It could be the name of a prehistoric beast that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary, or a lover in a myth who gets metamorphosed into a book. It means treasury, but it is just a place where words congregate with their relatives, a bigContinue reading “Epiphany 2025: for coming home”
Tag Archives: soul work
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)”
Sunday 4: for waiting
Do this work until you feel the delight of it. In the trying is the desire. The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing. You won’t know what this is. You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God. You mustContinue reading “Sunday 4: for waiting”
day 14: for acceptance
I still believe mainly in the opportunities afforded by acceptance. Robert Adams If you have ever been frustrated, trying to photograph the beauty of the moon or a sunrise, then you will know that a snapshot is a mere recreation of what the human eye sees. It can’t do justice to the beauty we behold.Continue reading “day 14: for acceptance”
day 7: for discomfort
She loves the wind. There on the edge of the known world, at ninety, In her tall house, any wildness in the elements Is as welcome as an old friend. When the surgically patched elms and sycamores Crack off their heavy limbs in the freak snow storm Of October, she rejoices; the massy hail ThatContinue reading “day 7: for discomfort”
day 4: for preparation
‘What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.’ A.W. Tozer I reach for the empty suitcase, and wonder if today is the day when I will have enough energy to discern what needs to be put in it. And then I run out of days.Continue reading “day 4: for preparation”
day 2: for emptiness
It might seem that we have to generate the sense of openness, freshness, joy, revelry, or stillness we touch in such moments. From the Buddhist perspective, however, such a state of being is already there within us and has been so since the beginning. It’s tantalizing to think that perhaps expansiveness lies waiting to beContinue reading “day 2: for emptiness”
k’s big bday gratitude: one year (and a bit) on
Last week I finished writing all my thank you cards, notes and letters to those who donated to the fundraising campaign I launched as part of my ‘Big Birthday’ celebrations. To my utter amazement, we managed to raise over £950.00 for the charity Creative Response which has been such a crucial lifeline for me sinceContinue reading “k’s big bday gratitude: one year (and a bit) on”
Epiphany 2023: knowing in whole…
Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on this earth in the winters of this climate. Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she sufferedContinue reading “Epiphany 2023: knowing in whole…”
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”