Category Archive

THE HONEST SELF-ASSESSMENT
Humility is the mother of all virtues;
purity, charity and obedience.  
It is in being humble
that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent.  
If you are humble nothing will touch you,
neither praise nor disgrace,
because you know what you are.  
If you are blamed
you will not be discouraged.  
If they call you a saint
you will not put yourself on a pedestal.
~ Mother Teresa of Calcutta

THE NARRATIVE & THE NARRATOR

We create stories
& stories create us.
~ Chinua Achebe

THE ONE WITH THE HALO!

The saint
is essentially someone
who communicates & radiates
the character of God,
his love, his joy, his peace.
~ Kenneth Leach

COURAGE & CONFIDENCE

Relying on God
has to start all over again everyday,
as if nothing as yet been done.
~ C.S.Lewis

OUT OF ADVERSITY: STRENGTH

All the adversity I’ve had in my life,
has strengthened me.
You may not realize it when it happens,
but a kick in the teeth
may be the best thing in the world for you.
~ Walt Disney

KINDNESS

Kindness is more important than wisdom,
and the recognition of this
is the beginning of wisdom.
~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

PERSEVERANCE

Continuous effort
~ not strength or intelligence ~
is the key to unlocking our potential.
~ Sir Winston Churchill

FOR BIBLE SUNDAY

My own experience
is that the Bible is dull when I am dull.
When I am really alive,
and set in upon the text with a tidal pressure of living affinities,
it opens,
it multiplies discoveries,
and reveals depths even faster than I can note them.
The worldly spirit shuts the Bible;
the Spirit of God makes it a fire,
flaming out all meanings and glorious truths.
~ Horace Bushnell

SEEKING PEACE & PURSUING IT

I treat as good those who are good.
I also treat as good those who are not good.
In acting this way my own goodness increases.
~ Laozi

Kind words can be short
& easy to speak,
but their echoes
are truly endless.
~ Mother Teresa

A long quarrel
means both sides are wrong.
~ Voltaire

To experience God’s presence
in earthly friendship
& to be friendliness oneself ~
that is the dialectic
which rules the good man’s life.
~ Ladislaus Boros
“Hidden God”

The quieter you become,
the more you can hear.
~ Ram Dass

The only way
you can truly get more out of life
for yourself
is to give part of yourself away.
~ Jim Stovall

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God
that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities
that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received,
and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing that you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into our bones,
and allow your soul the freedom
to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and everyone of you.
~ St Teresa

I must not attempt to control God’s actions;
I must not count the stages
in the journey he would have me make.
I ask him to make a saint of me,
yet I must leave to him
the choice of that saintliness itself
and still more the choice of the means which lead to it.
~ Mother Teresa

Humility is perfect quietness of heart.
It is to expect nothing,
to wonder at nothing that is done to me,
to feel nothing done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises me,
and when I am blamed or despised.
It is to have a blessed home in the Lord,
where I can go in and shut the door,
and kneel to my Father in secret,
and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness,
when all around and above is trouble.
~ Andrew Murray

Our goal must not be
peace in our time
but peace for all time.
~ Harry S. Truman

Forgiveness does not change the past,
but it does enlarge the future.
~ Paul Boese

Responsibility does not only lie
with the leaders of our countries
or with those who have been appointed
or elected
to do a particular job.
It lies with each of us individually.
Peace, for example,
starts within each one of us.
When we have inner peace,
we can be at peace with those around us.
~ The Dalai Lama

THE HOLY PLACE…

Though on Yom Kippur
our prayers and thoughts are directed heavenward,
the real Yom Kippur must take place within us.
It is far easier to confess one’s sins and shortcomings
to an unseen God
than to confess them truly to one’s self.
The Torah teaches us that the High Priest of Israel
entered the holy sanctuary – the inner sanctum – of the Temple
on Yom Kippur.
The Talmud called that entrance
of the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest,
as entering “Lifnai u’lfanim.”
This phrase meant entering deep within.
The rabbis of the Talmud
were not only referring to the physical entering
into the chamber of the Holy of Holies
in the Temple in Jerusalem
but they were obliquely referring to entering
our own very most inner chambers
of heart, mind and soul.
All of us are bidden on Yom Kippur to enter
“Lifnai u’lfanim.”
For without true self-examination
and true commitment to self- improvement,
Yom Kippur can, God forbid,
be an exercise in futility
if not even a meaningless charade.
That is what the prophet Isaiah warns us of
in the great haftorah of his
that we read on the morning of Yom Kippur:
“Is this the fast day that I ask of you?
That you should bend your head to Me like a reed
or that you should beat your breast with your fist?”
All such public contrition is meaningless
if it is not accompanied by a heartfelt conviction
for self-improvement
and for better behaviour towards God and man
consistent with such convictions and self-analysis.
~ Rabbi Wein

SPEAKING PEACE

Mankind must put an end to war,
or war will put an end to mankind…
War will exist until that distant day
when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige
that the warrior does today.
~ John F. Kennedy

Restlessness and impatience
change nothing
except our peace and joy.
Peace does not dwell in outward things,
but in the heart
prepared to wait trustfully and quietly
on him who has all things safely in his hands.

~ Elisabeth Elliot

SERVING GOD’S CREATION

Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals)
is our first duty to them,
but to stop there is not enough.
We have a higher mission:
to be of service to them
whenever they require it.
~ Francis of Assisi

WHICH WAY SHALL WE GO?

There is a guidance for each of us,
and by lowly listening,
we shall hear the right word.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

LIFE MODEL

Love the earth & sun & animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid & crazy,
Devote your income & labour to others . . .
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
~ Walt Whitman

THE MATHEMATICS OF HARMONY

People need loving the most
when they deserve it the least.
~ John Harrison

In love one and one are one.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre

THE HEAVENLY HOST

It is not because angels
are holier than men or devils
that makes them angels,
but because they do not expect holiness
from one another,
but from God alone.  
~ William Blake

RE-TELLING ONE’S STORY

Those who do not have power
over the story that dominates their life,
power to retell it, rethink it,
deconstruct it, and joke about it,
and change it as times change,
truly are powerless,
because they can not think new thoughts.
~ Salman Rushdie

TURNING POINTS
No trumpets sound
when the important decisions of our life made.  
Destiny is made known silently.
~ Agnes De Mille

THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO

Nothing is more terrible
than to see ignorance in action.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

MYSTERY

That great chain of causes,
which, linking one to another,
even to the throne of God Himself,
can never be unravelled
by any industry of ours.
~ Edmund Burke

