Category Archives: Christmas

#adventapertures2025: Christmas Day

Arise, shine, for the rays of God’s glory touch the earth.  We welcome the light that burns in the rising sun.  We welcome the light that dawns through the Holy Child of God.  We welcome the light that gleams through the growing earth.  We welcome the light that shines through saints and signs.  We welcomeContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Christmas Day”

Watchnight: for growth (unknowing)

I clear the surface of my desk and make a pool of light with my lamp.  I go off to fetch matches and light a candle.  One light is steady and sure, the other uncertain and flickering.  I open my notebook and work between these two poles.  On balance, it’s where I prefer to be:Continue reading “Watchnight: for growth (unknowing)”

Christmas Day: for birth

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. So IContinue reading “Christmas Day: for birth”

#adventapertures is back in 2024

After a break of a couple of years, I decided I wanted to write another series of daily photo reflections for Advent 2024. These #adventapertures (as I call them) bring a huge variety of source material together – from poetry, news journalism, cultural comment, scientific insight and music to biblical writings and liturgy. Each dayContinue reading “#adventapertures is back in 2024”

watchnight 2022

We met among alphabets.  I saw myself Greek: walking the walls, inviolate as logic, mistress of philosophy’s glassy tongue. Translation came slow.  I learned to trust Hebrew’s rich misreadings, risk reading between the lines: language of faith, our leap in the dark. ‘Among Alphabets’  Helen Tookey And when night comes, and you look back overContinue reading “watchnight 2022”

Blue Christmas 2: light is in the horizon yet

This piece was originally written for the Godspace blog to be a part of their Advent theme Proclaiming Justice, Seeking Peace Through Advent. It was published on 21 December 2022 here. All images by Kate Kennington Steer. … And if, as autumn deepens and darkens  I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems thatContinue reading “Blue Christmas 2: light is in the horizon yet”

whole: Christmas Day

Where is that place apart you summon us? Noisily we seek it and have no time to stay.  Stars are distant;  is it more distant still,  out in the dark in the shadow of thought itself?  No wonder it recedes as we calculate its proximity in light years. Maybe we were mistaken at the beginningContinue reading “whole: Christmas Day”

whole: day 2

Who speaks the sound of an echo? Who paints the image in a mirror? Where are the spectacles in a dream? Nowhere at all – that’s the nature of mind! Tree-Leaf Woman (8-11thc. Indian female practitioner of Tantric Buddhism) What is it that I think I know of myself?  I may not want to lookContinue reading “whole: day 2”

whole: Sunday 1

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight  I got from looking through a pane of glass  I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough  And held against the world of hoary grass.  (from ‘After Apple-picking’, Robert Frost) For the last few years I have been trying to change the way I think and talkContinue reading “whole: Sunday 1”