religion doesn't make a difference - that people aren't better because of it. So what difference does worship this morning make to our lives? Does Christmas mean anything? Yes - today makes a world of difference. For in the message of this Christmas morning God gives us so much that can
- [Light on our Lives](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/light-on-our-lives/) - Last month I travelled to Paris for a short break and spent some time with in the Louvre. It was good to catch this wonderful painting by George de la Tour ' the Adoration of the Shepherds'. I captured some fragments of photographs and have been dwelling on it in these last hours as the
- [Advent: Light and Darkness - knowing and not knowing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-light-and-darkness-knowing-and-not-knowing/) - where the moon lives 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
- [Advent: and our thirst.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-and-our-thirst/) - water Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill,
- [Advent :Life and Death](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-life-and-death/) - sweet day 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,
- [Advent and our hope of salvation?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-and-our-hope-of-salvation/) - In our postmodern culture self-fulfilment has become a matter of individually self-chosen goals. Freedom - in the sense of the absolute autonomy of the individual - has become the single, overarching ideal to which all other goals are subordinated. I must be free to be whoever I choose to be and to pursue whatever
- [Advent and our need for Patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-and-our-need-for-patience/) - patience An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no
- [What makes for Good Church?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-makes-for-good-church/) - Perhaps 'good' Church has a few essential things in common? 1. They share a deeply incarnational view of the world, the recognition that matter is the scaffolding of spirit, the two deeply entwined; each Church knows that the commonplace, when seen with the eye of the heart, is holy, and that the ordinary is
- [Advent :Longing and Desire](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-longing-and-desire/) - climb the stair Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone to show you how your longing waits alone. What alchemy
- [Lord help us to see](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/lord-help-us-to-see/) - Vision is quite simply about seeing. In religious terms it means seeing the world as God's world. It means refusing to conform to the world's standards and values, or to go along with that cynical pessimism which some call realism but is in fact a terrible, destructive despair. To believe in God is to
- [Seeds](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seeds/) - seeds You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree. (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you
- [Advent and contemplating our mortality ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-and-contemplating-our-mortality/) - coins When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox: when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through
- [A Lack of Soul?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-lack-of-soul/) - AGEING AND CARE OF THE SOUL Thomas Moore has described the fundamental psychological problem of contemporary life as a lack of “soul.” As Moore understands the problem, “soul” is not exclusively a religious term but rather “a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value,
- [Yellow](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/yellow/) - A yellow flower (Light and spirit) Sings by itself For nobody. A golden spirit (Light and emptiness) Sings without a word By itself. Let no one touch this gentle sun In whose dark eye Someone is awake. (No light, no gold, no name, no colour And no thought: O, wide
- [Where do our lives point?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-do-our-lives-point/) - Matthew 3 The Proclamation of John the Baptist 3In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’* 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way
- [here’s to opening and upward](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/heres-to-opening-and-upward/) - here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain and here’s to silent certainly mountains;and to a disappearing poet of always, snow and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful friend twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and
- [music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/music-3/) - ah, the hidden sweetness we find when the belly is empty! we are no more or less than string instruments: if the sound box is full of something, no music: obviously. so: if the brain and the belly are burned clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire:
- [Befriending Death](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/befriending-death/) - MOTHER MARY CLARE SLG (1906-1988) LIVING THROUGH THE DYING Any Christian whether living in the world or in the Religious Life, active or enclosed, is being called as was St Antony of old to go down into the most frightening places of world history. If we are really trying to live this life in Christ,
- [interconnectedness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/interconnectedness/) - Indra's net Buddhism uses a similar image to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena. It is called Indra's Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought
- [Learning to forgive .................more](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/learning-to-forgive-more/) - To forgive,” writes Mary Gordon, “is to give up the exhilaration of ones own unassailable rightness” And there is loss in that, only it is the loss of an illusion, and what is gained is unmistakably real: the chance to live again, free from the bitterness that draws the sweetness from our lives, that gives
- [what we need is here](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-we-need-is-here/) - Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is
- [leaves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leaves-4/) - 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. T hey must
- [Growing Older?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/growing-older-2/) - BEDE GRIFFITHS: THE MONK GROWS OLD Father Bede Griffiths was a a Catholic monk who spent most of his life as a "Christian Yogi" in India, where he expounded the unity of world religions: "(Father Bede) said at the age of 85 he begged to differ with those who think that life is all over
- [if only](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/if-only/) - if only Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time. If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift! If only, most lovely of all,
- [ATTAINING HAPPINESS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/attaining-happiness/) - The Turkish folkhero Mullah Nasruddin was renowned for his paradoxical approach to wisdom as both paradox and folly. A student sought out Mullah Nasruddin for years, hoping to find guidance from him. He finally found the Mullah in the marketplace sitting atop a pile of anana peels-- no one knows why. "Oh great sage, Nasruddin,"
- [if there are any heavens](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/if-there-are-any-heavens/) - if there are any heavens if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses my father will be(deep like a rose tall like a rose) standing near my
- [a golden petal](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-golden-petal/) - The dawn was apple-green, The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between. She opened her eyes, and green They shone, clear like flowers undone For the first time, now for the first time seen. D. H. Lawrence, Green
- [HAVE WE LIVED THE WRONG LIFE?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/have-we-lived-the-wrong-life/) - "We all dimly feel that our transient historical identity is the only chance in all eternity to be alive as a somebody in a here and a now. We, therefore, dread the possibility, of which we are most aware when deeply young or very old, that at the end we may find that we have
- [asleep and dreaming](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/asleep-and-dreaming/) - He knew he was asleep and was dreaming Of a beautiful poem. It seemed to be singing Itself in the night, and he woke In a bed in a room in an old hotel And lay there, hearing the song go on Though he could see the shape Of his empty shirt on the straight
- [Celebrate Imperfection ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/celebrate-imperfection/) - W H Auden told Golo Mann that “in each of us, there is a bit of Catholic and a bit of Protestant; for truth is catholic, but the search for it is protestant,” Auden consistently saw the relation between the catholic truth and the protestant search dialectically. As he said, analogously and repeatedly, “the
- [blue](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blue-2/) - It is like the light coming through blue stained glass, Yet not quite like it, For the blueness is not transparent, Only translucent. Her soul's light shines through, But her soul cannot be seen. It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, childlike, wise And noble. Joyce Kilmer
- [Immortal Autumn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/immortal-autumn-2/) - 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. Now No more the foreign sun does meddle
- [patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/patience-6/) - patience An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no
- [sunflowers and our search for the divine?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunflowers-and-our-search-for-the-divine/) - attain God... he said, then realised it had been done with nothing but sunflowers from Nicolette Stasko, Conseil de Gauguin (advice from Gauguin)
- [Being Faithful ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-faithful/) - Faithful living is mostly about spreading the good news through faithful relationships, built and nurtured over the long haul. Con­gregations will continue to transform lives in new generations when they pay attention to what's important: hospitality, the nur­ture of children and adults, and radical welcome to all who come seeking God. Faith is fundamentally
- [wild beauty](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wild-beauty-2/) - A nothing day full of wild beauty and the timer pings. Roll up the silver off the bay take down the clouds sort the spruce and send to laundry marked, more starch. Goodbye golden- and silver- rod, asters, bayberry crisp in elegance. Little fish stream by, a river in water. James Schuyler, Closed
- [autumn rose](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/autumn-rose/) - yellow, sadness, colour fading: flower, the sun and rain have had their way with you and yet you are rich, you are immaculate against all you kept your excellence intact.
- [buttercup](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/buttercup/) - I never knew the earth had so much gold— The fields run over with it, and this hill Hoary and old, Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill. Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God! This fringe of wood, Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.
- [What is Gospel?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-gospel/) - The Gospel is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest despair, failure, sin, weakness, losing,failing, frustration, inability, helplessness, wandering, and falling short. God meets you there— right there— right exactly there­in that place, and announces, I am onyour side. Gospel insists that God doesn’t wait for us
- [in the garden](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-the-garden/) - Whatever you hoped, you will not find yourselves in the garden, among the growing plants. Your lives are not circular like theirs: your lives are the bird's flight which begins and ends in stillness-- which begins and ends, in form echoing this arc from the white birch to the apple tree. From
- [AGING AND THE TRANSITORINESS OF LIFE](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/aging-and-the-transitoriness-of-life/) - In old age something special happens to reality. Its hardness is softened by the experience of transitoriness. Persons who once seemed indispensable die. One after another disappears — parents, teachers, onetime superiors first, contemporaries next. One has the feeling that a former generation has come to an end and that the following, one's own, is
- [God gifts us](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/god-gifts-us/) - To be human is to recognize our lives as gift. We do not exist and then God gifts us; our very existence is gift, and it is Gods story of triune love that continues to work passionately and extravagantly in us. That is what rooted means. Our lives become meaningful when we discover and
- [a golden heaven](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-golden-heaven/) - @ @ @ A yellow flower (Light and spirit) Sings by itself For nobody. A golden spirit (Light and emptiness) Sings without a word By itself. Let no one touch this gentle sun In whose dark eye Someone is awake. (No light, no gold, no name, no colour And no thought:
- [waiting](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/waiting-3/) - 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 something that is
- [bring me a sunflower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bring-me-a-sunflower/) - bring me a sunflower; I want it to grow in my sunscorched seasalted homeland. It will show all day to the blue sky mirror the sadness of its sunward face. shadows make for clarity, don't they? all things flow, and then dissolve first into colour, then into music; and then, and then, they
- [Ways into death and its narratives](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ways-into-death-and-its-narratives/) - Quietus: The vessel, death and the human body An exhibition by Julian Stair Winchester Cathedral Autumn 2013 FB friends will have seen some (not very good) photographs of Winchester Cathedral caused in part by a failure to take my specs on my journey ! However the main reason for the visit south was to
- [seeking out what is real ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seeking-out-what-is-real/) - Tension, then, is an inescapable feature of our spirituality and no one was more insistent upon this that von Hugel. 'Christianity', he wrote, 'can and does develop in man a temper, a state of soul, which so deeply and delicately, so sharply and steadily perceives and feels the difference between Time and Eternity, the Fleeting
- [rose](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rose/) - All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. The wrong of unshapely things
- [Does belief change in old age?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/does-belief-change-in-old-age/) - Belief and Ageing Spiritual pathways in later life Peter G. Coleman (Editor) Paperback, 192 pages Policy Press Bristol 2011 ISBN 9781847424594 2011 Most of the books on my shelves about religion and ageing are written out of the United States of America. There are many individuals and groups who are investing resources in research
- [autumn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/autumn/) - The leaves are falling, falling, as from far away from distant gardens, somewhere in the sky they drift and wave, like someone saying 'no' and through the night the earth is falling, too falling like all the lonely night sky stars and all of us. This hand is falling, look, and this
- [Moral Medicine?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/moral-medicine/) - On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics Edited by M. Therese Lysaught and Joseph J. Cotva Jr. With Stephen E. Lammers and Allen Verhey Publisher: Erdmans Michigan 3rd Edition 2012, 1,162 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8028-6601-1 no price marked This book has been an important resource for those teaching and learning about bio-ethics. This
- [the opening and the close](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-opening-and-the-close/) - The Opening and the Close Of Being, are alike Or differ, if they do, As Bloom upon a Stalk. That from an equal Seed Unto an equal Bud Go parallel, perfected In that they have decayed. Emily Dickinson
- [A radical rethink on health care - Church Times Review](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-radical-rethink-on-health-care-church-times-review/) - Remodelling Medicine Jeremy Swayne Saltire Books £39.98 (978-1-908127-00-6) THERE are consultations in UK general practice every day. Many of us will be grateful for our doctor's skill and humanity in diagnosis and treatment. As patients, we present an extraordinary mixture of symptoms, which are shaped by many factors, not least our religious lives and
- [RS Thomas on Prayer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rs-thomas-on-prayer/) - There are nights that are so stillthat I can hear the small owlcallingfar off and a fox barkingmiles away. It is then that I liein the lean hours awake listeningto the swell born somewhere inthe Atlanticrising and falling, rising andfallingwave on wave on the long shoreby the village that is withoutlightand companionless. And thethought comesof
- [a leaf](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-leaf/) - When in still air and still in summertime A leaf has had enough of this, it seems To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage Its drifting in detachment down the road. Howard Nemerov
- [memories](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/memories/) - We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away
- [Chagall at Chichester](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chagall-at-chichester/) - A popular feature of Chichester Cathedral is a stained glass window on the north side, designed and created by the French artist Marc Chagall. The window is inspired by Psalm 150, which urges its readers to 'let everything that hath breath praise the Lord'. Vibrant and colourful, our Chagall window encompasses aspects of the Anglican
- [What makes a great politician?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-makes-a-great-politician/) - Disraeli, or The Two Lives Douglas Hurd and Edward Young Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2013 £20 Friends will know of my mild obsession with post second world ward political biographies and autobiographies. They are a strange and mildly unsatisfying genre with few jewels on the shelves. It is difficult to write a life that is completely
- [THE WISDOM OF AGE](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-wisdom-of-age/) - Turkish folk hero Mulla Nasr Edin had reached old age and was sitting in a tea house with friends looking back on his life: "When I was a young man I was filled with the goal of awakening everyone and I prayed to God to give me what was needed to change the world. One
- [amazement is the thing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/amazement-is-the-thing-3/) - The point is the seeing, the grace beyond recognition, the ways of the bird rising, unnamed, unknown, beyond the range of language, beyond its noun. Eyes open on growing, flying, happening, and go on opening. Manifold, the world dawns on unrecognizing, realizing eyes. Amazement is the thing. Not love, but the astonishment of loving. From
- [Moving Theory into Practice?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/moving-theory-into-practice/) - Transitions and the Lifecourse Challenging the Constructions of 'Growing Old' Amanda Grenier 256 pages, pbk £26.99, Policy Press Bristol- (Ageing and the Lifecourse Series) 2012, ISBN 978 1 84742 691 8. Most of us in middle age have the experience of living with the experience of our ageing parents. They can force us to
- [Revolutionary Petunia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/revolutionary-petunia/) - The nature of this flower is to bloom Rebellious. Living Against the elemental crush A song of color Blooming for deserving eyes. Blooming gloriously For Its Self. Alice Walker
- [Constant Movement and Opportunity ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/constant-movement-and-opportunity/) - It always seems as if the spirit of the river was speaking to me, and telling me how, in its rapid, continuous course, it is setting an example to man how he can most wisely and happily regulate his life. The water is so wise; when it comes to little banks and uneven places
- [The Priest](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-priest/) - The priest picks his way Through the parish. Eyes watch him From windows, from the farms; Hearts wanting him to come near. The flesh rejects him. Women, pouring from the black kettle, Stir up the whirling tea-grounds Of their thoughts; offer him a dark Filling in their smiling sandwich. Priests have a long
- [Learning about Loss - Book review](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/learning-about-loss-book-review/) - The Essential Guide to Life After Bereavement Beyond Tomorrow Judy Carole Kauffmann and Mary Jordan Paperback: £12.99 Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2013, 176pp ISBN: 978-1-84905-335-8. In pastoral ministry there are many encounters that remain in the memory of the pastor. These find their way to speak about human resilience, our encounter with pain, the
- [a sunflower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-sunflower/) - Helen says heaven, for her, would be complete immersion in physical process, without self-consciousness— to be the respiration of the grass, or ionized agitation just above the break of a wave, traffic in a sunflower's thousand golden rooms. from Mark Doty, Heaven for Helen
- [greenness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/greenness-2/) - The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is greener than anyone knows. from Richard Wilbur, The beautiful changes
- [bouquet, sunlight](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bouquet-sunlight/) - Our sense of these things changes and they change, Not as in metaphor, but in our sense Of them. So sense exceeds all metaphor. It exceeds the heavy changes of the light. It is like a flow of meanings with no speech And of as many meanings as of men. We are
- [The Poetry of Love](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-poetry-of-love/) - What then is our human relationship with a universe that is not human? It is a relationship of time, it seems, of time and eternity. Because our lives are in time, we are in the world, but because we are not just in time but also in eternity, we also somehow transcend the world. Time
- [the scent of mint](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-scent-of-mint/) - Oh, the littles that remain! Scent of mint out in the lane; Flare of window; sound of bees; — These, but these. Three times sitting down to bread; One time climbing up to bed; Table-setting o’er and o’er; Drying herbs for winter’s store; This thing; that thing;—nothing more. But just now out in
- [dandelion](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dandelion-2/) - unfurling like a green prayer, or a question mark in a world of answers, or a poem in a world of prose, cramming his vamped exuberance like a camel through the eye of a needle, which Jesus thought unlikely, but not inconceivable, at least for a miracle-worker like himself, who made wine from water, and
- [as dew clarifies air](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/as-dew-clarifies-air/) - They say eyes clear with age, As dew clarifies air To sharpen evenings, As if time put an edge Round the last shape of things To show them there; The many-levelled trees, The long soft tides of grass Wrinkling away the gold Wind-ridden waves--all these, They say, come back to focus As we grow old.