HUMILITY
The true way to be humble
is not to stoop till you are smaller than yourself,
but to stand at your real height
against some higher nature
that shall show you what the real smallness
of your greatest greatness is.
~ Author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”
Phillips Brooks
Bishop of Massachusetts
& Advocate of the Emancipation of the Slaves

ARROGANCE

When men are most sure and arrogant,
they are commonly the most mistaken,
and have then given views to passion,
without that proper deliberation and suspense
which can alone secure them
from the grossest absurdities.
~ David Hume

STIMULATING EXAMPLES
Emulation is a handsome passion;
it is enterprising, but just withal.
It keeps a man within the terms of honour,
and makes the contest for glory just and generous.
He strives to excel,
but it is by raising himself,
not by depressing others.
~ Jeremy Collier

MAMMON’S MALEVOLENCE

Whenever money
is the principle object of life
with either man or nation,
it is both ill got,
& spent ill,
& does harm
both in the getting
& spending.
~ John Ruskin
“The Crown of Wild Olives”

DESTINY
The wheels of nature
are not made to roll backward;
everything presses on toward Eternity;
from the birth of Time
an impetuous current has set in,
which bears all the sons of men
toward that interminable ocean.
Meanwhile heaven is attracting to itself
whatever is congenial to its nature,
is enriching itself by the spoils of earth,
and collecting within its capacious bosom,
whatever is pure, permanent and divine.
~ Robert Hall

BEING TOGETHER TO DOING TOGETHER

Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.
~ Henry Ford

KINDNESS IS CATCHING

One great reason
why men practice generosity so little in the world
is their finding so little there.
Generosity is catching;
and if so many men escape it,
it is in a great degree from the same reason
the countrymen escape the smallpox…
…because they meet no one to give it to them.
~ Sir Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, Lord Brooke

THE CRADLING GOD

The soul is a breath of living spirit,
that with excellent sensitivity,
permeates the entire body to give it life.
Just so, the breath of the air makes the earth fruitful.
Thus the air is the soul of the earth,
moistening it, greening it.
~ Hildegard of Bingen

PATIENCE

Human beings, like plants,
grow in the soil of acceptance,
not in the atmosphere of rejection.
~ Sir John Powell

FULL OF GOOD WORKS

To pity distress
is but human;
to relieve is Godlike.
~ Horace Mann

THE CROSS THAT CROSSES OUT WHAT IS WRONG

The believer is one who places
a particular kind of interpretation
on his past
~ he sees it as salvation.
And he does this,
not by selecting from it what suits him;
not by ignoring the less pleasant bits.
He ignores nothing.
He accepts it all
as the way God brought him;
learns from it all,
but is bowed down by none of it.
His past becomes not the history of failure,
but the history of what God
has done to him, & for him, & with him.
~ Henry McKeating
“God & the Future”

FLASH-POINT

To be surprised,
to wonder,
is to begin to understand.
~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMB

All the world is full of suffering.
It is also full of overcoming.
~ Helen Keller

LETTING GO OF PAST WRONGS
How sure we are of our own forgiveness from God.
How certain we are that we are made in His image,
when we forgive heartily and out of hand
one who has wronged us.
Sentimentally we may feel,
and lightly we may say,
“To err is human, to forgive divine;”
but we never taste the nobility and divinity of forgiving
till we forgive and know the victory of forgiveness
over our sense of being wronged,
over mortified pride and wounded sensibilities.
Here we are in living touch with Him
who treats us as though nothing had happened
–who turns His back upon the past,
and bids us journey with Him into goodness and gladness,
into newness of life.
~  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

IN SORROW: SILENCE
Believe me,
it is no time for words
when the wounds are fresh and bleeding;
no time for homilies
when the lightning’s shaft has smitten,
and the man lies stunned and stricken.
Then let the comforter be silent;
let him sustain by his presence,
not by his preaching;
by his sympathetic silence,
not by his speech.
~ George Horace Lorimer

THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT

Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God.
They love with a love that glows.
They serve with a faith that kindles.
They serve with a devotion that consumes.
They hate sin with fierceness that burns.
They rejoice with a joy that radiates.
Love is perfected in the fire of God.
~ Samuel Chadwick

MARTYRDOM

Who falls
for love of God
shall rise a star.
~ Ben Jonson

CARING FOR CREATION

By having a reverence for life,
we enter into a spiritual relation with the world.
By practicing reverence for life
we become good, deep, and alive.
~ Albert Schweitzer

A man is ethical
only when life, as such,
is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals
as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help.
~ Albert Schweitzer

GOD’S FREEDMEN

The cause of freedom
is the cause of God.
~ William Lisle Bowles

CREATION TIME

‘What is the food like?’, ‘Who is providing the food?’, ‘Is there enough
food to go round?’ Food-poisoning, food-rationing, food-security, food market.
Our everyday talk constantly makes reference to food. And this
is no surprise, as obviously food and drink are essentials for life. We
need food for energy on a regular basis. And food is also one of the
enjoyments of life, if we are not worrying where the next meal is coming
from. Food is a major part of our trade. Much of our land is given to food
production. Huge industries are involved in food distribution and retail.
Christians acknowledge that the ultimate source of our food is the
Creator God, whose faithfulness to the covenant promise that seed-time
and harvest will not cease is our ultimate food security. But there is a
great deal that happens between the feeding and watering ‘by God’s
Almighty hand’ and the enjoyment of food at a party in suburbia, or the
empty stomachs of too many people in sub-Saharan Africa. When we
pray “Give us our daily bread” we are both acknowledging our
dependence on God’s generosity, and our realisation that the answer to
that prayer needs to include agriculture, commerce, sharing, trade justice,
animal welfare, diet and a host of other considerations.
This year our Creation Time sermon notes focus on the theme of Food in
God’s creation, and we will select the themes of celebration, responsible
choices, sufficiency, equity and faithful discipleship. May God make us
more aware of his generosity and our responsibilities as we pray.
~ Sermon Notes prepared by Bishop David Atkinson
for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland
for this Sunday in Creation Time.
These notes do not provide complete sermons in outline,
but a rich selection of suggestions, starting points,
and possible lines to follow.

