#adventapertures2025: day 23

Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love. St. Augustine So the Wise-Ones were directed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Continue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 23”

#adventapertures2025: day 6

Seeing is not the work of the eyes alone… Deprived of the privilege of the eyes [the blind person] measures at the same time his loss and his gain. Most of all, he continues to live and to experience with an irresistible force the wonderful mutual exchange that takes place between the inner and theContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 6”

#adventapertures 2025

In order to subscribe to this #adventapertures series, please go to the home page and click the white subscribe button which is normally found at the bottom right of the screen. If you already receive an automatic feed via email from WordPress on behalf of imageintoikon.com – then you’re already signed up! You need toContinue reading “#adventapertures 2025”

an elemental year: Sashiko

This piece was originally written as a ‘monk in the world’ piece for Abbey of the Arts here. I am currently spending a year exploring the elements in the company of the Kinship Photography Collective.  My practice group (a special mix of people who are able to meet on zoom during the day in the U.S. andContinue reading “an elemental year: Sashiko”

I am limited

Last week it was my great honour to have another ‘monk in the world’ post published on the Abbey of the Arts Blog. Here is that post: A few months ago I wrote these words in response to a series of photographs (some of which are pictured here) I made in collaboration with the KinshipContinue reading “I am limited”

Blue Christmas: for mourning

Grief is a response to an irreversible loss… To generate grief rather than sadness, the thing lost must carry great emotional weight, and it must pull back the veil that covers a transcendent aspect of the world. Breathe out to push the fog away from a brilliant pinpoint of light. … Gravity holds my feetContinue reading “Blue Christmas: for mourning”

day 20: for nourishment

In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimateContinue reading “day 20: for nourishment”

day 5: for darkness

Consider this.  In the shadow of a perfectly round object, you will find a rebellious glimmer of light – a bright spot in the middle.  I’m not being metaphorical here.  I really mean to queer the essential and disturb its eminence.  What better way to do it in this case than to point to lightContinue reading “day 5: for darkness”

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”