- [Questions and Answers?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/questions-and-answers-2/) - “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point
- [hopeful green](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/hopeful-green/) - A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the
- [Surrender of Self?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/surrender-of-self/) - In his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff captured a major cultural theme of the last five decades of the twenti­eth century. Therapy’s triumph in an age of radical individualism has enriched our lives in numerous ways. Almost every facet of our lives has been touched, and in many cases, reshaped by
- [The sacrament of Art](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-sacrament-of-art/) - David Jones Artist 1895-1974 Art for David Jones is a sacramental process – the record of interface with God. Artworks are the fragments of traces left over from this colloquy. These residues are in exact remains and it is their very imperfections that compel artists obsessively to continue with this process of creating each day;
- [Indra's net](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/indras-net/) - Buddhism uses a similar image to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena. It is called Indra's Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every datum
- [TELL ME WHO I AM](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tell-me-who-i-am/) - Stories are ways of telling others who I am. But are there limits to narrative? "You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? That brings us to the second problem. Although in the end
- [thorn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thorn/) - In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which he
- [The Reverend Jeremy Sampson](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-reverend-jeremy-sampson/) - (from The Church Times Obits) SAMPSON. - On 11 July, the Revd Jeremy John Egerton Sampson: Vicar of North Perak, Malaya (1951-52); Priest-in-Charge of Johore Bahru (1952-57); Vicar of St John the Divine, Ipoh (1957-62); Killingworth (1962-76); Consett (1976-90); Rural Dean of Lanchester (1980-85); aged 89. It was with a mixture of sadness and gratitude that I learnt about
- [Clergy work in St Georges House](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/clergy-work-in-st-georges-house/) - A Church in Bavaria Everything bends to re-enact the poem lived, lived, not written, the poem spoken by Christ, who never wrote a word, saboteur of received ideas who rebuilt Rome with the words he never wrote; whether sacred, whether human, himself
- [flint](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/flint/) - An emerald is as green as grass; A ruby red as blood; A sapphire shines as blue as heaven; A flint lies in the mud. A diamond is a brilliant stone, To catch the world’s desire; An opal holds a fiery spark; But a flint holds fire. Christina Rossetti, Jewels
- [St. Peter and the Angel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/st-peter-and-the-angel/) - Delivered out of raw continual pain, smell of darkness, groans of those others to whom he was chained-- unchained, and led past the sleepers, door after door silently opening-- out! And along a long street's majestic emptiness under the moon: one hand on the angel's shoulder, one feeling the air before him, eyes open
- [ribbon](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ribbon/) - The curl of the ribbon by leaves of the reeds, the grasses paint peeling on the wet clapboards like the curl of the flat ribbon pulled by the blade of scissors wrapping a package in gold moving in the autumn breeze bathed in a puddle of light grasses above the maple leaves calling my
- [rosemary](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/rosemary/) - Beauty and Beauty's son and rosemary - Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly - born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary - since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers - white
- [How do we speak about God? Where is the spiritual pulse?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-do-we-speak-about-god-where-is-the-spiritual-pulse/) - How do we speak about God? As a pastor over the past thirty years, what I’ve seen again and again is people who want to live lives of meaning and peace and significance and joy—people who have a compelling sense that their spirituality is in some vital and yet mysterious way central to who they
- [opening and upward](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/opening-and-upward/) - here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain and here’s to silent certainly mountains; and to a disappearing poet of always, snow and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful friend twilight (and a first dream
- [Disturb us....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/disturb-us/) - This is a wonderful prayer attributed to an early Anglican explorer, Sir Francis Drake, whose chaplain held an Anglican service on the shores of the West Coast in 1579. Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived
- [Colours](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/colours/) - Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly,
- [a sheet of interrupting water](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-sheet-of-interrupting-water/) - The roaring alongside he takes for granted, And that every so often the world is bound to shake. He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake. The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet Of interrupting water comes and goes
- [Money](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/money/) - 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 hair shirt I lie down in my bed
- [CONFUCIUS ON THE LIFE-COURSE](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/confucius-on-the-life-course/) - 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 could follow the dictates
- [Our Calling?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/our-calling/) - 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 for all members of the Church, both lay
- [Are we ever too old?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/are-we-ever-too-old/) - 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 which I struggle not to stray.
- [Redesigned Web Page](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/redesigned-web-page/) - James Woodward take a look : www.jameswoodward.info Constructive feedback welcome! JW
- [belonging?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/belonging/) - 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 meaning. But meaning is never achieved, though the wandering continues;
- [Run the course of life’s banquet - approaching old age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/run-the-course-of-lifes-banquet-approaching-old-age/) - 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 destroying its pleasure. Both host and guest at
- [Challenging Power?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/challenging-power/) - 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 power when it becomes self-serving or even
- [Hands on .......](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/hands-on/) - The power of touch and connection What is the meaning of Age Always better together Living by the Word.....
- [Nurture Wisdom?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nurture-wisdom/) - 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 comprehend profound pain and alienation, to live
- [flowering](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/flowering/) - 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 bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me.
- [Garter Day 2013](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/garter-day-2013/) - 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, robes and music seen and heard on Garter Day
- [The meaning and life in our hands](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-meaning-and-life-in-our-hands/) - The power and possibility of diversity The Wonder and wisdom of Age The awesomeness of prayer across the generations
- [springtime](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/springtime/) - 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, everywhere. Where is nirvana? Why, here, of course.
- [morning rain](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/morning-rain-2/) - 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. Du Fu (712-770 AD)
- [Embrace your weakness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/embrace-your-weakness/) - 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 other words, from a
- [Community as a place of Hope?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/community-as-a-place-of-hope/) - 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 name our
- [purple as...](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/purple-as/) - 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 I will paint
- [later life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/later-life/) - 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 ahead of the road I
- [curves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/curves/) - 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 to each
- [LIFE BEYOND GRIEF](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/life-beyond-grief/) - 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 interludes between disasters. What consolation could there be? We conclude that
- [very intense](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/very-intense/) - 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. Oh angels, keep
- [Recovering our Mission? Turning outwards.....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/recovering-our-mission-turning-outwards/) - 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 ridiculous. Tutu has an
- [Waiting](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/waiting-2/) - 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 something that is
- [iris](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/iris/) - 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. From Madison Julius Cawein, The Wild Iris
- [a crowd of stars](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-crowd-of-stars/) - 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 true,
- [Seeing and Looking](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seeing-and-looking/) - 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. In other words
- [Secrets of Leadership?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/secrets-of-leadership/) - 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 through respect 3.Go for the people, not the position
- [Balance](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/balance/) - 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
- [upside down](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/upside-down/) - 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 the breeze
- [In Praise of .....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-praise-of-22/) - 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 traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of
- [delight](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/delight-2/) - 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 contraption, Only your song is an absolute
- [the swan](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-swan/) - 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 takes him to itself
- [Pentecost](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pentecost-2/) - 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 Christ...
- [Love - free and untroubled?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-free-and-untroubled/) - 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 God
- [Home, sweet Home!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/home-sweet-home/) - 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 or seemingly ill-considered their architecture,
- [veins](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/veins/) - 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, The Geranium
- [to fly towards a secret sky](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-fly-towards-a-secret-sky-2/) - 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
- [dandelion](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dandelion/) - 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 barely visible by day, pale cerebrums clinging to life on tough green
- [History from a different angle!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/history-from-a-different-angle/) - 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 their reader backwards to understand the world of the
- [Innocence and Judgement?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/innocence-and-judgement/) - The Pilgrim way has led to the Abyss. Was it to meet such grinning evidence We left our richly adorned ignorance? Was the triumphant answer to be this? The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss. We who must die demand a miracle. How could the eternal do a temporal act. The Infinite become
- [blossom](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blossom/) - Is it not by his high superfluousness we know Our God? For to be equal a need Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling Rainbows over the rain And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows On the domes of deep sea-shells, And make the necessary embrace of breeding Beautiful also as fire, Not
- [Being Human](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-human/) - Abraham Maslow points out in his “hierarchy of needs” that one cannot meet higher needs at any level of depth if the lesser needs are not first tended to. One cannot do an “end run” to levels of communion and compassion, for example, when one’s basic security and survival needs have not been met. As
- [The Transfiguration](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-transfiguration/) - So from the ground we felt that virtue branch Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists As fresh and pure as water from a well, Our hands made new to handle holy things, The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed Till earth and light and water entering there Gave back
- [Cosmo Lang](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/cosmo-lang/) - Cosmo Gordon Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis Robert Beaken (I B Tauris, £25), This was a hasty buy helped by a book token that I had been trying to use for ages and (frankly) a rather interesting set of photographs! I was not disappointed.... It has gained a little publicity in relation to the role
- [Acnowledging Weakness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/acnowledging-weakness/) - Sixth Sunday of Easter St George’s Chapel Windsor 5th May 2013 Mattins Acts 16.9–15 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia,
- [smile](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/smile-2/) - Then new happenings happened, and said: 'Don't move a muscle. Something overwhelmingly generous is on its way.' The sun is a fountain of light. It is you. I am a tree shadow on the earth. You make angles curve. The soul at dawn is the night sea that slowly begins to
- [25 Ways to say "No" Without Saying "No"](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/25-ways-to-say-no-without-saying-no/) - I don't want to reject this out of hand. So I'll have to think it through first. Perhaps you could find somewhere else that they've tried this. And maybe join them for a while, so you can really understand it? I'd like you to bring this to the Annual Church Meeting. Coincidentally, we had one
- [Our need for theology?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/our-need-for-theology/) - It is the role of the contemporary conflicts of theology to expose the idolatries to which we Christians are prone; and the exorcism of them is necessary for the renewal of faith and for the convincing communication of faith to the world. Idolatry for Christians wears many guises. It arises when the service of God
- [The Centre and the Edges](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-centre-an-dthe-edges/) - How do we find what is supposedly already there? How do we awaken our deepest and most profound selves? By praying and meditating? By more silence, solitude, and sacraments? Yes to all, but the most important way is to live and fully accept our reality. This solution sounds so simple and innocuous that most of
- [Seeing the Glorgy of God](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seeing-the-glorgy-of-god/) - The truth of God’s transcendence still stands. God is near, but God is different. God is here, but man is dependent. God’s otherness is the otherness of Creator to creature, of Saviour to sinner; and it is for the creature still to worship the Creator and for the sinner still to ask for the Saviour’s
- [Wise Self Reflection?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wise-self-reflection/) - Everybody matters– how do we live up to those words.? That precept is not only the title of Mary Robinson’s autobiography, but also the core conviction that has guided virtually every step of her life on the world stage. By any measure, Mary Robinson is a remarkable public servant and humanitarian. She was the first woman president
- [The Scene of a Thousand Jokes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-scene-of-a-thousand-jokes/) - 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, people,
- [fresh life](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/fresh-life/) - and then my heart pulled itself apart and, filled to the brim with a new light, overflowed with fresh life. now even the heavens are thankful that because of love i have become the giver of light Rumi, ghazal 1393
- [The Incarnate One](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-incarnate-one/) - The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream, And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae. I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream, Christ, man and creature in their inner day. How could our race betray The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake Who chose this form and fashion for our sake? The Word made flesh
- [The springtime of Lovers has come](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-springtime-of-lovers-has-come/) - The springtime of Lovers has come, that this dust bowl may become a garden; the proclamation of heaven has come, that the bird of the soul may rise in flight. The sea becomes full of pearls, the salt marsh becomes sweet as kauthar, the stone becomes a ruby from the mine, the body becomes
- [love's confusing joy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/loves-confusing-joy/) - If you want what visible reality can give, then you are: an underling. If you want the unseen world, you haven't discovered the truth. Both wishes are stupid. Don't worry about it. It's so easy not to know that absolutely all you really want is love's confusing joy. Rumi
- [St George](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/st-george-3/) - God of hosts, who so kindled the flame of love in the heart of your servant George that he bore witness to the risen Lord by his life and by his death: give us the same faith and power of love that we who rejoice in his triumphs may come to share with him the
- [decline](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/decline-2/) - one day a day woke up and was sky, air, light and itself. Later, evening tapped my shoulder: a reminder, a privilege, a job to do. Record, it said the elegance of the day's decline, and the perfect curves of all that is left of a tulip. Denise Levertov
- [A prayer for Vocations Sunday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-prayer-for-vocations-sunday/) - 'I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you, or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be
- [The Confirmation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-confirmation/) - 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 call you?
- [watchful](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/5359/) - 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 that purifies; no-one
- [impermanence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/impermanence-2/) - 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!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ageing-is-no-accident/) - 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 fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character.
- [On Anglican Piety](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-anglican-piety/) - “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 so­cial life, though, of course, not the ultimate criterion in either, reverence
- [Love After Love](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-after-love-2/) - 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 heart to itself, to the
- [awakening](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/awakening/) - 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 burns the
- [Living with Disagreement](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-with-disagreement/) - 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 resolution without staying with the relationship, at least
- [your sleeping head](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/your-sleeping-head/) - 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 entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no
- [INTERCESSION by Mother Mary Clare](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/intercession-by-mother-mary-clare/) - 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 activity of prayer into different
- [The métier of blossoming](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-metier-of-blossoming-2/) - 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](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-wings/) - 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 in sorrow did beginne;
- [Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-3/) - 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 art. The
- [At the Easter vigil](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/at-the-easter-vigil/) - 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 experiences – let
- [back to social media.....](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/back-to-social-media/) - 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 friends
- [Remixing The Church](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/remixing-the-church/) - 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 attempts to reverse this steady loss of people and indeed
- [The necessity of Age!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-necessity-of-age/) - 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 work after the age of 80. When she
- [make friends with fire](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/make-friends-with-fire/) - 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
- [Live the Questions](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/live-the-questions/) - 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 would not be able to
- [The Strange Problem of Entitlement](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-strange-problem-of-entitlement/) - 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 and an inability to be thankful for anything.
- [long shadows](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/long-shadows/) - 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
- [Transcendence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/transcendence/) - 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 intimacy. God is always here. The truth of God’s transcendence still stands. God is near, but
- [Annie Leibovitz](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/annie-leibovitz/) - 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
- [to fly towards a secret sky](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-fly-towards-a-secret-sky/) - 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
- [The challenges of buidling community](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-challenges-of-buidling-community/) - 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 building community are worth the trou­ble. We often invest great hope in our Christian communities, and
- [Gratitude](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gratitude/) - 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, individuals and their contributions are acknowledged and
- [What is Good Religion?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-good-religion/) - 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 superficial and does not help the journey inwards which is
- [virtue](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/virtue/) - 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](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/across-the-sky/) - 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 possibility of being free
- [like cautious sunlight](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/like-cautious-sunlight/) - 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 ended just before you arrived. I liked the glimpse
- [And be thankful??](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/and-be-thankful-2/) - 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 gifts no less than the greatest, and
- [AGEING AS TIMELESS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ageing-as-timeless/) - 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 nature that the body inevitably
- [WHERE EVERYTHING IS MUSIC](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-everything-is-music/) - 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 reading. Take down a musical instrument.
- [Laughter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/laughter-5/) - 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, people,
- [Faith for a New Year?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/faith-for-a-new-year/) - 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 life between doubt and faith, between
- [leaves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leaves-3/) - 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 go down into
- [Prayer and Thanksgiving](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/prayer-and-thanksgiving/) - 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 can claim to know anything
- [Nativity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/nativity/) - 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 wise men will travel
- [On the Mystery of the Incarnation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-the-mystery-of-the-incarnation/) - 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
- [The east window of St Georges Chapel Windsor](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-east-window-of-st-georges-chapel-windsor/) - 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 memorial to Prince Albert in
- [look at love](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/look-at-love-2/) - 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
- [Verses for Advent - twenty third day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-twenty-third-day-of-december/) - O Come, O Come, thou calling child: the creatures, those both tame and wild, the weak and powerful, coax along, and change their trembling into song. Rejoice ! Rejoice ! the vuln'rable shall make us all insep'rable
- [Verses for Advent - the twenty second day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-twenty-second-day-of-december/) - 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 vowed. Rejoice ! Rejoice ! Our God afresg thr covenant shall soon enflesh.