THE SEARCH FOR NEW POWER

The fifth revolution will come
when we have spent the stores of coal and oil
that have been accumulating in the earth
during hundreds of millions of years. . . .
It is to be hoped that before then
other sources of energy will have been developed. . . .
Whether a convenient substitute for the present fuels is found or not,
there can be no doubt that there will have to be
a great change in ways of life.
This change may justly be called a revolution,
but it differs from all the preceding ones
in that there is no likelihood
of its leadings to increases of population,
but even perhaps to the reverse.
~ Charles Galton Darwin
(grandson of the author of “The Origin of the Species”)

THE VITAL LINK

We won’t have a society
if we destroy the environment.
~ Margaret Mead

SHARING OUR RESOURCES

The earth we abuse
and the living things we kill
will, in the end, take their revenge;
for in exploiting their presence
we are diminishing our future.
~ Marya Mannes

FOR THE FEAST OF ST AIDAN
If there is righteousness in the heart,
there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character,
there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home,
there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
there will be peace in the world.
So let it be
~ from a Celtic Blessing

FROM PRAYER TO PRAISE
Hast thou not seen
how all in the Heavens & in the Earth
uttereth the praise of God?
the very birds as they spread their wings?
Every creature knoweth its prayer & its praise!
And God knoweth what they do.
~ The Qu’ran

FROM SORROW TO JOY

There will be no Christian
but what will have a Gethsemane,
but every praying Christian
will find that there is no Gethsemane
without its angel!
~ Thomas Binney

HERE I STAND

It is a blessed thing that in every age
some one has had individuality enough
and courage enough
to stand by his own convictions,
some one who had the grandeur to say his say.
I believe it was Magellan who said,
“The church says the earth is flat;
but I have seen its shadow on the moon,
and I have more confidence even in a shadow
than in the church.”
On the prow of his ship
were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll

BELIEVING IS SEEING

Faith is to believe
what we do not see;
and the reward of this faith
is to see what we believe.
~ St Augustine of Hippo

UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY

The diversity in the faculties of men,
from which the rights of property originate,
is not less an insuperable obstacle
to a uniformity of interests.
The protection of these faculties
is the first object of government.
From the protection of different and unequal faculties
of acquiring property,
the possession of different degrees and kinds of property
immediately results.
~ James Madison

RENEWAL

Millions of men have lived
to fight, build palaces and boundaries,
shape destinies and societies;
but the compelling force of all times
has been the force of originality and creation
profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.
~ Ansel Adams

New links must be forged as old ones rust.
~ Jane Howard

FRIENDSHIP

We dwell in the shelter of one another.
~ Irish proverb

FAITH IN THE FUTURE

There is one thing which gives radiance to everything.
It is the idea of something around the corner.
~ G. K. Chesterton

A FRIEND IN NEED

It is a consolation to the wretched
to have companions in misery.
An agreeable companion on a journey
is as good as a carriage.
~ Publilius Syrus

BOWING OUT GRACEFULLY
If even dying is to be made a social function,
then, grant me the favour
of sneaking out on tiptoe
without disturbing the party.
~ Dag Hammarskjold

THE SURROUNDING ARMS
There are three pictures of Mary.
In the first, she has a child in her arms.
In the second, she nurses that child
who is now just a broken, wounded body
descending from the cross.
In the third, she, as an old woman,
is received into heaven
into the arms of that same child.

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship is a plant
that loves the sun,
yet thrives ill under clouds.
~ Amos Bronson Alcott

THE SUB-TEXT FOR SO MANY

Our Father who art in Heaven
Stay there
And we will stay on Earth
Which is sometimes so lovely.
~ Jacques Prévert, translated by Sarah Lawson

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

Living in our own hermetically sealed bubble
is not enough.
~ The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres
on the recent wave of rioting  

A SHOW OF STRENGTH

When you go through hardships
& decide not to surrender,
that is strength.
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

The force needed on our streets today
is force of character not force of arms.
The resilience of our civic life
cannot be imposed from outside
but must be nurtured in our society
by faith communities,
firm family ties & solid friendships.

MINDING

“Mindless…”
is the reaction of so many
looking on at the violence
currently erupting in our evening streets.
But these are not nights of the living dead.
Those perpetrating vandalism
are neither zombies nor automatons.
They communicate through social networking sites
& can articulate, not just through committing outrages,
their disaffection with society,
their bitterness towards the police
& their grievances against a society
that places its faith in convenience stores.
Not mindless then:
but certainly heartless.
And whereas it will take a commission or so
before the mind of the mob can be read,
faith & community leaders are already at work
in the task for which all have responsibility:
to give new heart & different hopes
to our disenchanted & disengaged.

LITTLE DEEDS OF KINDNESS

Small service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest friends, bright Creature! scorn not one;
The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dew drop from the Sun.
~ William Wordsworth,
to a Child: Written in Her Album

TRUST

It is a view of God
that compensates every thing else,
and enables the soul to rest in His bosom.
How, when the child in the night screams with terror,
hearing sounds that it knows not of,
is that child comforted and put to rest?
Is it by a philosophical explanation
that the sounds were made by the rats in the partition?
Is it by imparting entomological knowledge?
No;
it is by the mother taking the child in her lap,
and singing sweetly to it, and rocking it.
And the child thinks nothing of the explanation,
but only of the mother.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

TRANSCENDING EVIL

Children of the atomic age
can never forget that it was
on the day of the Feast of the Transfiguration
that the first atomic bomb was dropped.
Eyewitnesses spoke of a flash
“brighter than a thousand suns”.
there could be no sharper posing
of the question,
“Which power do we in reality
worship & follow?”
Is it that power
which harnesses the forces of God’s world
for blind & indiscriminate destruction,
in which human beings are “wasted”,
reduced to shadows on the pavement?
Or is it the power of the One
who shines on the mountain top,
the One whom our Celtic ancestors called,
“the Sun behind all suns”,
in whom our humanity is glorified?
~ Leith Fisher

EMBRACING MISFORTUNE

The difficulties of life are intended
to make us better, not bitter.
~ Jim Vaske

TO WHOM ARE WE GIVING?
When we give alms,
we should think that we are giving
to our Lord,
and not to the poor.
We often think we are relieving a poor person,
and we find it is our Lord.
~ Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, the Curé d’Ars

DESTINY

Learning to live with what your born with
is the process, the involvement,
the making of a life.
~ Diane Wakoski

THE FAST

Leanness of body & soul
may go together.
~ John Owen

THE FORCE FOR THE GOOD

To overcome evil with good is good,
to resist evil with evil is evil.
~ The Prophet Muhammad

WHICH IS EASIER?

