Holiness
There is a way of living life, a mode of being religious that causes destruction wherever it appears. It is the misinterpretation of the concept of holiness. It was certainly an issue in Jesus’ day. The variety of the ‘Judaisms’…
The Moor
It was like church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God was there made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening…
The Doorway Into a Wound
The doorway into the silent land is a wound. Silence lays bare this wound. We do not journey far along the spiritual path before we get some sense of the wound of the human condition, and this is precisely why…
Thinking Our Way Out of Contemplation
Preserve a loving attentiveness to God with no desire to feel or understand any particular thing concerning God. – St John of the Cross, St. Maxims on Love, 9, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross .…
A Prayer
Gracious Spirit, who has given me eyes to see the light that fills my room, give me the inward vision to see you in my lived experience. Gracious Spirit, who has made me to feel the wind upon my limbs,…
Prayer as Consent
If we are honest, most of us have to admit that prayer is often more of an obligation than something arising spontaneously from desire . . . the core of the misunderstanding lies in thinking of prayer as something that…
Conventional Divisions Abolished By Joy
The coming of Jesus has certainly confused our experience of spirituality. Our relationship to divinity, ever since, has become much more subtle. Gone are the well-defined walls that separated what is godly from what is merely human. Gone is the…
O Holy Night
O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining, It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth. A thrill of hope the…