- [A Christmas Carol](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-christmas-carol/) - 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 can
- [luminous](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/luminous-2/) - 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 God, We cannot count All
- [Advent Calendar](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advent-calendar/) - 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 of alien, sword-set beauty.
- [inner light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/inner-light/) - 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 responds,
- [Verses for Advent - the sixteenth day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-sixteenth-day-of-december/) - 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. Rejoice ! Rejoice ! the radiant dawn shall soon console the hearts that mourn.
- [Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pre-raphaelites-victorian-avant-garde/) - 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 Tate brings together over 150 works in different media, including painting, sculpture, photography and the applied arts, revealing
- [Three Poems of Incarnation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/three-poems-of-incarnation/) - 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
- [Verses for Advent - the ninth day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-ninth-day-of-december/) - 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 groan. Rejoice! Rejoice! Atender cry shall smooth our pian and lift us high.
- [wheel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wheel/) - 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
- [where the moon lives](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/where-the-moon-lives/) - 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. We are faithful only to
- [The Fifth Day of December - Advent verses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-fifth-day-of-december-advent-verses/) - 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. Rejoice! Rejoice! In words that sing true liberty shall soon take wing.
- [Shadows in the Water](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/shadows-in-the-water/) - 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 water's brink Another world beneath me
- [Verses for Advent - the third day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-third-day-of-december/) - 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. Rejoice! Rejoice! The marks of pain shall show the law of love most plain.
- [Verses for Advent - the second day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-second-day-of-december/) - 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 Rejoice! Rejoice! Our God shall leap with light that rouses us from sleep.
- [Verses for Advent - the first day of December](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/verses-for-advent-the-first-day-of-december/) - 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. Rejoice! Rejoice ! To mend our strife shall come in flesh the God of Life.
- [Immortal Autumn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/immortal-autumn/) - 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. Now No more the foreign sun does
- [impermanence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/impermanence/) - 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.
- [Autumn wood](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/autumn-wood/) - THE TREES are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well
- [Never Mind about Living what about dying?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/never-mind-about-living-what-about-dying/) - A Sermon preached at Emmanuel College, Cambridge Chapel 18 November 2012 Joy and Woe are woven fine A clothing for the soul divine Under every grief and pine Lies a joy with silken twine It is right it should be so Man was made for joy and woe And when this we rightly know Through
- [Imagining Age?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/imagining-age/) - Here is the opening to my lecture in Southwark Cathedral last night In a science museum, there is one exhibit in particular which attracted long lines of children: "Face Ageing". A child sits down in front of an automatic camera and has their portrait taken. They wait and their digitized bust appears on a TV
- [The space between wanting to be right and knowing we are wrong!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-space-between-wanting-to-be-right-and-knowing-we-are-wrong/) - When we discover that we have been wrong, we say that we were under an illusion, and when we no longer believe in something, we say that we are disillusioned. More generally, analogies to vision are ubiquitous in the way we think about knowledge and error. People who possess the truth are perceptive, insightful,
- [Silence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/silence-6/) - Silence is the language of God, and the only language deep enough to absorb all the contradictions and failures that we are holding against ourselves. God loves us silently because God has no case to make against us. The silent communion absorbs our self-hatred, as every lover knows. We put words between ourselves and things.
- [Back to Basics (part one) : forget the trappings - what about language?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/back-to-basics-part-one-forget-the-trappings-what-about-language/) - Ordinary Christians are constantly being invited to forget their language. Clergy are also tempted to dilute the force of the language we represent in an attempt to be relevant. Yet paradoxically the pluralist character of our society offers us, once again, the space to embody and articulate distinctive Christian discourse without feeling the necessity to
- [Defining Leadership?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/defining-leadership/) - “Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the environment within which things can be accomplished.” Richards and Engle (1986) “Leadership is the process of making sense of what people are doing together so that people will understand and be committed.” Drath & Palus (1994) “Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do
- [MICHELANGELO: The Art of Old Age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/michelangelo-the-art-of-old-age/) - Did Michelangelo really believe that his life had been wasted because he failed to pursue a spiritual goal? Yes, he did believe that and wrote about in his journal in later life. Nonetheless, his later works are an astounding example of what critics would later call the "late style" and "late freedom." Here
- [patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/patience-5/) - An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness
- [THE RIPENING IN US](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-ripening-in-us/) - When grapes turn to wine, they long for our ability to change. When stars wheel around the North Pole, they are longing for our growing consciousness. Wine got drunk with us, not the other way. The body developed out of us, not we from it. We
- [Writing your life honestly?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/writing-your-life-honestly/) - The autobiography of Jack Straw - an MP for thirty-three years and at the heart of government throughout the longest-serving Labour administration in history As a small boy in Epping Forest, Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britain's Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents, he
- [What makes you happy?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-makes-you-happy/) - There are two kinds of happiness - the temporary pleasure derived primarily from material comfort alone and another more enduring comfort that results from the thorough transformation and development of the mind. We can see in our own lives that the latter form of happiness is superior because when our mental state is calm and
- [Thinking about Death on All Souls Day](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thinking-about-death-on-all-souls-day/) - Some of you may well remember that I spent a good deal of 2011 as part of a working group looking into the present law in this country regarding assisted suicide. The report, published at the beginning of this year, argued coherently (I think) that the present law is unsatisfactory and that, under certain
- [made of light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/made-of-light-2/) - salt rose, topaz, archery, carnations, the birth of fire. You are none of these. You are the holy secret darkness, that space between shadow and soul. There, where love is. You are the flower that only blooms within; hidden, but made of light. A tactile fragrance, an enhancement deep within the earth, my
- [All Saints](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/all-saints-4/) - O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one Communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those indescribable joys which thou hast prepared for those who truly
- [Martin Luther](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/martin-luther-2/) - Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben. His father was a copper miner. Luther studied at the University of Erfurt and in 1505 decided to join a monastic order, becoming an Augustinian friar. He was ordained in 1507, began teaching at the University of Wittenberg and in 1512 was made a doctor
- [Control](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/control/) - ‘Control’ in this context( of death) has two distinct meanings, both equally crucial. In the first place, ‘control’, as you would expect, means priority and ability to manage, not to force, the compliance of others, to determine what others think or do. In the second, more elusive sense - a sense which, nevertheless, saves my
- [Love's Like A Shoestring](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/loves-like-a-shoestring/) - It feels that our love is more like a shoestring although it appears to be such a good thing, and all that we have now which is readily seen may either be too loose or tight for us between. If we continue on the path that we are both going and it still seems
- [Changing Expectations of Death](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/changing-expectations-of-death/) - HERE IS SOME ADVANCE PUBLICITY ABOUT A CONFERENCE A Cumberland Lodge residential conference Changing Expectations of Death Friday 23rd November 17.00 Arrival, Registration and Tea 17.30 Welcome by Dr Alastair Niven, Principal, Cumberland Lodge 17.45 Changing Patterns of Death and Dying Plenary 1 Dr George Leeson, Co-Director, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford
- [looking within](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/looking-within/) - When you are engrossed in thoughts of anger, hatred, envy, resentment or disgust, notice the way your horizons shrink and your creativity diminishes. I find it impossible to write well when I am churning with resentment. In the grip of these hostile pre-occupations, we become focused on ourselves, can think j of little else, and
- [wild beauty](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wild-beauty/) - A nothing day full of wild beauty and the timer pings. Roll up the silver off the bay take down the clouds sort the spruce and send to laundry marked, more starch. Goodbye golden- and silver- rod, asters, bayberry crisp in elegance. Little fish stream by, a river in water. James Schuyler, Closed
- [Ode to Adversity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ode-to-adversity/) - Daughter of Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and torturing hour, The bad affright, afflict the best! Bound in thy adamantine chain The proud are taught to taste of pain, And purple tyrants vainly groan With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. When first thy Sire to send
- [roast chorizo chicken](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/roast-chorizo-chicken/) - Tried this yesterday and guests enjoyed it - all in one dish = less washing up! Ingredients 500g/1lb 2oz new potatoes, such as Charlotte 1-2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper 8 skinless and boneless chicken thighs (approximately 500g/1lb 2oz) 1 tsp smoked paprika pinch ground cinnamon (optional) handful fresh
- [perhaps the roses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/perhaps-the-roses/) - Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know. If we should weep when clowns put on their show, If we should stumble when musicians play, Time will say nothing but I told you
- [bring wine](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bring-wine/) - Bring wine, my thirst is desperate, God has taken hold of me, he is holding me so close. For love, for the essence of love, bring wine that is the envy of the sun. All that I know or care about is love. Bring that whose name my mouth cannot say, that which breaks
- [And what of our old age?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/and-what-of-our-old-age/) - From a lecture given 17th October 2012 Chichester WHAT ARE OLDER PEOPLE FOR? The profit motive, the mass media’s love affair with the new, and the anxiety provoked by growing old in a youth obsessed culture have led millions to surrender their faces to the war on wrinkles. We are being asked to unmake what
- [Saying Sorry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/saying-sorry/) - Someone hurts you. Someone does you wrong. No doubt about it. They were wrong. So what do you do? You start holding a grudge. You feel bitter and rehearse their hurt and nurse your wound. You feel superior. You refuse to forgive. Your inner ecology begins to change; your inner climate warms in some ways
- [surprise](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/surprise/) - Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given out Take only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart Or greater than a star; Tame wild disappointment With caress unmoved
- [THE SENSE OF WONDER](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-sense-of-wonder/) - "Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night
- [blue](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blue/) - A slash of Blue— A sweep of Gray— Some scarlet patches on the way, Compose an Evening Sky— A little purple—slipped between— Some Ruby Trousers hurried on— A Wave of Gold— A Bank of Day— This just makes out the Morning Sky. Emily Dickinson
- [What are we becoming?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-are-we-becoming-2/) - A person who is impartial, fair, calm, gentle, serene, accepting and open-hearted is indeed a refuge. In the person of the Buddha, who had gone beyond the limitations and partialities of selfhood, many experienced a humanity that made them feel that life was endurable. A truly compas­sionate person touches a chord in us that resonates
- [Wrestling with the self](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wrestling-with-the-self/) - Enmity shapes our consciousness and identity. The people we hate haunt us; they inhabit our minds in a negative way, as we brood in a deviant form of meditation on their bad qualities. The enemy thus becomes our twin, a shadow self whom we come to resemble. Nations may also feel deep antagonism towards people
- [Let all beings be happy!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/let-all-beings-be-happy/) - Let all beings be happy! Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be bom — May they all be perfectly happy! Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere. May nobody wish harm to any single
- [green](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/green-3/) - Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Andrew Marvell
- [vine leaves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/vine-leaves/) - 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 ended just before you arrived. I liked the glimpse
- [selfishness?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/selfishness/) - If we remain trapped in this greedy, needy selfishness, we will continue to be unhappy and frustrated. But as we acquire a more realistic assessment of ourselves, we learn that the envy, anger, fear and hatred (which often spring from thwarted egotism) have little to do with us; they are ancient emotions that we inherited
- [What is your task?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-your-task/) - W H Auden wrote, in A Certain World, “In this world, so long as we are vigorous enough to be capable of action, God, surely, does not intend us to sit around thinking of and loving Him like anything. Aside from rites of public worship in which we bring our bodies to God, we should
- [music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/music-2/) - Music. The breath of a statue. Or, perhaps: the silence of a painting. The words beyond where all words end. Time at a true right angle to the transience of the heart. A feeling? For whom? No, no, a feeling moving, changing. To what? To a landscape you can hear. Oh, stranger: music.
- [thorns](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thorns-2/) - Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
- [Honesty](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/honesty/) - Novelist and essayist C. S. Lewis used to ask, ‘What is the most significant conversation you have every day?’ People would respond piously, ‘Your conversation with God, of course.’ ‘No,’ Lewis would reply. ‘It’s the conversation you have with your­self before you speak to God, because in that conversation with yourself, you decide whether you
- [Its all about me?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/it-all-about-me/) - There is no doubt that in the deepest recess of their minds, men and women are indeed ruthlessly selfish. This egotism is rooted in the 'old brain', which was bequeathed to us by the reptiles that struggled out of the primal slime some 500 million years ago. Wholly intent on personal survival, these creatures were
- [Beaumaris Castle](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/beaumaris-castle/) - Beaumaris Castle, located on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, was built as part of King Edward I's campaign to conquer the north of Wales. It was designed by James of St. George and was begun in 1295, but never completed. Beaumaris is part of the World Heritage site. Beaumaris Castle was positioned to face
- [The Cross and Empathy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-cross-and-empathy/) - The definitive icon of Western Christianity is the image of a crucified man in an extremity of agony. It is an emblem of the cruelty that human beings have inflicted on one another from time immemorial. But it is also a pain that redeems the world. The Western Christian doctrine of atonement - one that
- [The Golden Rule?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-golden-rule/) - The Golden Rule requires self-knowledge; it asks that we use our own feelings as a guide to our behaviour with others. If we treat ourselves harshly, this is the way we are likely to treat other people. So we need to acquire a healthier and more balanced knowledge of our strengths as well as our
- [Stability](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/stability/) - You will find stability at the moment when you discover that God is everywhere, that you do not need to seek God elsewhere, that God is here, and if you do not find God here it is useless to go and search elsewhere because it is not God that is absent from us, it is
- [What are we becoming??](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-are-we-becoming/)
- [stillness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/stillness-2/) - Whatever you hoped, you will not find yourselves in the garden, among the growing plants. Your lives are not circular like theirs: your lives are the bird's flight which begins and ends in stillness-- which begins and ends, in form echoing this arc from the white birch to the apple tree. From
- [Chirk Castle](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chirk-castle/) - Chirk Castle (Welsh: Castell y Waun) is a castle located at Chirk, Wrexham, Wales. The castle was built in 1295 by Roger Mortimer de Chirk, uncle of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March as part of King Edward I's chain of fortresses across the north of Wales. It guards the entrance to the Ceiriog Valley.