The hunger for love
is much more difficult to remove
than the hunger for bread.
~ Mother Teresa

DIRECT DIRECTIONS

Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven?
Certainly,
turn at once to the right,
then go straight forward.
~ William Wilberforce

HOME

Home
should be an oratorio of the memory,
singing to all our after life
melodies and harmonies
of old-remembered joy.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

CONFIDENCE

A Christian’s freedom from anxiety
is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble,
but to the folly of worry
and especially to the confidence that God is our Father,
that even permitted suffering
is within the orbit of his care.
~ John Stott
whose death was announced today

TESTING TIMES

Great occasions
do not make heroes or cowards;
they simply unveil them to the eyes of men.
Silently and perceptibly,
as we wake or sleep,
we grow strong or weak;
and last some crisis shows what we have become.
~ Brooke Foss Westcott

BOLD AGE

Old men’s lives are lengthened shadows;
their evening sun falls coldly on the earth,
but the shadows all point to the morning.
~  Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

GREATNESS

There is a great man
who makes every man
feel small.
But the real great man
is the man who makes every man
feel great.
~ G. K. Chesterton
“Charles Dickens”

CONTAGION

All work is as seed sown;
it grows and spreads,
and sows itself anew.
~ Thomas Carlyle

GIVEN IN TRUST

Property is a divine trust.
Things are tools, not prizes.
Life is not for self-indulgence, but for self-devotion.
When, instead of saying,
“The world owes me a living,”
men shall say,
“I owe the world a life,”
then the kingdom will come in power.
We owe everything to God but our sins.
Fatherland, pedigree, home-life, schooling, Christian training,
~ all are God’s gifts.
Every member of the body or faculty of mind
is ours providentially.
There is no accomplishment in our lives
that is not rooted in opportunities and powers
we had nothing to do with in achieving.
“What hast thou that thou didst not receive?”
If God gives us the possibilities and the power to get wealth,
to acquire influence,
to be forces in the world,
what is the true conception of life
but divine ownership and human administration?
“Of Thine own we render Thee.”
All there is of “me” is God’s estate,
and I am His tenant and agent.
On the day of our birth a new lease is signed.
On the day of our death accounts are closed.
Our fidelity is the interest on God’s principal.
“That I may receive mine own with interest,”
is the divine intention.
So live,
that when thy summons comes
to give an account of thy stewardship,
it may be done with joy, and not with grief!
~ Maltbie Davenport Babcock

MARY OUR MODEL

The writer of John’s gospel
gives Mary a serious role in her own right.
She is part of an emergent ministry team,
which is to launch the way of Jesus into the world.
Perhaps she is his lover,
perhaps she is his wife or his sister
or his fiancée or his cousin…
it doesn’t matter.
What matters in terms of the gospel,
is that she is the one who goes
and tells the others
that Jesus has risen from the dead.
Mary is the primary evangelist and apostle,
who is the first to receive the good news, the gospel,
and who receives the instruction go and tell.
She is the primary bearer,
not of a child, as in The Da Vinci Code,
but of the gospel given to her by Jesus….

Mary of Bethany is a role-model
for loving service in action,
someone prepared to demonstrate
genuine tenderness to another,
even daring to express really intimate tenderness,
at the risk of being terribly misunderstood.
~ Annie Heppenstall-West

FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA

I have often thought
what a melancholy world this would be
without children,
and what an inhuman world
without the aged.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

FOR GRACE ABOUNDING

We should act with as much energy
as those who expect everything from themselves;
and we should pray with as much earnestness
as those who expect everything from God.
~ Charles Caleb Colton

YOUR FAITH HAS MOULDED YOU

Every major question in history
is a religious question.
Faith has more effect in moulding life
than nationalism or a common language.
~ Hilaire Belloc
who died on July 16th 1953

TO DO OUR DUTY

Never to tire,
never to grow cold;
to be patient, sympathetic, tender;
to look for the budding flower and the opening heart;
to hope always;
like God, to love always
…this is duty.
~ Henri-Frederic Amiel

ALL SHALL BE ONE

Poems are prayers,
Dives and Lazarus of one flesh.
~ Samuel Beckett

HARD CASH

Money, in truth, can do much,
but it cannot do all.
We must know the province of it,
and confine it there,
and even spurn it back
when it wishes to get farther.
~ Thomas Carlyle

HE DID NOT WANT TO BE FOUND

I want to suggest that although the older son
stayed home with his father his entire life
he was just as lost as his younger brother
and perhaps even more so.
The younger son at least knew he was lost and sinful
and came to his Father, with humility.
It’s obvious, when reading this last part of our story
that the older son never found any joy
in being home with his father.
Although he was physically present,
spiritually he was far from home and filled with pride.
He’s resentful and angry,
unable to enjoy his brother’s homecoming,
instead he has a spirit of complaint
that thinks only of himself.
In the same way that the Father offered forgiveness and grace
to the younger son,
it’s offered to the older son as well.
The Father goes out to the older son
and pleads with him to join in the celebration
but he refuses.
We’re left with a picture of a man
who is resentful, angry and jealous
and more lost than his younger brother,
who willingly received forgiveness.
And so I would say to those of you
who feel like you’ve always done the right things
that perhaps you need to return to your Father as well.
~ Jackie Bolen

PRESUMPTIOUS CLAIMS

Those who dare to interpret God’s will
must never claim him as an asset
for one nation or group rather than another.
War springs from the love and loyalty
which should be offered to God
being applied to some God substitute,
one of the most dangerous being nationalism.
~ Robert Runcie, who died on July 11th 2000

HOSPITALITY

Let not the emphasis of hospitality
lie in bed and board;
but let truth and love
and honour and courtesy
flow in all thy deeds.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

GROWING IN LOWLINESS

The true way to be humble
is not to stoop till you are smaller than yourself,
but to stand at your real height
against some higher nature
that shall show you
what the real smallness of your greatest greatness is.
~ Phillips Brooks

CRITICISM

I do not care very much
what men say of me,
provided that God approves of me.
~ Sir Thomas More
in a Letter to Erasmus

A DOCTOR’S DIAGNOSIS

Men that look no further than their outsides,
think health an appurtenance unto life,
and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick;
but I that have examined the parts of man,
and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs,
do wonder that we are not always so;
and considering the thousand doors that lead to death,
do thank my God that we can die but once.
~ Sir Thomas Browne

INDEPENDENCE

For my own private satisfaction,
I had rather be master of my own time
than wear a diadem.
~ Bishop George Berkeley

DOUBT: DIVINE OR DEADLY?

All that belongs to human understanding,
in this deep ignorance and obscurity,
is to be sceptical,
or at least cautious;
and not to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever;
much less, of any which is supported
by no appearance of probability.
~ David Hume
Scepticism is slow suicide.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A BAPTISM OF FIRE

If you are going through hell,
keep going.
~ Sir Winston Churchill

MAKING EVERY EFFORT

A hundred times every day
I remind myself that my inner and outer life
depend on the labours of other men, living and dead,
and that I must exert myself
in order to give in the same measure
as I have received
and am still receiving.
~ Albert Einstein

SELF SERVICE

The best way to find yourself
is to lose yourself
in the service of others.
~ Indira Gandhi

SOLID AS A ROCK?

