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Category Archives: prayer
Chaos and prayer
Without words, prayer falls formless and void; we must speak light to scare chaotic thought into patterns, comforting, familiar as poppies in the hedgerow – the spirit sighs deeply. Without prayer, words usurp God, creating worlds of their own imagination … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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When you pray
This was the prayer that first made me fall for Jesus, when I was a child. Of course, I learnt the expanded form that we use in worship; the one that we prayed, hands together, eyes closed, every morning at school assembly time (never at home). But even in its stripped down, barest form, as Luke presents Jesus teaching it, the world which this prayer conjures into being is enough to set my spirit on fire. Continue reading
The cathedral
Entering a slanted cathedral, pilgrim feet sheathed in tourist shoes, watching for the Spirit’s tell between the illustrated tombs; some unquiet air consecrated to the sighs of an unquiet world. If our hearts remain stone, and cold, at least, let … Continue reading
Stronghold
On a mountain of modest height, rendered in verse for its appetite for irony and steadfastness, they found the man, the poets say, guarding his skeleton where it lay. The way to the summit is strewn with the rubble of … Continue reading
Fridays are for mortality
The choice of incarnation, an island carved out of immortality, implies that God is not immune to hard weeks. Continue reading
Posted in prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged birdsong, death, grief, immortality, Trinity Sunday
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Pentecost 2019: Come, Holy Spirit
The Spirit has been present since before the birth of creation, brooding over the waters of the uncreated deep. She breathed life into the nostrils of the first human animals, according to the old stories. She has never been far from us. The trick is to catch sight of the movement of her wings, to hear the vibrations that she creates, the rush of air, the breath of heaven. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon
Tagged Holy Spirit, Pentecost
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who art in heaven
There is nothing wrong with our prayers, nor even with our orange stoles, unless they make no difference to the gaping wound that continues to haemorrhage life from this nation, that siphons off hope and replaces it with weaponry. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer
Tagged #OrangeStoleMovement, #WearOrange, gun violence, Lord's Prayer
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Prodigal prayer
Can we start over, with my head bent low and my knees bent lower, my eyes evading your pain hung high in case it engulfs my own? Can we start here, with my feet on the ground, my toes rooted … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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Sufficient
I came to you out of driving need: a child’s wailing, howling hunger for bread and tenderness. You fed me loaves of love wrapped in wrinkled hands and silver Now it is my need holds me at bay: the need … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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Undertow
I went to the water filled with chaos, foaming with worry, frothy with fear; I went to the water cold as winter, opaque as oil. I went to the water to see your Spirit spraying the rocks with invisible ink, animation drawn out of … Continue reading