- [JUNG AND AGEING](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/jung-and-ageing/) - "Wholly unprepared, [people] embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world and of life? No, there are none. Thoroughly unprepared we take the
- [patterns](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/patterns/) - And the bird called, in response to The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery, And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at. There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting. So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, Along the empty alley,
- [Portmeirion](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/portmeirion/) - Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion's designer, denied repeated claims that the design was based on the town of Portofino, Italy. He stated only that he wanted to pay tribute to the atmosphere of the Mediterranean. He did, however, draw from a love of the Italian village stating, "How should I not have fallen for Portofino? Indeed
- [sunset bird](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunset-bird/) - The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it
- [Powis Castle and Gardens](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/powis-castle-and-gardens/) - Powis Castle is a medieval castle, fortress and grand country mansion located near the town of Welshpool, in Powys, Mid Wales. The residence of the Earl of Powis, the castle is known for its extensive, attractive formal gardens, terraces, parkland, deerpark and landscaped estate. The property is under the care of the National Trust, who
- [This Moment !](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/this-moment/) - Never let yourself think that because God has given you many things to do for Him — pressing routine jobs, a life full up with duties and demands of a very practical sort — that all these need separate you from communion with Him. God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the
- [Alastair Campbell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/alastair-campbell/) - If anyone has any doubt about the sheer complexity and difficulty of the work of a modern-day Prime Minister then this book and all 730 pages of it should dispel any lingering lack of understanding! It takes us into the heart of the work of government, the handling of the press, the management of a
- [What is Gods name?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-gods-name/) - In Islam there are ninety-nine names for God ~ stopping short of a hundred as if to say, ‘No name is suffi­cient, and all names together still fail short.’ Here are a few that I especially love: The All-Compassionate The All-Merciful The Pure One The Source of Peace The Inspirer of Faith The Guardian The
- [Conwy Castle](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/conwy-castle/) - Life began in the town that was to become Conwy long before Conwy Castle stood here. Welsh settlers recognised the region as naturally strong because of the large estuary and the abundance of food and the remains of an early fortification can still be found above the town of Deganwy on the opposite bank
- [Finding God?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/finding-god/) - 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 superficial and does not help the journey inwards which is
- [Berrington Hall](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/berrington-hall/) - Berrington Hall is a country house located near Leominster, Herefordshire. It is a neoclassical country house building which was designed by Henry Holland in 1778-81 for Thomas Harley. It has a somewhat austere exterior, but the interiors are subtle and delicate. Berrington Hall is home to the Elmar Digby furniture collection, paintings by, amongst
- [The Elizabethans](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-elizabethans/) - I don't know what you take away on holiday to read – if anything at all? I enjoy a bit of politics (more of that later) and always at some history.I have had Wilsons the Elizabethans on the shelf for some time and it was one of those books that I had picked up but
- [THE LEGEND OF MELANGELL AND THE HARE](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-legend-of-melangell-and-the-hare/) - The legend of Melangell derives from two seventeenth-century transcript of a lost medieval Life of the Saints. One day a prince named Brochwe was hunting at a place called Pennant His hounds raised a hare that tool refuge in a thicket On pursuit, the prince found a virgin praying, with thE hare hiding under the
- [The Shrine Church of Saint Melangell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-shrine-church-of-saint-melangell/) - A hidden place in Wales, where a Celtic saint gave her protection to the hare, Pennant Melangell is situated at the head of the Tanat Valley, not far from Llangynog on the main Oswes­try - Bala road. This church is the only one which is dedicated to Melangell. It is an ancient church and the
- [undistracted ?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/undistracted/) - The métier of blossoming 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
- [Penmon Priory](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/penmon-priory/) - This tranquil location on the eastern tip of Anglesey has remains spanning over 1,000 years. It was the site of a monastery dating back to the time of St. Seiriol, who is believed to have lived in about the 6th century. A holy well which survives may have its origins in this period. In the
- [Prayer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/prayer-2/) - prayer Don't do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head up and down. Prayer is an egg. Hatch out the helplessness that is within. Rumi
- [Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wales-churches-houses-castles/) - On Announcing that I was off to Wales for my summer holiday a well-meaning but I suspect slightly prejudiced enquirer responded: 'Oh Wales – I'm terribly sorry'! Simon Jenkins offers my first in a short series about holiday books.I've had this one on my shelves for a while but it came into its own
- [A Call for to Compassionate Living](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-call-for-to-compassionate-living/) - Thousands of people from all over the world contributed to a draft charter on a multilingual website in Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, Spanish and English; their comments were presented to the Council of Conscience, a group of notable individuals from six faith traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism), who met in Switzerland in February
- [Cymer Abbey](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/cymer-abbey/) - Cymer Abbey is a ruined Cistercian abbey near the village of Llanelltyd, just north of Dolgellau, Gwynedd, in north-west Wales. It was founded in 1158-9 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary under the patronage of Maredudd ap Cynan ab Owain Gwynedd (d. 1212), Lord of Merioneth and grandson of Owain Gwyned and his brother, Gruffudd ap
- [sleeping](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sleeping/) - The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you: Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want: Don't go back to sleep. People are going in and out of the door where the two worlds touch: The door is right there, look, it's wide open! Don't go back to
- [pond](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pond/) - At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?
- [God: some conversations – final reflections.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/god-some-conversations-final-reflections/) - It has been a very busy and intensive 10 days as clergy have gathered at St George's house for a consultation designed to engage us all in a process whereby we might consider how we speak – and perhaps more confidently – about God.We have been blessed with some very skilled and knowledgeable speakers and
- [End of Summer Term – the College of St George.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/end-of-summer-term-the-college-of-st-george/) - I have already indicated something of the rhythms and patterns of the College – and this is very self-evident at the moment as we draw the summer term to a close.The school has started its summer holiday and the choristers are enjoying a well-deserved rest.Today the lay clerks sing their last services and change and
- [SICK VISITS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sick-visits/) - They keep me sober, The old ladies Stiff in their beds, Mostly with pale eyes Wintering me. Some are like blonde dolls, Their joints twisted; Life in its brief play Was a bit rough. Some fumble With thick tongue for words And are deaf; Shouting their faint names I listen: They are far off,
- [so shining](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/so-shining/) - Conjure something glowing Take this day You were born with hands for spinning Talent for dreams and making them real Roll the hours like yarn Spin something that makes you feel full And big and open to talk Make this day your own square In your own life quilt So shining it brightens
- [outburst](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/outburst/) - EVERYONE suddenly burst out singing; And I was fill'd with such delight As prison'd birds must find in freedom Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on; on; and out of sight. Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
- [Saying Goodbye - articulating the significance in transitions!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/saying-goodbye-articulating-the-significance-in-transitions/) - I guess that all of us need some kind of help and friendship and encouragement as we negotiate the inevitable ups and downs of life are particularly some of the transitions that come our way. In my previous Ministry I had the privilege of working in a Church of England primary school for nearly 11
- [tristesse](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tristesse/) - sadness, goodbye but hello again you are the writing on the ceiling you are the writing in her eyes sadness, sadness, you're not that bad I can eclipse and cloud you with a smile welcome, again you are the body of love you are the power of love love's uprising beyond the body
- [a crack in everything](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-crack-in-everything/) - You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, there is no drum Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything
- [The Pleasures of Ageing?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-pleasures-of-ageing/) - JAMES HILLMAN: "Suppose we all lived to be 125, or 185; how would we live? It's a frightening idea, because it’s a deep denial of something fundamental to the human experience... Life extension isn’t even enough as a goal. [Scientists] want to prevent dying, to say that dying isn’t really necessary to the
- [Sunday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sunday/) - I'm not, I think, a signer up to campaigns! I think there is an activist streak to me – as I hope there is to many of my friends and colleagues – but perhaps early middle age has brought both a wider (and perhaps even wiser) perspective combined worryingly with a pinch of complacency.I really
- [the scarlet sky](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-scarlet-sky-2/) - when a child leaves the breast for solid food it does not look back it grows the seed is nourished by earth then spreads towards the sun so: taste the scarlet sky open towards wisdom hide no longer in yourself you came here like a star that had no name enter the night
- [Christian theology in Practice](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christian-theology-in-practice/) - Christian Theology in Practice Discovering a Discipline Bonnie J. Miller –McLemore Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 2012 I have had a rather frustrating time of late due, in part, to a paucity of stimulating reading in the area of the theory of pastoral and practical theology. Most of the
- [morning rain](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/morning-rain/) - 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. Du Fu (712-770 AD)
- [The Right to Die?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-right-to-die/) - Sometimes life moves at such a busy pace that it's easy to think of it as just one thing after another. I think we probably spend too little time processing things, though I was glad to be warned by a friend that too much self-introspection is not entirely healthy! Last weekend I spent two
- [The Solemnity of St George 2012: Garter Day](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-solemnity-of-st-george-2012-garter-day/) - The organisation that goes into Garter day here in Windsor Castle is quite extraordinary.There are the rehearsals, careful planning of time, consideration of the unpredictable nature of our English weather, organisation of security, music, military bands, processions, guards of honour, press, allocation of seats in the Chapel and the organisation of many hundreds of people
- [luminous](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/luminous/) - the day is remarkable luminous, joyful so easy, to live with the taste of colour love makes me laugh and, at the last moment, I open my eyes. Paul Eluard, Serie
- [Garter Day 2012](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/garter-day-2012/) - Table laid and now to the kitchen!
- [Go straight to terminal one! Further musings…](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/go-straight-to-terminal-one-further-musings/) - I think that some of you know that for much of last year I was involved in the Falconer Commission on assisted dying.Itwas a fascinating year and one not without its measure of controversy.Much is made about my dissension from the main recommendations to change the law to allow a very restricted group individuals in certain
- [steel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/steel/) - Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper
- [shining](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/shining/) - I've tried the new moon tilted in the air Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster As you might try a jewel in your hair. I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster, Alone, or in one ornament combining With one first-water start almost shining. I put it shining anywhere I please. By walking slowly
- [pink](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pink/) - Blossoms will run away, Cakes reign but a Day, But Memory like Melody Is pink Eternally. Emily Dickinson, Blossoms will run away
- [Prayers for HM the Queen](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/prayers-for-hm-the-queen/) - Almighty God, who rulest over all the kingdoms of the world, and dost order them according to thy good pleasure: We yield thee unfeigned thanks, for that thou wast pleased, as on this day, to set thy Servant our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth upon the Throne of this Realm. Let thy wisdom be her guide,
- [A week in the life of… Part 4 - Saturday.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of-part-4-saturday/) - The Diamond Jubilee celebrations are now well underway with the Queen having just arrived in Epsom for the Derby! Windsor is full of visitors streaming through the Castle and Chapel.On days like this it's very difficult to fight your way through to the shops with excited and I suspect slightly jetlagged tourists determine to soak up
- [LIVING THE QUESTIONS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-the-questions-2/) - "...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the
- [listening](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/listening-2/) - I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks
- [A week in the life of… Part three Monday!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of-part-three-monday/) - It's Monday morning at the start of the working week and the beginning of three weeks of being Canon in residence here at St George's Chapel Windsor.The May sunshine continues to exceed expectations and it gives everyone such a extraordinary sense of holiday.many many visitors crowd the Castle and it's difficult to negotiate oneself through
- [A day in the life of… Part two?!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-day-in-the-life-of-part-two/) - The College of St George as a rhythm and pattern – a routine of three terms fitting neatly round the cycle of the Church's year.Today with Christians throughout the world we have marked the feast of Pentecost.This is a celebration of holy disturbance, of transformation and change.At the heart of it there remains a
- [Water](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/water-3/) - If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water. Going to church Would entail a fording To dry, different clothes; My litany would employ Images of sousing, A furious devout drench, And I should raise in the east A glass of water Where any-angled light Would congregate
- [A Week in the Life of ??](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of/) - I started my blog nearly 4 years ago when I was fortunate enough to secure a sabbatical in the United States of America.I had spent 10 years in Temple Balsall engaged in parish work, the support of the church school and the constantly demanding work of overseeing the organisation and delivery of care for older
- [listening](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/listening/) - I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks
- [thistles](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thistles/) - Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure. Then they grow grey like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground. Ted Hughes
- [valentine](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/valentine/) - Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying
- [love is a tree](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-is-a-tree/) - Love is not condescension, never that, nor books, nor any pencil trace on paper, no; nor in how we talk about each other. Love is a tree with branches reaching out to always with roots that come from everywhere, and no trunk. Have you seen it? No. You can't. Your deep desire can't
- [Go with the Flow](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/go-with-the-flow/) - It was a pleasure to travel up to London last night to Downing Street for a Reception, hosted by Samantha Cameron, in support of Maggie’s and by way of launching Gemma Levine’s ‘Go with the Flow’. It is, of course, always interesting to step inside and see something of a famous building but more interesting
- [Now which of these will you be today??!!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/now-which-of-these-will-you-be-today/) - Able Accurate Adaptable Analytical Articulate Astute Consistent Creative Decisive Dedicated Diligent Diplomatic Dynamic Effective Efficient Energetic Enthusiastic Experienced Fast Flexible Gregarious Imaginative innovative Inventive Methodical Motivated Organised Outgoing Outstanding Patient Perceptive Persistent Positive Practical Productive Proficient Punctual Quick Rational Reliable Resourceful Responsible Self-motivated Self-reliant Shrewd Succcssful Tactful Talented Versatile
- [Who understands Death?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/who-understands-death/) - Following a conversation yesterday about the narratives of death and particularly our own relationship to death I turned to that extraordinary narrative by Gillian Rose that asks us all whether we have faced our mortality Gillian Rose LOVES WORK Page 72 & 73 With a man in clerical orders, one may legiti­mately expect him to have
- [amazement is the thing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/amazement-is-the-thing-2/) - The point is the seeing, the grace beyond recognition, the ways of the bird rising, unnamed, unknown, beyond the range of language, beyond its noun. Eyes open on growing, flying, happening, and go on opening. Manifold, the world dawns on unrecognizing, realizing eyes. Amazement is the thing. Not love, but the astonishment of loving.
- [AGAINST SELF-IMPROVEMENT](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/against-self-improvement/) - "Life for us has become an endless affair of trying to improve ourselves: achieving more and doing more, learning more, always needing to know more things. The process of learning and being taught has simply become a matter of being fed facts and information-- receiving what we didn’t have before, always being given
- [white flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/white-flower-2/) - He said, I am with you always. That means, when you look for God That God is the looking itself, Yes, and the thought of looking And the you that thinks the thought Always, already, all of it; There is no outside. A white flower grows in the silence Let your speech be that flower.
- [WHAT SHOULD I FEAR?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-should-i-fear/) - Let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine. Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in the dirt swing through the air. How could I look at anything in this world and tremble, and grip my hands over
- [delight](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/delight/) - 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 contraption, Only your song is an
- [St George](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/st-george-2/) - The Prayer to Saint George directly refers to the courage it took for the saint to confess his Christianity before opposing authority: Almighty God, who gave to your servant George boldness to Confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that
- [Letting Go of our Control?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/letting-go-of-our-control/) - ‘Control’ in this context has two distinct meanings, both equally crucial. In the first place, ‘control’, as you would expect, means priority and ability to manage, not to force, the compliance of others, to determine what others think or do. In the second, more elusive sense - a sense which, nevertheless, saves my life and
- [radiant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/radiant-4/) - this blessing God's love calls us to that elsewhere world which only lovers eyes alight, eyes aflame can see at all. only those who have self surrendered: once, they were flecks of fire; now, they are the radiant sun. Rumi
- [Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter-2/) - Rise, heart, thy lord is risen. Sing his praise Without delays, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise With him may'st rise: That, as his death calcinиd thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just. Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part With all thy art,
- [Holy Saturday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holy-saturday-2/) - When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snap the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to
- [Good Friday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/good-friday-3/) - This is it. The is what we have always feared – The moment of surrender, the helpless moment When there is nothing to do but to let go… “Into Thy hands” – into another’s hand No matter whose; the enemy’s hand, death’s hand, God’s…The moment not to be evaded Which says, “You must,” the moment
- [Maundy Thursday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/maundy-thursday-3/) - Lord, in your love you wash our feet soiled as we tramp lifes well worn street As from the clamour we retreat concious of failure and defeat wash from our feet the dirt of sin scars from the past which lurk within humbly we heed your discipline faced with temptation, help us win Wash from
- [Time to look inwards?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/time-to-look-inwards/) - NEWS OF THE INNER WORLD "It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world." -John O'Donohue, ANAM CARA:
- [the beauty of the heart](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-beauty-of-the-heart/) - The beauty of the heart is what will remain: it brings to your lips the water of life. in truth, it is the water, and the jug that holds it, and the lips that drink. All three become one when your talismans are broken. This is a oneness you won't know by thinking about
- [The peace of wild things](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-peace-of-wild-things/) - When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into
- [Jungle Queen II by Hew Locke](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/jungle-queen-ii-by-hew-locke/) - Hew Locke is a sculptor and contemporary British visual artist based in london. Locke uses a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, photography, relief, fabric, sculpture and casting, and makes extensive use of found objects and collage. Recurrent themes and imagery include visual expressions of power, trophies, globalization, movement of peoples, the creation of
- [time](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/time-2/) - LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone. Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins. Let
- [Shalom and Pastoral Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/shalom-and-pastoral-care/) - The undergirding theme of pastoral care is characterized by the Hebrew word shalom. This is usually translated 'peace', but that is inadequate. Greek ideas domi­nate western thought. As a result 'peace' has come largely to mean 'the absence of war', a state which produces prosperity and well-being. But the Hebrew is more positive. God gives
- [See how these Christian love one another](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/see-how-these-christian-love-one-another/) - Church of Nigeria reacts to Archbishop of Canterbury’s Resignation The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 when it was a happy family. Unfortunately, he is leaving behind a Communion in tatters: highly polarized, bitterly factionalized, with issues of revisionist
- [Chagall](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chagall/) - chagall donkey or cow, cockerel, horse, right down to the varnish on a violin; a man who sings, a lonely bird, a dancer floating with his wife; a couple, soaked in their own springtime; the gold of the grass, the leaden sky; between them, blue flames and the vitality of dew: the blood
- [acting](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/acting/) - Poetry reveals that there is no empty space. When your truth forsakes its shyness, When your fears surrender to your strengths, You will begin to experience That all existence Is a teeming sea of infinite life. In a handful of ocean water You could not count all the finely tuned Musicians Who are
- [Theology and Worship](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology-and-worship/) - Theology is positioned by God who is Trinity, and to speak or think about God, is not merely human talk, 'because it in­volves the reception of the mind of God and the participation in the life of God'. To do theology is to be taken up into the realm of worship and glory. It
- [Love](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love/) - All that there is, is love. Nothing else is, but love. Love is the force that fires the stars, that drives our lives from seed to sepulchre, from edge to edge, from end to end.