If it had been up to Peter himself,
despite his leadership qualities and boldness,
the Church would not have got off the ground.
But Jesus said,
“You are Peter, and on this rock
I will build my Church.”
He said, “I will build my church.”
Peter is not the builder, nor is he in charge.
God is in charge,
and he used Peter to build his church.
How could this be?
We’ve seen how unstable Peter was.
He failed. More than once. Just as we do.
But the church has been built,
and it continues to be built,
by the Lord himself,
through the power of His Word.
~ Pastor W. Logan
Pittsworth Lutheran Church

RICH TOWARDS GOD

Our society and our church speak a lot about belief
as it relates to sex and relationships,
but we say less about belief as it relates to money.
Part of the reason may be
because we all know we are implicated
through money in structures and habits of sin,
and we feel uncomfortable about it,
and wish we weren’t,
but we don’t know how to get free of it.
Jesus had more to say about money
than any other sphere of personal conduct,
not because money is more immoral than anything else,
it isn’t,
but because it goes to the very heart
of our relationship with God.
For the word ‘money’ read ‘security’ and read ‘meaning’.
We use money to build into our lives
both security and meaning,
and that drives God out of the very place where he belongs.
That is why our use of money
is contested space
and why Jesus has so much to say about it.
~ The Venerable Ian Jagger
Archdeacon of Durham

EVERY SPARROW COUNTS

We defy augury.
There’s a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ’tis not to come.
If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now,
yet it will come
—the readiness is all.
Since no man of aught he leaves knows,
what is ’t to leave betimes?
Let be.
~ William Shakespeare: Hamlet

DEDICATION

When we have learned
to offer up every duty
connected with our situation in life
as a sacrifice to God,
a settled employment
becomes just a settled habit of prayer.
 ~ Lord Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

SUFFER FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH

Truth is often attended with danger.
~ Marcellinus Ammianus

THIS IS THE WITNESS OF JOHN

I imagine that you don’t spend
very much time thinking about John the Baptist.
Understandably
 - he’s an obscure character from a very old story.

But when you do stop to think about him,
I wonder how you picture John the Baptist
in your mind’s eye:
perhaps as a bit of an oddball,
a wild man walking barefoot in the desert,
with unkempt hair and shocking clothes,
and eating habits that probably meant that
when he opened his mouth
to begin one of his uncontrolled rants,
the air around him smelt bad.

John’s place in history is undisputed.
He is down as the chief witness to Jesus Christ.
He’s the one God chose
to explain to the waiting world
just who Jesus was and what he was likely to do.

I don’t know about you,
but if I ever need to find someone to witness for me,
I’d be looking for someone respectable,
someone with a bit of influence,
a professional of some sort.
Stood next to a city councillor
or a head teacher or a bishop,
John the Baptist with his hair and halitosis,
looks like a very unreliable witness.

Yet, here is one of the strange ironies
of the Christian faith….
God chooses unreliable witnesses
to reveal the truth to the world.
The people least likely
to be listened to by polite society,
are precisely the ones who hold the key
to real understanding.

If you want to find out what it’s really like
trying to seek refuge in a foreign country,
then you’ll get a far better impression
by spending an afternoon
with an asylum-seekers project
than by reading the Daily Mail.
The scraggy Big Issue seller
- who actually reminds you a bit of John the Baptist
when you look at him –
may rant on about the uselessness of the benefit system
for people like him,
but he’s worth listening to
because he’s educating you,
far better than a textbook,
about the realities of living in poverty in Britain today.

Unreliable witnesses turn out to be truth-keepers.
So let’s tune our ears to hear the voices
that usually get censored, covered up,
the odd voices like John’s.
Let’s learn to discern them,
to sift out those which lead down blind alleys
and keep hold of those which offer
new enlightenment about our world,
new insight into our lives.
Like those who took John seriously,
we may find we can see things far more clearly
because of what these witnesses say.

The Revd John Davies
in a sermon at the Blue Coat school, Liverpool 2002

THE GREAT INVITATION

The Lord’s Supper
is the central act of Christian worship.
It is a prophecy, pledge, and prelude
to that “supper table of the Lamb,”
when we shall sit down
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
in the kingdom of our Father.
~ Gerard Benjamin Fleet Hallock

CONTINUE URGENT IN PRAYER

Prayer pulls the rope below,
and the great bell rings above
in the ears of God.
Some scarcely stir the bell,
for they pray so languidly;
others give but an occasional pluck at the rope;
but he who wins with heaven
is the man who grasps the rope boldly
and pulls continuously,
with all his might.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

DISTRACTIONS

Of course, it is easy for us to be like Martha and do things
~ most of us find it difficult to be like Mary and pray.
Not just finding the time, the initiative, and a quiet place to pray
~ we also find it difficult not to be distracted.
Perhaps, like me,
you start off wanting to be in the presence of the Lord
~ but suddenly, you’re thinking of things you want to fix up
or need praying about.  
Then suddenly, you’re distracted.
We would like to embrace prayer, eagerly, like Mary
~ but for most of us,
it’s a task that requires more work
than what Martha was doing in the kitchen.  
In comparison, Martha really had it easy!
Even she was distracted, as St. Luke says.  
So distraction about prayer is part of the story too.  
~ Tony Noble

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHARITY

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
“If I stop to help this man,
what will happen to me?”
But… the good Samaritan reversed the question:
“If I do not stop to help this man,
what will happen to him?”
~ Martin Luther King

FOR FATHERS’ DAY

A good father
is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed,
and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.
~ Billy Graham

I AM SMALL & OF NO REPUTATION

Size is not grandeur,
and territory does not make a nation.
~  Thomas Henry Huxley

YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS

You are never too old
to set another goal
or to dream a new dream.
~ Les Brown

ALL IN ALL

There is no place in my soul,
no corner of my character,
where God is not.
~ Evelyn Underhill

CHANGING THE WORLD

All over this magnificent world
God calls us to extend His kingdom
of shalom-peace and wholeness
— of justice, of goodness, of compassion,
of caring, of sharing, of laughter, of joy,
of reconciliation.
God is transfiguring the world
right this very moment through us
because God believes in us
and because God loves us.
What can separate us from the love of God?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
And as we share God’s love with our brothers and sisters,
God’s other children,
there is no tyrant who can resist us,
no opposition that cannot be ended,
no hunger that cannot be fed,
no wound that cannot be healed,
no hatred that cannot be turned into love,
no dream that cannot be fulfilled.
~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

CLEAR THE AIR!

