Awareness is always about presence. But how often are we present to ourselves and to our environment in a distracted world where electronic multi-tasking rules, even while we’re having a meal with a friend? From both within and without, that inner sacred place is continually invaded. Without this grace of space there will be no stillness for catching the cadences of the unfinished symphony beneath the surface of what happens. One Celtic evening, the mythical […]

It is often said that people are searching for meaning in their lives. But could it be rather that they are looking for evidence that they are really and truly alive? A boy sat on the steps of a building with a battered hat by his feet. A cardboard sign read: “I’m blind. Please help.” The hat held a few small coins. A man was walking by. He dropped a euro in the hat, picked […]

“I swear to you by the stars above, And below, if such there be, As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes, That’s how you’re loved by me.” Valentine greetings such as Ogden Nash’s verse will criss-cross our planet this week-end as lovers compete for new expressions of their love. Little did the third century Saint realise what he was starting when he signed himself off with ‘from your Valentine’ in a note to a girl […]

If we are to hear the silent music beneath the noisy traffic of our thinking, we need to learn how to leave the mind and focus on the senses. The distractions of modern life prevent us picking up the rhythm of grace. At a Metro station in Washington DC a man started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that rush hour […]

While January’s Janus, the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways, is always depicted as unrelentingly and ambiguously staring at the past and into the future, our God of Epiphany is embraced as forever creating new possibilities from within the womb of the present.  I like to think of January, my own birth month, as the month of courageous beginnings.   There is something of the child-beginner about January.  In the natural liturgy of the seasons, […]

In the first month of the new year, millions are ready to overcome their natural fears of the unknown and throw off the habit of the familiar to embrace a journey that requires patience, determination and boldness to change not only the way of looking at life but life itself. It is very early on the first day of the year. Intent and attentive, I’m sitting here at the window of my new home. The […]

The Christmas hype is well and truly over but the meaning of Incarnation has no ending. In January, the month of courageous beginnings, Christians will try to live out in their lives the Feast of Love and Mercy they have just celebrated. In a weeping world they will put love where there was no love and thus continue the human Incarnation of divine love.  Life itself, all that it brings, all that we experience, every […]

January is a month for courageous beginnings. Yet so many of us are starting the new year with less conviction than usual. This is an extraordinary moment in our history where fragmentation and confusion are casting heavy shadows over our day-to-day lives. Widespread populist power is a growing phenomenon in a radically changing world – a fragile world so wounded by the nightmares of terrorism, political upheaval and global warming. The challenges that face us […]

It was dark and I was taking the washing off my line. The lights streamed into the darkness from the kitchen, where my three girls were sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, chatting about their day. I watched the interaction between them, saw their animated discussion and knew that there, right in the heart of my home, God was too. A beautiful presence that set the place into radiance’. Paula, a friend, […]

It was dark and I was taking the washing off my line. The lights streamed into the darkness from the kitchen, where my three girls were sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, chatting about their day. I watched the interaction between them, saw their animated discussion and knew that there, right in the heart of my home, God was too. A beautiful presence that set the place into radiance’. Paula, a friend, […]

‘Excitement and joy flow out from Tom and Rhianna whenever they talk about the pregnancy. Their delight is infectious but more striking is their sense of privilege – to be having this baby is wondrous gift. Together they’ve opened up a heightened awareness of the miracle, hope, promise of this one new life, a recognition of the holiness, fragility and wonder of this baby, their baby. There is a new stillness in them, as if […]

Some kinds of vulnerability – the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual suffering that accompanies vulnerability – can make us angry, bitter, resentful, depressed, over-anxious, determined to protect ourselves as much as possible, and thus we can close down our defences, hide behind walls, narrow our vision, see things in a black and white way – and so reduce our learning – we can hold the world at a distance, we see it or other people […]

There are many faces to loss and loneliness. One face is about the precariousness of our human condition. The heart still twists in me, for instance, when, visiting residential homes, I see the dull glaze in the lonely eyes that once shone with delight – a delight that fills the happy, faded, family photographs hanging on the wall behind them. One such person admitted to finding the sound of overheard laughter unbearably poignant. There is […]

There is a powerful pathos in the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Autumn is heavy with such imagery and recollections. Falling October leaves preach poignant panegyrics as they go. November makes us vulnerable to the ache of a lasting […]

If we are to hear the silent music beneath the noisy traffic of our thinking, we need to learn how to leave the mind and focus on the senses. The distractions of modern life prevent us picking up the rhythm of grace. At a Metro station in Washington DC a man started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that rush hour […]