- [Gift and Challenge](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gift-and-challenge/) - Every segment of life is both gift and challenge, both endowment and responsibility. It is the warp and woof 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 life between doubt and faith, between
- [Inattention - more wisdom from the desert fathers](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/inattention-more-wisdom-from-the-desert-fathers/) - Most of us fail to look and see - the failure to see what is truly there in front of us - because our own vision is clouded by self-obsession or self-satisfaction. There are several variants of a story in which some young monk goes in despair to one of the great
- [Loving One another](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/loving-one-another/) - 'Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.' From the writings of the desert fathers And this is where the desert monastics have an uncompromising message for us: a relationship with eternal
- [smile](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/smile/) - One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight, And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, And work will be simple and swift as a
- [Growing great?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/growing-great/) - "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." -Greek proverb
- [For the Gift of Music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/for-the-gift-of-music/) - Let us bless God for the gift of music O Christ, whose birth was greeted with the song of angels, whose mother sang as she magnified the Lord, and who was greeted in the Temple by the song of Simeon, we bless you for the gift of music. For music which calms our fears,
- [Pearl](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pearl/) - This poem is about the wordless, the beautiful. What, do you need a manual, to feel the heat of the sun? Look, look at this beauty. It has no reason. Feel its blessing. Nothing is as good as this. Perhaps this poem is a miracle. Perhaps it's a trick. It was written by the
- [Do we know what nourishes us?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/do-we-know-what-nourishes-us/) - Diet is a key challenge to Christian communities. While it is certainly the case that phrases such as 'food as fuel', 'garbage in garbage out', 'an army marches on its stomach' and 'you are what you eat' can seem simplistic, there is a truth here which has particular importance for a church seeking to recover
- [Befriending Strangers?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/befriending-strangers/) - During Lent we should recall the challenge of Jesus to wel­come and pay attention to the stranger. This was at the heart of Jesus' ministry because it is at the heart of God's relationship to creation. The stranger represents the one different to us. The Pharisees sought to establish a Jewish comfort zone beyond which
- [What kind of leadership?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-kind-of-leadership/) - So often we think of the Church as an organisation that needs to be run! It might be worth remembering Bishop Edward King. The words are those of G. F. Wilgress, who was, I think once his chaplain. ‘Without any very visible method in his administration of his diocese, there was a deep underlying
- [Ash Wednesday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ash-wednesday-3/) - Ash Wednesday T.S. Eliot Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished
- [leaves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leaves-2/) - Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the beach, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, hang out in views, and seek the least of all possible mistakes. A fantastic
- [BACH'S ST MATTHEW PASSION St Georges Chapel Windsor 24th March 2012](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bachs-st-matthew-passion-st-georges-chapel-windsor-24th-march-2012/) - ST GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR CASTLE ST MATTHEW PASSION J.S. BACH 24th MARCH 2012 at 7.00pm (doors open 6.00pm) Choir of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle Oxford Bach Choir ‘Supers’ Choir (St George’s School) Oxford Philomusica James Oxley (Evangelist) Soprano: Miriam Allan Other solos: Lay Clerks of
- [white flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/white-flower/) - He said, I am with you always. That means, when you look for God That God is the looking itself, Yes, and the thought of looking And the you that thinks the thought Always, already, all of it; There is no outside. A white flower grows in the silence Let your speech be
- [radiant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/radiant-3/) - this blessing God's love calls us to that elsewhere world which only lovers eyes alight, eyes aflame can see at all. only those who have self surrendered: once, they were flecks of fire; now, they are the radiant sun. Rumi
- [eyes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/eyes-2/) - Love is the cure. Your pain will keep giving birth to more pain. Just let your eyes breathe out love as easily as a flower breathes out its sweetness. Rumi, Love is the cure,
- [Reading the Bible?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/reading-the-bible/) - The Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, challenges us to immenrse ourselves in the Bible : "The texts a culture teaches its children shape their landscape of literacy, their horizons of aspiration. People who can quote the Bible walk tall. They sing with the tongues of poets; walk with the wisdom of Solomon; find solace in
- [prisoner of time](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/prisoner-of-time/) - Lord, said David, since you don't need us, why did you make the two worlds? The Real replied: O prisoner of time, I am a secret treasure of kindness that wishes itself to be known. So, I made a mirror: its shining face is one world, its dark back, the other. You'd like the
- [the double bass](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-double-bass-2/) - He is a drunk leaning companionably Around a lamp post or doing up With intermittent concentration Another drunk's coat. But close your eyes and it is sunset At the edge of the world. It is the language Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots, The heart-beat slowing down. John Fuller
- [CandleMass](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/candlemass/) - Homily preached at St Pauls University Ottawa for The Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple 2 February 2012 Are you a cynic or a realist? What kind of world do you inhabit? How do you read the signs of the times? Whenyou stop and I mean really stop to listen
- [GRACE APPROACHING](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/grace-approaching-2/) - There is a grace approaching that we shun as much as death, it is the completion of our birth. It does not come in time, but in timelessness when the mind sinks into the heart and we remember. It is an insistent grace that draws us to the edge and beckons us surrender safe territory
- [Barnett Newman](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/barnett-newman/) - One of the exciting things about travel is the discovery of new artists - Newmans effect on this tourist was electrifying - his use of primary colours is vibrant and fascinating. Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract
- [William Rees-Mogg](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/william-rees-mogg/) - William Rees-Mogg is one of the pivotal figures of post-war Britain. In this memoir he recounts the story of a colourful life, and reflects on the key figures and events of his time. As editor of The Times (his glory years), journalist, commentator, Chairman of the Arts Council, and, later, Chairman of the Broadcasting
- [UnMasking Age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/unmasking-age/) - Unmasking Age: The significance of age for social research Social Research Bill Bytheway Policy Press 2011 When the history of social gerontology is written, the chapter devoted to the contribution of individual researchers to the field, will certainly feature Bill Bytheway. This book is a brilliant overview of age. It is readable, stimulating and
- [Amaryllis](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/amaryllis/) - One morning--and so soon!--the first flower has opened when you wake. Or you catch it poised in a single, brief moment of hesitation. Next day, another, shy at first like a foal, even a third, a fourth, carried triumphantly at the summit of those strong columns, and each a Juno, calm in brilliance, a
- [To Canada](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/to-canada/) - I am surrounded by lists at the moment and preparing to go fly off to Canada - intrigued and interested to see what I shall discover. Monoday morning shall take me in Heathrow (soem advantages of living in Windsor!) to fly to Ottawa, Ontario St Matthews Anglican Church are my hosts and I shall be having
- [Hands](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/hands/) - "Adam, where are you?" God's hands palpate darkness, the void that is Adam's inattention, his confused attention to everything, impassioned by multiplicity, his despair. Multiplicity, his despair; God's hands enacting blindness. Like a child at a barbaric fairground -- noise, lights, the violent odors -- Adam fragments himself. The whirling rides! Fragmented Adam
- [Time and Age - some more questions!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/time-and-age-some-more-questions/) - Is it absurd to suggest that the tick of the clock is relevant to understanding age? Picture it: a landscape, a family enjoying a picnic, rolling hills in the distance; Can you think of an equivalent timescape? How routine is your daily life? Do you think it is becoming more routine as you grow
- [presence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/presence/) - When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into
- [How Old do you think I am?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-old-do-you-think-i-am/) - Try this out for a starter if you want to reflect in Age! Do you feel age masks 'the real you'? When did you last take a hard look at yourself in the mirror? Do you look your age? Do you feel your age?
- [patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/patience-4/) - An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than
- [The Tate Modern](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-tate-modern/) - Tate Modern was created in the year 2000 to display the national collection of international modern art (defined as art since 1900). By about 1990 it was clear that the Tate Collection had hugely outgrown the original Tate Gallery on Millbank. It was decided to create a new gallery in London to display the international
- [Wilhelmina Barns-Graham](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wilhelmina-barns-graham/) - Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912. As a child she showed very early signs of creative ability. Determining while at school that she wanted to be an artist, she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where, after some dispute with her father, she
- [thinking](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/thinking/) - Half the day lost, staring at this window. I wanted to know just one true thing about the soul, but I left thinking for thought, and now - two inches of snow have fallen over the meadow. Where did I go, how long was I out looking for you?, who would never leave
- [Theology?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology/) - Theology is the Greek word for thinking about God. According to H. R. Mackintosh, ‘’theology is simply a persistent and systematic effort to clarify the convictions by which Christians live.’’ Theology is thereby also the clarification of convictions by which Christians engage in ministry. Therefore, God is the principal subject matter of pastoral theology, though
- [PRAYER](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/prayer/) - Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man
- [How do we learn?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/how-do-we-learn/) - Learning by suffering—pathei mathos in Aeschylus' phrase; but this means more than being undeceived: 'what a man has to learn through suffering is not this or that particular thing, but the knowledge of the limitations of humanity, of the absoluteness of the barrier which separates him from the divine. It is ultimately a religious insight—that
- [Being Wrong - we are all destined to err](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-wrong-we-are-all-destined-to-err/) - In this sense, all wrongness is optimism. We err because we believe above all, in ourselves: no matter how often we have gotten things in the past, we evince an abiding and touching faith in our own stork theories. Traditionally, we are anxious to deny that those stories and theories are stories and theories—that we
- [BURNING THE FALSE SELF](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/burning-the-false-self/) - Suffering is a predominant feeling of the process though which a human being must pass as the mental ego deconstructs and the transpersonal self is birthed... The suffering comes from the clinging we do to all those facets of self we imagined ourselves to be and that burn off in the process of becoming Light.
- [Why I dissented from Falconer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/why-i-dissented-from-falconer/) - The Commission on Assisted Dying published its report yesterday. It has concluded that it is possible to devise a legal framework that would set out strictly defined circumstances in which terminally ill people could be assisted to die. The work was funded by Sir Terry Pratchett and Bernard Lewis, both advocates of assisted dying. I
- [Commission for assisted Dying - radio interviews](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/commission-for-assisted-dying-radio-interviews/) - Here ois a piece from BBC Radio wales ( starts 48 minutes 56 seconds in) http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b018lc28/
- [The Commission on Assisted Dying - more news reports](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-commission-on-assisted-dying-more-news-reports/) - 'Why I Rejected the Report Calling for Assisted Suicide in the UK One of the commissioners who worked on a report into assisted dying has rejected its conclusions. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth A report by the Commission on Assisted Dying which claimed there is a "strong case" for allowing assisted suicide was "not in the position to
- [The Commission on Assisted Dying - news reports](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-commission-on-assisted-dying-news-reports/) - http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1324331373.html From the Yorkshire Post Doctors may get power to help terminally ill people end life Published on Wednesday 4 January 2012 18:52 Doctors could be given the right to help terminally-ill people to die, under proposals in an influential report published today. Adults who are likely to have less than a year
- [The Commission on Assisted Dying Report](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-commission-on-assisted-dying-report/) - As I return from a relaxing post Christmas break I am preparing for what is bound to be a media storm tommorrow morning as the Report from the Commission is published "The current legal status of assisted dying is inadequate and incoherent...” My own position will be made clear in the Report but here are
- [the double bass](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-double-bass/) - He is a drunk leaning companionably Around a lamp post or doing up With intermittent concentration Another drunk's coat. But close your eyes and it is sunset At the edge of the world. It is the language Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots, The heart-beat slowing down. John Fuller
- [The Light that Christmas Sheds](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-light-that-christmas-sheds/) - Have you ever looked into the face of a tiny baby and wondered what will be in store for that child – how his or her life will unfold across the years? There is an exquisite painting which hangs in the great museum of The Louvre, in Paris. It is called ‘The Adoration of the
- [God made Man?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/god-made-man/) - For the central truth, or mystery, of the Christian faith is primarily not a matter of words, and therefore ultimately of ideas or concepts, but a matter of fact, or reality. The heart of the Christian mystery is the fact of God made man, God with us, in Christ; words, even his words, are
- [patience](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/patience-3/) - An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than
- [made of light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/made-of-light/) - salt rose, topaz, archery, carnations, the birth of fire. You are none of these. You are the holy secret darkness, that space between shadow and soul. There, where love is. You are the flower that only blooms within; hidden, but made of light. A tactile fragrance, an enhancement deep within the earth, my body.
- [When things start going really well, watch out](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/when-things-start-going-really-well-watch-out/) - "Playfulness can get you out of a rut more successfully than seriousness," "Triangles are the plaque in the arteries of communication and stress is the effect of our position in the triangle of our families " "If you are a leader, expect sabotage" "The colossal misunderstanding of our time is
- [in fulness of joy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-fulness-of-joy/) - And thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing
- [My favourite libraries - The Harper Library in the University of Chicago](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/my-favourite-libraries-the-harper-library-in-the-university-of-chicago/) - 60 000 books People Space wide tables Comfortable chairs to sleep serious reading space!
- [Our Relationship to the past?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/our-relationship-to-the-past/) - One of the most obvious features of modern life in the West has been a radical questioning of tradition, of everything received from the past. Wisdom distilled from living in previous eras has often seemed irrelevant and out of date, unsuited to modern conditions and problems. Add to all this the floods of information, images,
- [Advice? From Bill Gates!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/advice-from-bill-gates/) - Here's some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets them up for failure in the real world.
- [Gaze](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gaze/) - Gaze at the river. It is time and water. Remember that time is itself a river Know that we too recede always into the past. See all of our faces flow by, like a river and feel that to wake up is only to dream again and that each of those dreams is as real
- [Durham](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/durham/) - "Grey towers of Durham, Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles, Half church of God half castle against the Scot, A nd long to roam these venerable aisles, With records stored of deeds long since forgot". Sir Walter Scott
- [The Promise](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-promise/) - Promising myself before bedtime to contend more urgently with the problem. From nothing nothing comes. Behind everything - something, somebody? In the beginnning violence, the floor of the universe littered with fragments. After the enormous brawl, where did the dove come from? From what acorn mind these dark boughs among which at night thought loses
- [The harrowing of hell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-harrowing-of-hell/) - 'Keep your mind in hell, and despair not' is indeed a basic formula for the ideal truth inherent in Christlikeness. 'Take up your cross', says Jesus to his disciples, 'and follow me'. For that is how God is revealed - first and foremost, on the cross. Properly interpreted, the symbol of the harrowing of hell
- [look at love](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/look-at-love/) - 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
- [generosity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/generosity-2/) - Lord, said David, since you do not need us, why did you create these two worlds? Reality replied: O prisoner of time, I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity, and I wished this treasure to be known, so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart; its darkened back, the world;
- [Expectant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/expectant/) - 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. Rejoice! Rejoice! To mend our strife Shall come in flesh the God of life. - Jim Cotter, Expectant – Verses for Advent
- [language for god?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/language-for-god/) - Ordinary Christians are constantly being invited to forget their language. Clergy are also tempted to dilute the force of the language we represent in an attempt to be relevant. Yet paradoxically the pluralist character of our society offers us, once again, the space to embody and articulate distinctive Christian discourse without feeling the necessity to
- [joy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/joy-2/) - Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
- [Which Jesus?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/which-jesus/)
- [wrought flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wrought-flower-2/) - I believe the earth exists, and in each minim mote of its dust the holy glow of thy candle. Thou unknown I know, thou spirit, giver, lover of making, of the wrought letter, wrought flower, iron, deed, dream the ordinary glow of common dust in ancient sunlight. Be, that I may believe. Amen.