Never allow gradually the traffic
to smother with noise and fog
the flowering of the spirit.
~ Stephen Spender

KINDLING ZEAL

You will find that for a smoking flax
there is no specific like heaven’s oxygen;
for a faint and flickering piety
there is no cure comparable
to the one without which all our own exertions
are but an effort to light a lamp in a vacuum
…the breath of the Holy Spirit.
~ James Hamilton

SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY!

I expect
to pass through this world but once.
Any good thing, therefore,
that I can do
or any kindness
I can show
to any fellow human
being let me do it now.
Let me not defer nor neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again.

~ Stephen Grellet, 1773-1855
French-born Quaker Minister

THE SULLENNESS OF SILENCES

War is what happens
when language fails.
~ Margaret Atwood

THE SINAI DISCLOSURE

In moments of inner concentration
we may become aware of the very essence of a thing.
We perceive it not only according to its external form
but feel ourselves to be communing with its inner being.
Such moments become for the artist an image in a poem or a vision
translated on to canvas.
According to the mystical tradition,
when God spoke at Sinai
all the world was manifest with such intensity
and we all had the capacity to perceive it in that way.
God still speaks today;
God speaks in all creation all the time.
Now, however, the task of seeing the world like that
is up to us.
What does God’s voice say?
On the one hand it speaks with redeeming beauty;
it restores the soul.
But on the other, it speaks in questions,
it never fails to interrogate,
piercing to the essence of who we are.
It is as if the sequel to, “I am the Lord your God,”
were,
“And who are you? What are you doing in my world?”
~ Jonathan Wittenberg

IF I HAVE NOT LOVE…

Sympathy wanting,
all is wanting;
its personal magnetism
is the conductor of the sacred spark
that lights our atoms,
puts us m human communion,
and gives us to company, conversation,
and ourselves.
~ Amos Bronson Alcott

THE POWER OF WORDS

Kind words are benedictions.
They are not only instruments of power,
but of benevolence and courtesy;
blessings both to the speaker
and hearer of them.
~ Frederick Saunders

GLORY IN GRAYNESS

As the sun’s rays
will irradiate even the murky pool,
and make its stagnant waters to shine like silver,
so doth God’s goodness and tender mercy,
towards the greatest sinner, and the blackest heart,
make his own image visible there!
~ Hosea Ballou

FOR COMMUNICATION SUNDAY

This communicating of a man’s self to his friend
works two contrary effects,
for it redoubleth joys,
and cutteth griefs in half.
~ Francis Bacon

NOT AWAY BUT HOME

Christ’s Ascension
seems to remove him from our sight,
to put him as it were
at a greater distance from us.
But the reverse is the case.
Because he is no longer confined
by time & place
he is no longer in one geographical or historical point
but able to be all things to all people….
close to us rather than far away.
As he himself puts it in Matthew’s account of the Ascension,
“I am with you always
to the end of time.”

ALL BROUGHT INTO FOCUS…

By the Ascension
all the parts of life are brought together
in the oneness of their common destination.
By the Ascension
Christ in His Humanity is brought close to every one of us,
and the words “in Christ,”
the very charter of our faith,
gain a present power.
By the Ascension
we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things
to that which makes all things capable of consecration.
Then it is that the last element in our confession
as to Christ’s work
speaks to our hearts.
He is not only present with us as Ascended:
He is active for us.
We believe that He sitteth
on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
~ Brooke Foss Westcott

THE ABYSS OF PEACE

Christ is already in that place of peace,
which is all in all.
He is on the right hand of God.
He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance
which issues from the everlasting throne.
He is in the very abyss of peace,
where there is no voice of tumult or distress,
but a deep stillness
~ stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods
which we can fancy;
that most perfect of joys,
the utter profound,
ineffable tranquillity
of the Divine Essence.
He has entered into His rest.
That is our home;
here we are on a pilgrimage,
and Christ calls us to His many mansions
which He has prepared.
~ Cardinal John Henry Newman

UP & ACROSS

The ascension of Elijah
may be compared to the flight of a bird,
which none can follow;
the ascension of Christ is, as it were,
a bridge between earth and heaven,
laid down for all who are drawn to him
by his earthly existence.
~ Michael Baumgarten

THE VISITATION

What strikes us about Mary
is above all her loving concern
for her elderly relative.
Hers is a practical love,
one which is not limited to words of understanding
but is deeply and personally involved
in giving help.
The Blessed Virgin
does not merely give her cousin
something of herself;
she gives her whole self,
asking nothing in return.
Mary understood perfectly
that the gift she received from God
is more than a privilege;
it is a duty which obliges her to serve others
with the selflessness proper to love.
~ Pope John Paul II

CARE FOR OUR PLANET

There are no passengers
on spaceship earth.
We are all crew.
~ Marshall McLuhan

INTERCESSION

Prayer begins
where human capacity ends.
~ Marian Anderson

GOD STEALS A MARCH

Blessedness
is a whole eternity older
than damnation.
~ Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

LIFE’S POSSIBILITIES

You see things;
and you say, ‘Why?’
But I dream things that never were;
and I say, “Why not?”
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)
“Back to Methuselah”

NEW WORLD: OLD VALUES

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change
is to establish
the sanctity of human life,
the dignity of man,
the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.
~ Emma Goldman

BEHIND THE WORDS

I want to write,
but more than that,
I want to bring out all kinds of things
that lie buried deep in my heart.
~ Anne Frank

TOTAL COMMITMENT

Do all the good you can,
in all the ways you can,
to all the souls you can,
in every place you can,
at all the times you can,
with all the zeal you can,
as long as ever you can.
~ John Wesley

JUST TWITTERING…
OR SPREADING GOOD NEWS?

