Category belief
Dame Julian of Norwich
Dame Julian of Norwich was an anchoress. She lived in the fourteenth century and wrote “Revelations of Divine Love.”
She “good counsel did give” to her visitors, one of whom was Margery Kempe who wrote an autobiography, a rare and perhaps unique thing to do… Continue reading Dame Julian of Norwich
Poet on the Cliff
Let’s look again at St Aldhelm’s chapel, a small square Norman building on a cliff-edge. It stands at the very tip of a promontory on the Dorset coast called – a bit confusingly – St Alban’s Head.
The chapel is… Continue reading Poet on the Cliff
Shavings from The Rainbow
What is God, after all ?
If maggots in a dead dog
be but God kissing carrion,
what then is not God ?
And when the war began
it seemed that the poles
of the universe were cracking
and the whole
The Angel Overhead
In his grief, he asked the angel hanging overhead,
his faceless confessor :
Why, Lord, do sinners’ ways so grossly prosper ?
How can you allow the Lie so fatly to preside ?
And the angel answered :
I invited you to my feast,
my laden tables… Continue reading The Angel Overhead
The late David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham
Following the death of David Jenkins on September 4th, I want to bear witness in my own small way to his great stature as a man and true priest.
The first obituaries I read gave prominence to his Virgin Birth and Resurrection “denials.” And of course, in his time, he was called “The Red… Continue reading The late David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham
Sayings
Reaching for words
is like searching the earth
for stones
and then shaping them
one after another
into a path.
Your words took my breath away.
They killed me with their song.
They made my womb turn over.
Sing to me again.
The words… Continue reading Sayings
Shahada
I have recently imagined myself standing before a man of good sense, deep learning and positive engagement with humanity, and professing to that person my basic beliefs. A profession of faith. A sort of Shahada. Once, in a much less comfortable public situation than mine, Martin Luther