- [Clive Hicks-Jenkins](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/clive-hicks-jenkins/) - Clive Hicks-Jenkins was born in Newport in 1951 and educated in Theatre Studies at the Italia Conti School. He currently lives in mid Wales. His painting has been critically praised in The Independent, Modern Painters, Galleries and Art Review. Shelagh Hourahane, in Planet, has called him 'an inspiring and masterly painter', and Robert Macdonald described
- [Beware of professionalization!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/beware-of-professionalization/) - For some clergy, professionalism is their way of compensating for a sense of being an anachronism as a cleric. So skills in parish administration -- skills in this, skills in that -- are all part of “I matter because I have these skills,” as opposed to “I have internalized the theology I’ve been taught in
- [The creation of the 1611 Authorized (King James) Bible](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-creation-of-the-1611-authorized-king-james-bible/) - The King James Bible began life at a conference convened by James I at Hampton Court Palace in 1604. There it was ordered that a new translation of the Bible be produced, as the King strove to forge unity between Scotland and England. It was the culmination of over two centuries of struggle to
- [Faith](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/faith-2/) - Faith is belief that God is leading us to become in tune with the universe, however different we see ourselves to be. Faith is trust in the unknown goodness of life with­out demand for certainty in the science of it. Faith is belief that the God we call "our God" is either the God of
- [Launching a Prayer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/launching-a-prayer/) - The stripling posturing before the hero; the mature man posturing before God. Circularity is endless, yet one prayer, slipping the reason, speeds out into the cornerless universe so close to God as to open a crater in his composure. R.S. Thomas, Residues
- [oddity](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/oddity/) - Love, thou are deep: I cannot cross thee. But, were there Two Instead of One -- Rower, and Yacht -- some sovereign Summer -- Who knows, but we'd reach the Sun? Love, thou are Veiled: A few behold thee, Smile, and alter, and prattle, and die. Bliss were an Oddity, without thee, Nicknamed
- [Theological Study](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theological-study/) - Serious theological work today is or ought to be rather like working in a quarry, and quite specifically the kind of quarry which one finds in India, where men and women, and quite young children too, in the heat of the day hack away at the rock-face with simple implements, exposing themselves to danger, and
- [poppy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/poppy/) - In the whole garden like screens of green plane of green rising into the morning sun a single poppy more ornate, fuller, larger as if a shower puff, overlapping petals a singular color, melting salmon steak and orange sherbet richer, softer crepe paper ribbon bloom drinking in the light against a sea of green From
- [Theological Quarry (2)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theological-quarry-2/) - The cliff-face in our theological quarry is the Bible and the rich resources and insights into truth which are to be found in the Christian tradition, and the other world faiths and ideologies that have interacted with the Christian tradition If we are faithful in our quarry work in the heat and sweat of the
- [We need to talk about death!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/we-need-to-talk-about-death/) - All of us swim in the one sea of our lives, trying to stay afloat as best we can, clinging to such life-lines and preservers as we might draw about us: reason and science, faith and religious practice, art and music and imagination. But in the end the wall go down, we all sink,
- [Theorizing?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theorizing/) - So too with theorizing: the instinct is about staying alive, but the excess is about living. It enriches our everyday life (those happy-hour debriefs about the boss) and enables our most extraordinary achievements (that hoped-for cure for cancer). Without it, we would be bereft of virtually all our hallmark human endeavors: religion, science, and storytelling;
- [Communication?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/communication/) - One of the most obvious features of modern life in the West has been a radical questioning of tradition, of everything received from the past. Wisdom distilled from living in previous eras has often seemed irrelevant and out of date, unsuited to modern conditions and problems. Add to all this the floods of information, images,
- [Help me to change?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/help-me-to-change/) - The need to be right about ourselves—past, present, and future—is what drives our yearning for perfect self-knowledge. And it also drives our yearning for something else; perfect self-consistency. As with complete self- knowledge, we know, in theory, that an unchanging self is not part of the bargain of being human. In fact, sometimes we enthusiastically
- [Discovery?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/discovery-2/) - Sometimes everything has to be enscribed across the heavens So you can find the one line already written inside you. -David Whyte
- [All Saints](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/all-saints-3/) - Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living that we may come to those inexpressible joys that you have prepared for those who truly love
- [I Know?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/i-know/) - "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, "I thought I knew." —Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty
- [shadow](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/shadow/) - Are they shadows that we see? And can shadows pleasure give? Pleasures only shadows be Cast by bodies we conceive And are made the things we deem In those figures which they seem. But these pleasures vanish fast Which by shadows are expressed; Pleasures are not, if they last; In their passing is
- [Compton Verney House](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/compton-verney-house/) - Compton Verney House is an 18th century country mansion at Compton Verney near Kineton in Warwickshire which has been converted into the Compton Verney Art Gallery. The building is a Grade I listed house built in 1714 by Richard Verney, 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke. It was first extensively extended by George Verney, the
- [Being Wrong](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/being-wrong/) - All of us outgrow some of our beliefs. All of us hatch theories in one moment, only to find that we must abandon them in the next. Our tricky senses, our limited intellects, our fickle memories, the veil of emo­tions, the tug of allegiances, the complexity of the world around us: all of
- ['que sais-je?'](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/que-sais-je/) - Michel de Montaigne, the great Renaissance philosopher and essayist, inscribed above the door of his study que sais-je?—what do I know? And thus Descartes set himself the task of doubting everything, up to and including his own existence . These thinkers weren't nihilists, nor even skeptics. They believed in truth, and they wanted
- [the gaze](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-gaze/) - Something different, set apart, special this single room in the house, a sanctuary, a refuge a place where the spirit, palpable, real, living where this presence is felt, alive Under the gaze of angels, a collections of guardians symbols, metaphoric, talismans, a row of saints connecting her to her heritage, shaman, things of the earth
- [longing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/longing-3/) - Love is not condescension, never that, nor books, nor any pencil trace on paper, no; nor in how we talk about each other. Love is a tree with branches reaching out to always with roots that come from everywhere, and no trunk. Have you seen it? No. You can't. Your deep desire can't find
- [Edward the Confessor](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/edward-the-confessor-3/) - Edward was the son of Ethelred II 'the Unready' and Emma, the daughter of Richard I of Normandy. The family was exiled in Normandy after the Danish invasion of 1013, but returned the following year and negotiated Ethelred's reinstatement. After Ethelred's death in 1016 the Danes again took control of England. Edward lived in exile
- [Reflecting the light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/reflecting-the-light/) - Yet any glass through which we see is always made of human hands, like mine. All spiritual language is by necessity metaphor and symbol. The Light comes from elsewhere, yet it is necessarily reflected through those walking on the journey. As Desmond Tutu often says "We are only the light bulbs and our job is just
- [exuberance](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/exuberance/) - It's the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me, That drives us like lemmings, but cautiously— The search for a bright square cloud—the scent of lemon verbena— Or to learn rules for the game the sea otters Play in the surf. It is these small things—and the secret behind them That fill the heart. The
- [Embracing the diversity of the Bibles Impact](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/embracing-the-diversity-of-the-bibles-impact/) - Let us imagine entering a museum and contemplating one of the exhibits. The exhibit could be said to offer us a type of revelation, for it stands before us and communicates a message. However, the message of a piece of art is not simple, singular or able to be mastered. This is evidenced in the
- [A Cacophony of Voices](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-cacophony-of-voices/) - The Bible itself is a dynamic text full of poetry, prose, history, law and myth all clashing together in a cacophony of voices. We are presented with a warrior God and a peacemaker, a God of territorial allegiance and a God who transcends all territorial divides, an unchanging God and a God who can
- [Scripture](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/scripture/) - The Study of scripture is at the heart of theology. Scripture truthfully tells the story of God's action of creating, judging and saving the world. It is to be read and reread above all for the sake of God and God's purposes; hear it as God the Creator, Judge and Saviour crying out to humanity; respond
- [Living Life as it is!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-life-as-it-is/) - Every segment of life is both gift and challenge, both endowment and responsibility. It is the warp and woof 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 life between doubt and faith, between
- [What is theology?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-theology-2/) - If theology comes to be understood as the place where God speaks, then we must seek, not to speak of God, but rather to be that place where God speaks. Through our words and actions we seek to be the site of revelation through which people encounter the life- giving Word of God. For some,
- [Who do we listen to?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/who-do-we-listen-to/) - Choose the company of those withdrawn in love Listen to those who open a path to you: listen, and don't say a word. -Rumi
- [crucifix](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/crucifix/) - We can never be with loss too long. Behind the warped door that sticks, the wood thrush calls to the monks, pausing upon the stone crucifix, singing: "I am marvelous alone!" Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield: rows of marrow and bone undone. The horizon's flashing fastens tight, sealing the blue hills with vermilion. Moss
- [A Vision of how the church should be?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-vision-of-how-the-church-should-be/) - Found on a welcome sheet in a remote Welsh Church - how would you describe the welcome that your Church offers? Here we try to practise the generous Gospel of Jesus Christ. This means that you may be mixing with seekers, searchers, and those who have been bruised, those who limp and those
- [Tree](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tree/) - I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her
- [Holiday Books - A Walk on Part by Chris Mullin](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holiday-books-a-walk-on-part-by-chris-mullin/) - Yes Minister meets Alan Clark. This third and final volume of Chris Mullin's acclaimed diaries begins on the night John Smith died in May 1994, and continues until the moment of Mullin's assumption into government in July 1999. Together with the bestselling "A View from the Foothills" and "Decline and Fall", the complete trilogy covers
- [Holiday Books - The Life of Henry Moore](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holiday-books-the-life-of-henry-moore/) - Henry Moore’s rise from Yorkshire miner’s son to international acclaim as the twentieth century’s greatest sculptor is one of the most remarkable stories in British art. In this revised, updated, expanded and redesigned new edition of The Life of Henry Moore, Roger Berthoud charts Moore’s transition from controversial young modernist to pillar of the
- [unspoken autumn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/unspoken-autumn-2/) - 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. We are faithful only
- [unspoken autumn](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/unspoken-autumn/) - Joy, my love, joy in all things, in what falls and what flourishes. Joy in today and yesterday, the day before and tomorrow. Joy in bread and stone, joy in fire and rain. In what changes, is born, grows, consumes itself, and becomes a kiss again. Joy in the air we have, and
- [Barmouth Bay](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/barmouth-bay/) - On the west coast of Wales within the beautiful Snowdonia National Park, Barmouth Bay sits between a spectacular mountain range and the sea, close to the town of Barmouth, the bar at the mouth of the river Mawddach.
- [Gregynog Hall](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gregynog-hall/) - Gregynog has existed for eight hundred years. By the sixteenth century it was the home of the Blayney family, local gentry who claimed descent from the early Welsh princes and whose courage and benevolence were praised by the court poets. Their coat of arms is the centrepiece of the fine oak carvings in what
- [become the sun](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/become-the-sun/) - Love whispered to me make yourself my fool: leave the hunt become the prey live with me be homeless don’t cast shadows become the sun. Rumi
- [Spirituality and Personhood in Dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spirituality-and-personhood-in-dementia/) - ‘SPIRITUALITY AND PERSONHOOD IN DEMENTIA’ Edited by Albert Jewell, Jessica Kingsley publishers 2011 ISBN: 978-1-84905-154-5 Albert Jewell is a skilled researcher and together with his knowledge of the field of ageing, a third book has been published exploring what happens to an individual (and community) in the face of dementia. Jewell
- [letting Go!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/letting-go/) - "Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom." —Sogyal Rinpoche Glimpse After Glimpse
- [9/11](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/911-2/) - People draw near to God in their distress, pleading for help and begging peace and bread, rescue from guilt and sickness, nearly dead. Christian or not, all come in helplessness. People draw near to God in his distress: find him rejected, homeless, without bread, burdened with sin
- [autumnal](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/autumnal/) - It is an afternoon toward the end of August: Autumnal weather, cool following on, And riding in, after the heat of summer, Into the empty afternoon shade and light, The shade full of light without any thickness at all; You can see right through and right down into the depth Of the light
- [Ruthin Craft Centre](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ruthin-craft-centre/) - The Arts Council of Wales Lottery funded transformation of Ruthin Craft Centre is now complete. This amazing re-development designed by Sergison Bates architects is located on the existing site in its own landscape and is a dynamic zinc and cast stone building with undulating roofs to echo the surrounding Clwydian hills. With three galleries, six
- [CARE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/care-for-future-generations/) - "The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live. What's lacking is generativity, a generativity that will promote positive values in the lives of the next generation. Unfortunately, we set the example of greed, wanting a bigger and
- [What is theology?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-theology/) - On the other hand, theology could be provisionally described as that which attempts to come to grips with this life-giving experi­ence, to describe the source from which everything is suspended and from which our faith is born. In faith God is experienced as the abso­lute subject who grasps us, while in theology we set about
- [seagull](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seagull-2/) - If my spirit descended now, it would be a lost gull flaring against a deepening hillside, or an angel who cries too easily, or a single glass of seawater, no longer blue or mysterious, and still salty. From Philip Levine, Holding on
- [Living with Difference?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-with-difference/) - Being able to think differently from those around us and being able to function lovingly with people who think otherwise is the ultimate in human endeavor. It requires three things: a heart large enough to deal with conflict positively, enduringly, and kindly; a keen sense of personal purpose, the notion that there is something on
- [Queen Anne Ride Windsor Great Park](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/queen-anne-ride-windsor-great-park/) - Queen Anne's Ride, dating from 1708, is a grand avenue similar to The Long Walk, also three miles in length, but unlike its more famous counterpart, it features only a single row of trees on each side. It runs south-west towards Ascot. In the 18th Century it was known as Queen's Walk, the name changing
- [ripples](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ripples/) - Little patches of grass disappear In the jaws of lusty squirrels Who slip into the spruce. Cars collapse into parts. Spring dissolves into summer, The kitten into the cat. A tray of drinks departs from the buffet And voilà! the party's over. All that's left are some pickles And a sprig of wilting parsley
- ['Those who want to save their life will lose it’ (Matthew 16.25)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/those-who-want-to-save-their-life-will-lose-it-matthew-16-25/) - 28th August Mattins St Georges Chapel Windsor (Jeremiah 15. 15–21 Matthew 16. 21–28 ) 'Those who want to save their life will lose it’ (Matthew 16.25) I remember going to a Ruby Wedding party in my last parish and delighted in the way the couple seemed to be able to laugh at themselves and each
- [Embrace all of life as gift](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/embrace-all-of-life-as-gift/) - Life, after all, is a struggle, a journey in uncharted space, an exercise in both gain and loss, joy and sorrow. No life consists of nothing but success and satisfaction, security and self- gratification. Failure and disappointment, loss and pain are natural parts of the human equation. Then what? What use is an alleluia then,
- [wrought flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wrought-flower/) - I believe the earth exists, and in each minim mote of its dust the holy glow of thy candle. Thou unknown I know, thou spirit, giver, lover of making, of the wrought letter, wrought flower, iron, deed, dream the ordinary glow of common dust in ancient sunlight. Be, that I may believe. Amen.