The way we communicate
with others and with ourselves
ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
~ Tony Robbins

BUILT AS LIVING STONES

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men
is primarily based on mutual trust
and only secondarily on institutions
such as courts of justice and police.
~ Albert Einstein

CHANGING HISTORY…

Teach self-denial,
and make its practice pleasurable,
and you create for the world
a destiny more sublime
than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.
~ Sir Walter Scott

SEEKING A FAIRER WORLD

The injustice of men
subverts the justice of God,
and often also his mercy.
~ Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine (Soimonoff)

FOR CHRISTIAN AID WEEK
We make a living
by what we get,
we make a life
by what we give.
~ Sir Winston Churchill (1874 ~ 1965)

THE SPIRIT’S SCAFFOLDING

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the
foundations under them.
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817 ~ 1862)

GENEROSITY

He that gives all,
though but little,
gives much;
because God looks not to the quantity of the gift,
but to the quality of the givers;
he that desires to give more than he can
hath equalled his gift to his desire,
and hath given more than he hath.
~ Francis Quarles

STARTING ENDING POVERTY

If a free society
cannot help the many
who are poor,
it cannot save the few
who are rich.
~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy
in his inaugural speech, January 20, 1961

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Being a Shepherd
is not about idyllic pastoral scenes
and cute little lambs.
It’s about hard work,
protecting the sheep
and being willing to lay down one’s life in service.
It’s not for nothing
that one of the oldest words for Christian clergy
is “pastor” meaning “shepherd”.
Clergy are called to model their ministry
on that of Jesus,
but all of us are also sheep
that have a responsibility to listen for Jesus’ voice
and to look after the well being of the flock.
~ The Revd Andy Braunston

GIVEN GREATNESS

One never rises so high
as when one does not know
where one is going.
~ Oliver Cromwell

THE STILL SMALL VOICE

All things that speak of heaven
speak of peace.
~ Philip James Bailey

EASTER DAWN

The hope of humanity
has justly been called
a waking dream.
~ Basil the Great

BLESSED ARE THE MEEK…

Lowliness
is the base of every virtue,
and he who goes the lowest
builds the safest.
~ Philip James Bailey

BE IT UNTO ME ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD

One act of obedience
is better than one hundred sermons.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

ADVANCED IN YEARS…

Can man be so age-stricken
that no faintest sunshine of his youth
may re visit him once a year?
It is impossible.
The moss on our time-worn mansion
brightens into beauty;
and the good old pastor,
who once dwelt here,
renewed his prime and regained his boyhood
in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring.
Alas for the worn and heavy soul,
if, whether in youth or age,
it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

TALK WITH US, LORD

That is the happiest conversation
where there is no competition, no vanity,
but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments.
~ Dr Johnson

TO KNOW YOU IS TO LOVE YOU
(OR VICE VERSA)

A man doesn’t learn to understand anything
unless he loves it.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

THE WISDOM OF JUSTICE

We hope this is a turning point
away from the dark period of the last decade,
in which bin Laden symbolized the evil face of global terrorism.
His actions and those of al Qaeda
have violated the sacred Islamic teachings
upholding the sanctity of all human life.
His acts of senseless terror
have been met with moral outrage by Muslims worldwide
at every turn in the past decade.
~ Salam Al-Marayati
President of the Muslim Public Affairs Council  

In the face of a man’s death,
a Christian never rejoices,
but reflects on the serious responsibilities
of each person before God and before men,
and hopes and works so that every event
may be the occasion for the further growth of peace
and not of hatred…
~ A Vatican spokesman

I think that the killing of an unarmed man
is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling
because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done,
in those circumstances.
I think it is also true
that the different versions of events
that have emerged in recent days
have not done a great deal to help here.
I don’t know the full details anymore than anyone else does
but I do believe that in such circumstance
when we are faced with someone who was manifestly
a ‘war criminal’
as you might say in terms of the atrocities inflicted,
it is important that justice is seen to be observed.
~ The Archbishop of Canterbury

CLOSURE?

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives,
but I will not rejoice in the death of one,
not even an enemy.
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,
adding deeper darkness
to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate:
only love can do that.
~ Martin Luther King

WISDOM

In seeking wisdom
thou art wise;
in imagining that thou hast attained it,
thou art a fool.
~ Rabbi Ben Azai

HE WHO TERRORIZED US
IS DEAD

It is the conqueror ~ Death.
He carries a black flag,
and he takes no prisoners.
He digs a trench across the hemispheres
and fills it with the carcasses of nations.
Fifty times would the world have been depopulated
had not God kept making new generations.
Fifty times the world would have swung lifeless through the air
~ no man on the mountain,
no man on the sea ~
an abandoned ship ploughing through immensity.
Again and again has He done this work with all generations.
He is a monarch as well as a conqueror;
his palace a sepulchre;
his fountains the falling tears of a world.
Blessed be God, in the light of this Easter Morning
I see the prophecy that his sceptre shall be broken
and his palace shall be demolished.
The hour is coming when all who are in their graves
shall come forth.
Christ risen, we shall rise.
Jesus–”the first-fruits of them that slept.”
~  Richard Flanders,
Death of a Fundamentalist,
a sermon given April 25, 1886

BE OF GOOD COURAGE

This is the way to cultivate courage:
First, by standing firm on some conscientious principle,
some law of duty.
Next, by being faithful to truth and right
on small occasions and common events.
Third, by trusting in God
for help and power.
~ James Freeman Clarke

THE WAY

The longest journey
is the journey inward,
for he who has chosen his destiny
has started upon his quest
for the source of his being.
~ Dag Hammarskjold

THE BISHOP OF LONDON’S SERMON
AT THE ROYAL WEDDING

“Be who God meant you to be
and you will set the world on fire.”
So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today.
Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman
help each other to become what God meant each one to be,
their deepest and truest selves.

Many are full of fear
for the future of the prospects of our world
but the message of the celebrations
in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one
– this is a joyful day!
It is good that people in every continent
are able to share in these celebrations
because this is, as every wedding day should be,
a day of hope.  

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding
with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation,
making a new life together
so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married
in the sight of a generous God
who so loved the world that he gave himself
to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

And in the Spirit of this generous God,
husband and wife are to give themselves to each another.

A spiritual life grows as love finds its centre
beyond ourselves.
Faithful and committed relationships
offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life
in which we discover this;
the more we give of self,
the richer we become in soul;
the more we go beyond ourselves in love,
the more we become our true selves
and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed.
In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away
from self-centredness.
And people can dream of doing such a thing
but the hope should be fulfilled
it is necessary a solemn decision that,
whatever the difficulties,
we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today
– “I will” –
and by making this new relationship,
you have aligned yourselves
with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving,
and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century
which is full of promise and full of peril.
Human beings are confronting the question
of how to use wisely a power that has been given to us
through the discoveries of the last century.
We shall not be converted to the promise of the future
by more knowledge,
but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence,
for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform,
as husband and wife make one another their work of art.
It is possible to transform
as long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner.
There must be no coercion
if the Spirit is to flow;
each must give the other space and freedom.
Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:
“Whan maistrie [mastery] comth,
the God of Love anon,
Beteth his wynges,
and farewell, he is gon.”