- [In Memory : Father Donald Allchin](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/in-memory-father-donald-allchin/) - FR DONALD was our Warden for 27 years, and then Warden Emeritus. During the intercessions at Mass he would pray for the Sisters of the Love of God 'wherever they may be', and we would wonder... And we could apply the same phrase to him, praying for Fr Donald 'wherever he may be', whether in
- [Wealth and Poverty](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wealth-and-poverty/) - For two-thirds of the world, poverty is the order of the day. Yet, as Epicurus knew, "Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants' It is that kind of poverty of which Jesus speaks when he tells the rich young man to "sell everything you have, give to the poor, and
- [Subtle Degrees](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/subtle-degrees/) - subtle degrees of domination and servitude are what you know as love but love is different it arrives complete just there like the moon in the window like the sun of neither east nor west nor of anyplace when that sun arrives east and west arrive desire only that of
- [The purpose of wealth?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-purpose-of-wealth/) - Clearly, the purpose of wealth is not security. The purpose of wealth is reckless generosity, the kind that sings of the lavish love of God, the kind that rekindles hope on dark days, the kind that reminds us that God is with us always. It creates in the holy heart a freedom of spirit that
- [seagull](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/seagull/) - If my spirit descended now, it would be a lost gull flaring against a deepening hillside, or an angel who cries too easily, or a single glass of seawater, no longer blue or mysterious, and still salty. From Philip Levine, Holding on
- [Misericords](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/misericords/) - A misericord (sometimes named mercy seat, like the Biblical object) is a small wooden shelf on the underside of a folding seat in a church, installed to provide a degree of comfort for a person who has to stand during long periods of prayer. Prayers in the early medieval church for the daily divine
- [blossoming](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/blossoming/) - 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
- [Bangor Cathedral](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bangor-cathedral/) - Bangor Cathedral is an ancient place of Christian worship situated in Bangor, Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It is dedicated to its founder, Saint Deiniol. The site of the present building of Bangor Cathedral has been in use as a place of Christian worship since the 6th century. The cathedral is built on a low-lying and inconspicuous
- [Favourite galleries: Oriel Ynys Mon, Wales](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/favourite-galleries-oriel-ynys-mon-wales/) - Oriel Ynys Môn is a museum and arts centre located in Llangefni, Ynys Môn, Wales. A two-part centre, the History Gallery provides an insight into the island's culture, history and environment. The Art Gallery has a changing programme of exhibitions, encompassing art, craft, drama, sculpture and social history. It also houses a series of permanent
- [What is faith?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-faith/) - Faith is belief that God is leading us to become in tune with the universe, however different we see ourselves to be. Faith is trust in the unknown goodness of life with­out demand for certainty in the science of it. Faith is belief that the God we call "our God" is either the God
- [A sense of alleluia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-sense-of-alleluia/) - Every segment of life is both gift and challenge, both endowment and responsibility. It is the warp and woof 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 life between doubt and faith,
- [What kind of a God is this God we seek?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-kind-of-a-god-is-this-god-we-seek/) - God, we know, is a mystery in which we lived every moment of every day. The only question is, How? What kind of a God is this God we seek? Is God a teasing giant who must be pacified as we go through life? Is life an obstacle course designed to merit only the perfect, only
- [gold and grey](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/gold-and-grey/) - I was welcomed here--clear gold of late summer, of opening autumn, the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree, the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow tinted apricot as she looked west, tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun forever rising and setting. Now I am given a taste of the
- [THE VOICE OF YOUR OWN LONGING](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-voice-of-your-own-longing/) - "What's extraordinary is that the crucial thing we need for breaking free is already inside us: our longing. And the voice of our longing is repetition, insistently calling out to what's beyond anything we're familiar with or even understand... As you start being drawn behind appearances you begin to touch the bare bones
- [Beetroot and Feta Salad](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/beetroot-and-feta-salad/) - Ingredients 6 small Beetroot, raw, unpeeled 6 tbsp Olive Oil, 3 tbsp for the dressing 1 pinch Salt 1 pinch Black Pepper, freshly ground 1 Red Onion, very finely sliced 50g Rocket 100g Feta Cheese, cubed 1 handful Mint Leaves, torn, to garnish 1 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar, (for dressing) 1 tbsp Dijon Mustard, (for dressing)
- [Summer Holidays begin......](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/summer-holidays-begin/)
- [God: Some Conversations.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/god-some-conversations/) - I have just finished a ten day consultation with 24 clergy here in St Georges House - a fascinating and moving journey for us all. Here is our aspiration as set out by my colleague Hueston Finlay: To try and speak of God is, unavoidably, to work with words and images carved from the world’s
- [The North Quire Aisle, St Georges Chapel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-north-quire-aisle-st-georges-chapel/) - The work of the preservation of the Chapel is fascinating. Slowly the Chapel is being restored and at the moment work has begun of the North Quire Aisle. Scaffolding was erected in the North Quire Aisle in June allowing experts to undertake conservation cleaning of all the stonework in the area. The North Quire Aisle
- [leaves](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/leaves/) - Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the beach, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, hang out in views, and seek the least of all possible mistakes. A fantastic
- [Journeying with Mark](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/journeying-with-mark/)
- [the leaning grasses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-leaning-grasses/) - A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit Dumb As old medallions to the thumb Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown - A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs Leaving,
- [radiant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/radiant-2/) - this blessing God's love calls us to that elsewhere world which only lovers eyes alight, eyes aflame can see at all. only those who have self surrendered: once, they were flecks of fire; now, they are the radiant sun. Rumi
- [Regression and Progression](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/regression-and-progression/) - The most appropriate picture of living is of a spiral of regression and progression. The child remains in each of us, and from time to time throughout our adult life we move to and from that phase. Sometimes we may appear merely to return to a point that we, or others, have previously attained. But
- [Theology and Ministry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology-and-ministry/) - The Church's structures and intellectual formula­tions may become obsolete but 'the life of actual loving and caring, guided by tested knowledge, cannot get out of date'. Such an observation invites assent. But the illegitimate conclusion may sometimes be drawn that there does not have to be a link between the practice of pastoral ministry and
- [Holding the Presence?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/holding-the-presence/) - The theological undergirding of his grasp of the mystery of God in a systematic exploration of the Christian faith: It is said that souls are not saved nor the Kingdom advanced by academic rigour, intellectual openness or the need to ask the awkward question. True enough. But without the infrastructure of rigorous theological exploration and
- [Do we really know?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/do-we-really-know/) - One day Socrates made a young slave the centrepiece of a dialogue. Contrasting the innocent and ignorant boy with the sophisticated citizens, Socrates argued that 'a man who does not know, has in himself true opinions on a subject without having knowledge' (Plato Meno 85c). Theologians are in a similar position, and none more
- [LIVING THE QUESTIONS](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/living-the-questions/) - "...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,
- [LOVE THE WORLD](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/love-the-world/) - 1. Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing? Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say - behold the reliability and the finery
- [The seven deadly sins CEOs won't admit](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-seven-deadly-sins-ceos-wont-admit/) - It's a classic job interview question: "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" At the top of the business world, people seem to have taken to heart the advice to admit no negative traits, just positives in disguise, says Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times. Every week for the past year and a half, the Financial
- [Priesthood](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/priesthood/) - “Feed my Sheep” A Tribute to a Priest I am Proud to Call Friend On the Anniversary of His Ordination In that moment, The Luminous creases, draws back the curtain; Celestial, sacred, mystery stands unapologetically revealed. In that corporeal touch You were transformed, Marked; banished; publicly acknowledged; indelibly sealed. God’s most beloved; God’s highly
- [what would like to be remembered for?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-would-like-to-be-remembered-for/) - The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love Wordsworth
- [St Peter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/st-peter/) - Peter Peter is remembered by Christians as a saint; the fisherman who became the right-hand man of Jesus himself, the leader of the early church and a father of the faith. Of all the disciples that Jesus chose we know most about Peter. He is one of the most carefully described characters in the New
- [Caught between relevance and identity?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/caught-between-relevance-and-identity/) - But many sensitive pastors today feel at sea. The familiar horizons seem to become more distant as assumptions about the Church and the contexts in which it works are challenged and adjusted. At the same time the sands begin to shift under our feet. Turmoil in theology is not confined to universities and colleges. If
- [darkness](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/darkness/) - the sun remarked, the other day, 'really, I am just a shadow. yes, really. I wish I could show you the infinite incandescence that made me.' when you are in the dark, the lonely, doubtful darkness, I wish I could show you the amazing light of yourself. Hafiz
- [Pastoral Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pastoral-theology/) - The theological undergirding of his grasp of the mystery of God in a systematic exploration of the Christian faith: It is said that souls are not saved nor the Kingdom advanced by academic rigour, intellectual openness or the need to ask the awkward question. True enough. But without the infrastructure of rigorous theological exploration and
- [answer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/answer/) - . "Yes, love is the problem. Love, also, is the answer. It's a complicated story. You'll like it." From Actors, eat no onions!
- [Garter Day 2011](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/garter-day-2011/) - The crowds gather and the Royal Standard is raised! The bands play! Pictures taken by Marc Claire Panton
- [Preparations](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/preparations/) - Friday marked a day of preparations for garter Day here in the Castle. An early start for those involved in the military duties of lining the route of the procession, providing music for the day and leading the processions. Here are a few snaps from my window! The precision and attention to detail are quite
- [green](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/green-2/) - Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal Pouring redemption for me, that I do the will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal, Grow with nature again as before I grew. The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third Party to the couple kissing on an old seat, And a
- [The tasks of theological reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-tasks-of-theological-reflection/) - The tasks of theological reflection The induction and nurture of members What does it mean to be a Christian? Who am I as a Christian believer? Building and sustaining the community of faith. What does it mean to be the ‘body of Christ’ in this place and time? How are we to live faithfully and
- [dance](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dance/) - To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me- That is my dream! From Langston Hughes, Dream Variations
- [God Talk?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/god-talk/) - Actual human speech about God, thus, is not abstract logical talk about an 'ultimate limit' but rather talk about life and the world, about our deepest problems, about catastrophe and triumph, about human misery and human glory. It is about what is really important in life, how we are to live, how to comport ourselves,
- [The purpose of theology?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-purpose-of-theology/) - As a result of these various trends, Christian ministry comes to be understood as being less about the application of expertise and more about facilitating the vocation of all Christians through processes of understanding, analysing and reflecting. The purpose of theological education, therefore, is to equip people with skills and strategies to enable them to
- [eyes](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/eyes/) - Love is the cure. Your pain will keep giving birth to more pain. Just let your eyes breathe out love as easily as a flower breathes out its sweetness. Rumi, Love is the cure,
- [Discovery?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/discovery/) - In other words: the process of finding ourselves through narrative, not mathematics, is the most trust­worthy form of access to truth, and finally the one our humanity cannot do without.
- [Chartwell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/chartwell/) - Chartwell was the principal adult home of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill and his wife Clementine bought the property, located two miles south of Westerham, Kent, England in 1922. Extensive renovations simplifying and modernising the home were undertaken directly, completely transforming it when complete. When it became clear to the Churchills in 1946 that they could
- [Beatitudes for the Ageing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/beatitudes-for-the-ageing/) - Blessed are those who have the courage to do nothing. They demonstrate to us a different level of living for one another. Blessed are those who no longer expect anything and yet are able to smile. God's goodness is shining through them. Blessed are those who are able to listen without harping on the same
- [A Trip down the River!](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/a-trip-down-the-river/) - Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Greater London; it has not been inhabited by the British royal family since the 18th century. The palace is located 11.7 miles (18.8 km) south west of Charing Cross and upstream of Central London on the River Thames. It was originally built
- [Henry Moore -  Figure in a Shelter (1983)](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/henry-moore-figure-in-a-shelter-1983/) - Moore's Figure in a Shelter 1975 finds its origins in the Helmet Head series first produced in 1939-40. By making the central figure smaller, widening and dividing the space around that figure, and even eventually removing it entirely from its' protective armour to produce Bronze Form 1985.
- [awakened, lips parted](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/awakened-lips-parted/) - This form, this face, this life Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships. From T.S.Eliot, Marina
- [Henry Moore](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/henry-moore-2/) - Perry Green is the name of Moore’s former estate, which includes the farmhouse home of Hoglands and garden, his studios, and less formal gardens and fields containing many of his larger sculptures. The grounds also feature the Sheep Field Barn gallery with changing exhibits of his work, and the Aisled Barn with a display of
- [Church Going by Philip Larkin](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/church-going-by-philip-larkin/) - Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows
- [Our neighbour](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/our-neighbour/) - Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.' And this is where Christian discipleship has an uncompromising message for us: a relationship with eternal truth and love simply doesn't happen unless we mend our relations
- [Distraction and Prayer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/distraction-and-prayer/) - Distraction serves a purpose. Like gargoyles guarding the roofline of a cathedral, distractions first serve to ward off those who lack proper motivation. In an age when people claim to be ‘spiritual, not religious’–not really knowing what they mean by either-lack of proper motivation is common. We must long for truth, freedom, loving communion with
- [The Road to Emmaus](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/3654/) - Luke 24:13-49 13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from
- [AM I NO LONGER YOUNG?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/am-i-no-longer-young/) - Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me Keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. -Mary Oliver
- [What is theological reflection?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-theological-reflection/) - Christianity began with an experience, the experience of Jesus—his teachings and his deeds, the impact he had on people, the feeling for life which he communicated. People talked about this experience, formed opinions about him, and even took sides. Some of those who were attracted to him became regular followers and some of those were
- [dark](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/dark-2/) - Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and
- [GRACE APPROACHING](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/grace-approaching/) - There is a grace approaching that we shun as much as death, it is the completion of our birth. It does not come in time, but in timelessness when the mind sinks into the heart and we remember. It is an insistent grace that draws us
- [The Long Walk](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-long-walk/) - The Long Walk was commenced by Charles II from 1680-1685 by planting a double avenue of elm trees. The central carriage road was added by Queen Anne in 1710. The original planting comprised 1,652 trees placed 30 feet apart in each direction. The width between the two inner rows was 150 feet, and overall
- [Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/easter/) - Almighty Father, you have given your only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification: grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who
- [light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/light-2/) - A poet is someone who can pour light into a cup, then raise it to nourish your beautiful, parched, and holy heart. Hafiz
- [Pererindod Melangell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pererindod-melangell/) - St Melangell's Church There has been a Christian Church here for over 1200 years. Its setting, in a place of great beauty deep in the Berwyn Mountains, is peaceful and unspoilt. The church stands in a round churchyard, once a Bronze Age site, ringed by ancient yew trees estimated to be two thousand years old.
- [Pennant Melangell](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pennant-melangell/) - The Tanat Valley: Cwm Pannant, Llangynog, Powys Remote and isolated, deeply glaciated valley with clustered small farms with small enclosed fields on lower slopes and valley bottom, medieval church and legendary associations with St Melangell, abandoned farms. Historic background The area fell within the upper portion of the medieval ecclesiastical parish of Pennant Melangell,
- [Bank Holiday Musings](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/bank-holiday-musings/) - Some of you know that I am in temporary accomodation tucked in just below the Round Tower ..... for those of you who prefer pictures here is the view from my living room window: Visitors to the College of St George will have noticed some considerable activity. This particular phase of a major refurbishment project
- [Now Thank we all Our God - Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/now-thank-we-all-our-god-easter/) - The trouble with you is that you are never grateful,’ was the heartfelt challenge from parent to child overheard by us all drinking coffee in a Windsor shop. As I looked out of the window I wondered how I might have responded to the accusation. Are we grateful? How do we express gratitude? Gratitude, thankfulness,
- [Good Friday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/good-friday-2/) - Today of all days we must stand at the cross and gaze on Christ crucified with hope and trust. We must stand with Mary and John and claim the new life God offers us in Christ crucified. Looking up at him, looking into the infinite distance that death has set between us and Him,
- [Maundy Thursday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/maundy-thursday-2/) - Christianity gives us much to think about, much to figure out, it gives us lots of thoughts and words. But above all it gives us actions to do. Jesus, who in the agony of his last night, handed himself over once and for all to us, gave us an action as his living legacy. "Do
- [Wednesday of Holy Week](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wednesday-of-holy-week/) - Psalm 102 Refrain: My help comes from the Lord. 1 O Lord, hear my prayer • and let my crying come before you. 2 Hide not your face from me • in the day of my distress. 3 Incline your ear to me; • when I call, make haste to answer me, R 4 For my days
- [Tuesday of Holy Week](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/tuesday-of-holy-week-2/) - Psalm 27 Refrain: The Lord is my light and my salvation. 1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? • The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? 2 When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to
- [Monday of Holy Week](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/monday-of-holy-week-2/) - Blessed are you, Lord God of our salvation, to you be praise and glory for ever. As a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only Son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself. May we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be
- [Palm Sunday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/palm-sunday-3/) - Matthew 21. 1-11 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If
- [We continue to fail older people](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/we-continue-to-fail-older-people/) - Councils cut back on free adult social care Some authorities say they have no option but to cut one of their biggest areas of spending The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services study found just 26 out of 148 councils would fund people in "moderate" or "low" need, down from 41. The moves follow
- [Spring](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/spring-3/) - In spring, the axis of the Earth is increasing its tilt toward the Sun and the length of daylight rapidly increases for the relevant hemisphere. The hemisphere begins to warm significantly causing new plant growth to "spring forth," giving the season its name. Snow, if a normal part of winter, begins to melt, and streams
- [The Royal Victorian Order](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-royal-victorian-order/) - Today in the Chapel of St Gerge many hundreds of people are gathering for a service of Praise, Remembrance and Dedication for the members of the Royal Victorian Order. The Royal Victorian Order is given by The Queen to people who have served her or the Monarchy in a personal way. These may include officials
- [The Unbinding?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-unbinding/) - John 11. 1-45 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love
- [decline](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/decline/) - one day a day woke up and was sky, air, light and itself. Later, evening tapped my shoulder: a reminder, a privilege, a job to do. Record, it said the elegance of the day's decline, and the perfect curves of all that is left of a tulip. Tom Davis, after Denise Levertov
- [Welcome and Wonder](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/welcome-and-wonder/) - Ultimately cathedrals are places of welcome and transformation. Nowhere is this more true than of their worship. Their very construc­tion points to the existence of a God of mystery and awe, yet in their nooks and crannies are places of intimacy and comfort, where the hesitant can light a candle and say a prayer.
- [Church Going](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/church-going/) - Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows
- [Open your eyes?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/open-your-eyes/) - Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent. -Jalal ad-Din Rumi
- [wild flower](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/wild-flower/) - To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. From William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
- [radiant](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/radiant/) - The middle region of the sky, where spirit lives, is radiant with the music of light; There, where the pure white music blossoms, God lives, in delight. Kabir (15c)
- [Religion may become extinct in nine nations?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/religion-may-become-extinct-in-nine-nations/) - And what are we to make of this news item? Does it reflect our experience? A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the
- [meditation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/meditation/) - To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem. To meditate means to observe. Your smile proves it. It proves that you are being gentle with yourself, that the sun of awareness is shining in you, that you have control of your situation. You are yourself, and you have acquired some peace. Thich
- [The women who make it possible](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-women-who-make-it-possible/) - As someone who has always admired and liked Sarah Brown – for the dignity she showed through the death of a child and her self-respect whilst her husband was under attack from just about everybody on an almost daily basis – I was looking forward to reading this book. The title was fascinating. What was
- [Humility?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/humility/) - From the Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury Humility indeed happens when we're not looking. And that means that we have to learn where to look if we want to grow into the truth. We must look into the purpose, the mission, of God and allow ourselves to be taken up into the terror and
- [Be at Leisure](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/be-at-leisure/) - This is why the ability to be "at leisure" is one of the basic powers of the human soul. Like the gift of contemplative self-immersion in Being, and the ability to uplift one's spirits in festivity, the power to be at leisure is the power to step beyond the working world and win contact with
- [crocuses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/crocuses/) - Spring is the Period Express from God. Among the other seasons Himself abide, But during March and April None stir abroad Without a cordial interview With God. Emily Dickinson
- [Israel(8) Church of the Holy Sepulchre](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel8-church-of-the-holy-sepulchre/) - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians is a church within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. The site is venerated as Golgotha (the Hill of Calvary), where Jesus was crucified and is said to also contain the place where Jesus was buried (the sepulchre). The
- [The meaning of Leisure.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/the-meaning-of-leisure/) - Leisure, then, as a condition of the soul - (and we must firmly keep to this assumption, since leisure is not necessarily present in all the external things like "breaks” "time off," "weekend," "vacation," and so on - it is a condition of the soul) - leisure is precisely the counterpoise to the image of
- [Israel (7) Bethlehem](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel-7-bethlehem/) - Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank, approximately 8 kilometers south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people.It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism. The Hebrew Bible identifies Beit Lehem as the city David was from and
- [Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/pray-for-the-peace-of-jerusalem/) - Psalm 122 >> King James Version I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of
- [Ash Wednesday](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/ash-wednesday-2/) - “Lord teach us how to pray aright … for we perish if we cease to pray.” Lent calls us to repentance and repentance involves a change of heart. Help me to realise Lord that to change my life without changing my heart is like cutting weeds and leaving roots in the soil. Give me the
- [fire](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/fire/) - An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To
- [Israel (5) Yad Vashem](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel-5-yad-vashem/) - As I look back over my experience of Israel this visit remains fresh and powerfully disturbing. The Holocaust History Museum A decade in the making, the Holocaust History Museum combines the best of Yad Vashem’s expertise, resources and state-of-the-art exhibits to take Holocaust remembrance well into the 21st century . The Holocaust History Museum occupies over
- [Until I Was Nearly Fifty](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/until-i-was-nearly-fifty/) - Until I was Nearly fifty I rarely thought Of age But now As I approach Becoming An elder I find I want To give all That I know To youth. Those who sit Skeptical With hooded Eyes Wondering If there really Is A path ahead & Whether There really Are Elders Upon it Yes. We
- [Growing Older?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/growing-older/) - The first fifty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it. -Arthur Schopenhauer
- [light](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/light/) - A poet is someone who can pour light into a cup then offer it to refresh your beautiful parched and holy heart. Hafiz
- [Israel(4) Desert Places](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel4-desert-places/) - The Judean Desert is an area with a special morphological structure along the east of the Judean mountains. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El, and is marked by terraces with escarpments. It ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. The Judean
- [Israel (3) The Garden Tomb](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel-3-the-garden-tomb/) - The Garden Tomb is believed by many to be the garden and sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea, and therefore a possible site of the resurrection of Jesus. The Garden is owned and administered by The Garden Tomb ( Jerusalem) Association, a Charitable Trust based in the United Kingdom. The Garden Tomb is a quiet place
- [Israel - January 2011 - part 2: the Sea of Galilee](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel-january-2011-part-2-the-sea-of-galilee/) - Matthew 4.13-23 13He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 ‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— 16
- [Israel January 2011](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/israel-january-2011/) - Last month I was fortunate to be able to go to Israel (10th -17th of January). I has been a very transformative experience and given me a great deal to reflect upon. I plan to share some of the images over the next few days..... May the God who called our father Abraham to journey
- [Silence](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/silence-5/) - Silence is living, dynamic, and liberating. The practice of silence nourishes vigilance, self-knowledge, letting go, and the compassionate embrace of all whom we would otherwise be quick to condemn. Gradually we realize that whatever it is in us that sees the mind games we play is itself free of all such mind games and is
- [peace](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/peace/) - THE PEACE of great doors be for you. Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs. Wait for the great hinges. The peace of great churches be for you, Where the players of loft pipe organs Practice old lovely fragments, alone. The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on
- [Sabbath](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/sabbath/) - Love in the triune God is open, connecting, freeing, playful, painful, transforming. Its two faces are labor and rest, ministry and sabbath. Such love is the fulfillment of all the commandments. For this we are born. Yet this love does not come easily. We are an open Dr. Jekyll who lives with a Mr.
- [printing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/printing/) - For all the mysteries, engines, instruments, wherewith the world is filled, which we are able to frame and use to thy glory. For all the trades, variety of operations, cities, temples, streets, bridges, mariner's compass, admirable picture, sculpture, writing, printing, songs and music; wherewith the world is beautified and adorned. From Thomas Traherne, A
- [Power and Influence?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/power-and-influence/) - This rates very high amongst the endless pages of political memoirs produced in recent months..... Taking Machiavelli first, Powell marshals voices from Napoleon to Isaiah Berlin to remind us what an extraordinary work Machiavelli's The Prince is. It grapples with the political arts in states made up of real people, as opposed to peddling high
- [GOING BEYOND EGO](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/going-beyond-ego/) - "In the earlier parts of your life, up through your mid-years, you switch identity from ego to soul by doing spiritual practices. In aging, life itself takes over a bit more. It becomes the practice that takes you to the soul. Aging is the stage of transition and change. The change that occurs is
- [What is my question?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/what-is-mty-question/) - "I think one of the great questions we can ask ourselves is, What is my question? What is the question I am living, what question have I been living since the moment I was born, what is the essence of the pattern, and what’s the fierce, leading edge of that pattern and the way
- [Christians 'indispensible' to Middle East societies](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/christians-indispensible-to-middle-east-societies/) - I thought this worth pondering upon..... A leading commentator on Middle East issues has said that faith and civic leaders in the region have a responsibility to challenge "regimes that muzzle and polarise their peoples" along with the "religious totalitarianism" that fuels violence, discrimination and hatred towards minorities. Writing on the website of the
- [Passing Judgement on Others?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/passing-judgement-on-others/) - One of the most frequent ways in which this(sin) becomes visible, they suggest, is inattention, the failure to see what is truly there in front of us - because our own vision is clouded by self-obsession or self-satisfaction. There are several variants of a story in which some young monk goes in despair to one
- [Human finitude](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/human-finitude/) - Learning by suffering—pathei mathos in Aeschylus' phrase; but this means more than being undeceived: 'what a man has to learn through suffering is not this or that particular thing, but the knowledge of the limitations of humanity, of the absoluteness of the barrier which separates him from the divine. It is ultimately a religious insight—that
- [Cathedrals](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/cathedrals/) - In a way that seems to be more and more crucial to the modern quest for the spiritual, cathedrals can offer a transforming experience. If religion appeals to duty, it seems spirituality must deliver a tangible personal intuition - 'the tug of silver'.Cathedrals welcome the visitor, whether as worshipper, wanderer or the indifferent perplexed, and
- [Theology and Life?](https://www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theology-and-life/) - Basing theology on the lived experience of God has another important benefit: by including the experience of the whole person, rather than just their intellect, it allows for a theology that is as much of the heart as of the mind. Theology is not compartmentalised, kept separate from the rest of the spiritual life, but

## Pages

- [A warm welcome -  view my portfolio, blog and library.](https://www.jameswoodward.online/) - Thank you for visiting my virtual study, a place where you can find out what I am up to and read some of my reflections on a range of matters that have shaped and challenged my journey. I am committed to learning and change and growth through engagement with people and the questions that shape
- [Speaking and Lecturing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/about/speaking-and-lecturing/) - Book a Lecture Please get in touch with me if you are interested in arranging a speaking engagement or lecture. I'm also part of the lecture team at the Montgomery Trust. 2026 14th June The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn The 2026 Warburton Lecture 25th April Diocese of Bristol : Study and Reflection Day for Sector Chaplains Well Being,
- [Gallery](https://www.jameswoodward.online/gallery/) - The transformation of Bishop Auckland and Auckland Castle by Jonathan Ruffer is remarkable and close to my roots and heart. I went to School in the neighbouring Spennymoor. On a visit home to see my sisters and brother I was in awe of this extraordinary collection. Here are some my highlights. 2023 Kettles Yard Cambridge
- [Ageing & Spirituality](https://www.jameswoodward.online/ageing-spirituality/) - Befriending the Older Stranger in us: Why we should be thinking about Age ? I wonder what image you most connect with ageing ? Each day we age and age takes many shapes and forms. For some it is a struggle and a seemingly inexorable set of diminishments towards death. This area of my website
- [Supervision](https://www.jameswoodward.online/supervision/) - This is Harlech Beach in the Snowdonia Park Wales which I captured in June of 2023. I stopped and looked into a different space and was amazed by the light and reflection. Supervision is a place of a place of noticing, reflecting and encounter where we can feel seen and heard. It can challenge us
- [Theological Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/theological-reflection/) - The Field of Practical Theology : Key Texts and Reviews From the Shores of Silence Conversations in Feminist Practical Theology Edited by Ashley Cocksworth, Rachel Starr and Stephen Burns with Nicola SleeSCM Press 2023 £30.00(ISBN 9780334060963) This book moves feminist theology from a sub section in the library catalogue of choices into the heart of the
- [SLG Oxford](https://www.jameswoodward.online/slg-oxford/) - I have had a long association with the Sisters of the Love of God since my undergraduate days at Kings College London in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I spent some time living alongside the Community in one of their houses at Boxmoor. I have grown to rely on their life and witness as
- [Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/about/sarum-college/) - Our Vision… Sarum College is an ecumenical centre for Christian study and research where our passion is learning that nourishes the human spirit. Welcoming people of all faiths and none, we offer space and time for enquiring minds to grow in wisdom and courage. Sarum College is an ecumenical study, conference and research centre in
- [CV](https://www.jameswoodward.online/about/cv/) - James Woodward BD AKC STh MPhil PhD Employment 2015 - Present Principal of Sarum College 2017 - Present Visiting Professor of TheologyUniversity of Winchester 2009 - 2015 Canon of Windsor 1998 - 2009 Master of the Foundation of Lady Katherine Leveson, Temple Balsall, Birmingham 2000 - 2009 Director of the Leveson Centre for the Study
- [Books](https://www.jameswoodward.online/publications/books/) - Journeying with John (with Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce), 2014, SPCK. Journeying with Matthew (with Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce), 2013, SPCK. Journeying with Luke (with Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce), 2012, SPCK. Journeying with Mark (with Paula Gooder and Mark Pryce), 2011, SPCK. Between Remembering and Forgetting The spiritual dimensions
- [Downloadable Resources](https://www.jameswoodward.online/ageing-spirituality/downloadable-resources/) - Worship with Older People Celebrating Age in Worship (Edited by Alison Johnson) - 2008 lthough many churches now have all-age worship services, these are often in fact aimed at making the service accessible to the younger people present rather than ensuring that everyone can participate and benefit. All too often it is assumed that if
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## Categories

- [Blog](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/)
- [Book Reviews](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/book-reviews/)
- [Film](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/film/)
- [Politics](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/politics/)
- [Older People](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/older-people/)
- [Spirituality and Religion](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/spirituality-and-religion/)
- [Books](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/books/)
- [Sabbatical in America](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/sabbatical-in-america/)
- [In Praise Of...](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/in-praise-of/)
- [Spiritual Musings](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/spiritual-musings/)
- [Uncategorized](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/uncategorized/)
- [Art](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/art/)
- [Humour](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/humour/)
- [Society](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/society/)
- [Story](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/story/)
- [Wales](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/wales/)
- [June Sabbatical](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/june-sabbatical/)
- [Death and Dying](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/death-and-dying/)
- [Sunday Pause for Thought](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/sunday-pause-for-thought/)
- [Temple Balsall](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/temple-balsall/)
- [Memoir](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/memoir/)
- [Poetry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/poetry/)
- [Places](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/places/)
- [Birmingham](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/birmingham/)
- [Music](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/music/)
- [Food](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/food/)
- [People](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/people/)
- [North East](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/north-east/)
- [Windsor](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/windsor/)
- [Saints](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/saints/)
- [Anglicanism](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/anglicanism/)
- [Dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/dementia/)
- [Leadership](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/leadership/)
- [Israel](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/israel/)
- [Theological Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/theological-reflection/)
- [Houses](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/houses/)
- [Health](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/health/)
- [Advent](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/advent/)
- [Christmas](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/christmas/)
- [New Year](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/new-year/)
- [Cathedrals](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/cathedrals/)
- [Easter](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/easter/)
- [Sarum](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/sarum/)
- [Age](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/age/)
- [Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/sarum-college/)
- [Pastoral and Practical Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/pastoral-and-practical-theology/)
- [Spiritual Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/spiritual-care/)
- [Chaplaincy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/chaplaincy/)
- [Sermons](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/blog/sermons/)
- [Film Reviews](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/film-reviews/)
- [Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/sarum-college-2/)
- [Social Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/social-care/)
- [Research Methods](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/research-methods/)
- [Lent](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/lent/)
- [Lectionary Resources](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/lectionary-resources/)
- [Prayer](https://www.jameswoodward.online/category/prayer/)

## Tags

- [Human Flourishing](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/human-flourishing/)
- [Sexuality](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/sexuality/)
- [Christian Ethics](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/christian-ethics/)
- [Health and Social Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/health-and-social-care/)
- [Medicine](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/medicine/)
- [Older People](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/older-people/)
- [Ecclesiology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/ecclesiology/)
- [Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/theology/)
- [Theologians](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/theologians/)
- [Chaplaincy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/chaplaincy/)
- [Pastoral and Practical Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/pastoral-and-practical-theology/)
- [Spirituality](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/spirituality/)
- [Theological Reflection](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/theological-reflection/)
- [Dementia](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/dementia/)
- [Pastoral Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/pastoral-care/)
- [Spiritual Care](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/spiritual-care/)
- [Biography](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/biography/)
- [Politics](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/politics/)
- [Sarum College](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/sarum-college/)
- [Add new tag](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/add-new-tag/)
- [springtime](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/springtime/)
- [Christian Apologetics](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/christian-apologetics/)
- [lectionary resources](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/lectionary-resources/)
- [Stonehenge](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/stonehenge/)
- [Salisbury](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/salisbury/)
- [History](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/history/)
- [Malcolm Guite](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/malcolm-guite/)
- [Poetry](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/poetry/)
- [Alister McGrath](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/alister-mcgrath/)
- [Faith](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/faith/)
- [Choral Evensong](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/choral-evensong/)
- [Simon Reynolds](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/simon-reynolds/)
- [Liturgy](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/liturgy/)
- [St Helens Kelloe](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/st-helens-kelloe/)
- [Salisbury Cathedral](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/salisbury-cathedral/)
- [Narrative Theology](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/narrative-theology/)
- [Worth](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/worth/)
- [9/11](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/9-11/)
- [Books](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/books/)
- [Social Isolation](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/social-isolation/)
- [Belonging](https://www.jameswoodward.online/tag/belonging/)