As the reality of God has faded
from so many lives in the West,
there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations
that personal relations alone
will supply meaning and happiness in life.
This is to load our partner with too great a burden.
We are all incomplete:
we all need the love which is secure,
rather than oppressive,
we need mutual forgiveness, to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love,
following the example of Jesus Christ,
the Holy Spirit is quickened within us
and can increasingly fill our lives with light.
This leads to a family life
which offers the best conditions in which the next generation
can practise and exchange those gifts
which can overcome fear and division
and incubate the coming world of the Spirit,
whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present
and the many millions watching this ceremony
and sharing in your joy today,
will do everything in our power to support and uphold you
in your new life.
And I pray that God will bless you
in the way of life that you have chosen,
that way which is expressed in the prayer
that you have composed together
in preparation for this day:

God our Father,
we thank you for our families;
for the love that we share
and for the joy of our marriage.

In the busyness of each day
keep our eyes fixed
on what is real and important in life
and help us to be generous
with our time and love and energy.

Strengthened by our union
help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Amen.  

DRAWN BY LOVE’S POWER

The Royal Wedding took place
on the name day of Catherine Middleton,
the Feast Day of St Catherine of Siena
who has been called the Apostle of Love.
In her remarkable prayers & meditations
St Catherine explored the wonder of love,
both human & divine;
& GODLINES this week includes extracts from her writings
for both our meditations & our prayers.

Love transforms one
into what one loves.
~ Catherine of Siena
Dialogue 60

Reflect that God requires nothing else of us
except that we show our neighbours
the love we have for God.
~ Catherine of Siena
Letter T89

One who knows more,
loves more.
~ Catherine of Siena
Dialogue 66

The human heart is
always drawn
by love.
~ Catherine of Siena
Dialogue 26

It is the nature of love
to love as much as we feel we are loved
and to love whatever
the one we love loves.
~ Catherine of Siena

THE RACE

In the end death will beat her. Death always
wins, pulling ahead to beat us all, and
the doctors. No matter the new technologies,
the heroic measures, here’s the prize:
the inevitable box lid slamming down on the body
with a wooden certainty.

I’m right. In the hospital, death races through the door
into her room, gets to her before the Code Blue team,
before husband, family, chaplain, and Goodbye.
And I’m wrong. God moves more swiftly; from being by her
in her dying, he reaches heaven faster than light,
pulls her in through the door.

~ Luci Shaw

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

In his descent into hell,
Christ disturbs the absolute loneliness
striven for by the sinner:
the sinner, who wants to be ‘damned’ apart from God,
finds God again in his loneliness,
but God in the absolute weakness of love
enters into solidarity
even with those damning themselves.
~ Hans Urs von Balthasar

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

God just keeps coming,
challenging us with love & hope,
keeps looking into our eyes,
keeps accompanying our frailty & our failures…
Salvation is not finished business
but an ongoing relationship…
The real gift of our Redemption
is not paradise but God…
~ William Loader

THE AGONY

Jesus’ agony, his struggle against death,
continues until the end of the world.
We could also put it the other way around:
at this hour,
Jesus took upon himself
the betrayal of all ages,
the pain caused by betrayal in every era,
and he endured the anguish of history
to the bitter end.
~ Pope Benedict XVI

LOVING THEM TO THE END…

The foot that was raised to violently crush him
Jesus nonviolently caresses with his loving hands.
He responds to violence with love.
This is real love, loving your enemy.
Even when we betray Jesus
by not following him the way we should,
he still stands waiting for us
with a basin of water and a towel,
ready to serve us with love.
We might crucify him
by denying him with our loveless actions,
but Jesus keeps washing us to make us spiritually clean.
His caress won’t go away.
His caress can’t be killed.
Jesus doesn’t need us to love him
in order for him to love us.
That’s good news.
He loves us despite us,
despite what we have done, are doing, or will do.
That’s love.
Not that we loved God
but that God loved us first,
with a love that will never let us go.
We are loved.
~ Luke A. Powery
The African American Lectionary

UNLESS A SEED FALLS INTO THE GROUND…

God always comes closely attached
to the worst violence and greatest depravation,
stuck to it as its obverse in compassion.
When we see that,
every such event becomes a revelation of sin
and a window in which we perceive
divine pain.
~ William Loader

DEVOTION’S DANCING

The best dancing
is done on the devil’s dance floor.  
Perfect love casts out fear.  
It does so by offering a security
that all the carefulness in the world
cannot match.
~ Mary Hinkle
Pilgrim Preaching

THE PROPHET FROM NAZARETH

Prophets arise
when there is real, hungry openness
to the healing Word of God;
perhaps things have to be very dark indeed
for such a hunger to be felt.
But we look to One who is more than a prophet,
who has cleared the way for us
not just back to Eden
but forward to the new city, new Jerusalem,
in which the nations are healed
and strangers live gratefully together.
This Land was touched by God
so that it would be forever a sign of our hope
for the commonwealth of heaven.
The gates are open.
Let us with Jesus prepare to go through,
to walk with him to his cross and his resurrection.
~ Archbishop Rowan Williams
preaching in Jerusalem
on Palm Sunday in 2003

HOMEWARD BOUND

There are two things necessary
for a traveller to bring him to the end of his journey
~ a knowledge of his way,
a perseverance in his walk.
If he walk in a wrong way,
the faster he goes the farther he is from home;
if he sit still in the right way,
he may know his home,
but never come to it:
discreet stays make speedy journeys.
I will first then know my way,
ere I begin my walk;
the knowledge of my way
is a good part of my journey.
~ Arthur Warwick

PANIS ANGELICUS

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods,
but in the hands of our cooks.
~ Lin Yutang

IMMORTAL LONGINGS

There is a desire deep within the soul
which drives man
from the seen to the unseen,
to philosophy and to the divine.
~ Kahlil Gibran

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing,
you will be successful.
~ Albert Schweitzer

SPIRITUAL SUSTENANCE

To have what we want
is riches;
but to be able to do without
is power.
~ George MacDonald

THE SIMPLE STEP TO A SIMPLE LIFE

Constantly choose
rather to want less,
than to have more.
~ Thomas a Kempis

TAKE THIS CUP AWAY?

“My will, not thine, be done,”
turned Paradise into a desert.
“Thy will, not mine, be done,”
turned the desert into a paradise,
and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.
~ Edmond de Pressense

BY FAITH

Only he who believes
is obedient
and only he who is obedient
believes.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

THE INNER INCENTIVE

Motivation is a fire from within.
If someone else tries to light that fire under you,
chances are it will burn very briefly.
~ Stephen R. Covey

CONFIDENCE

It seems to me that people have vast potential.
Most people can do extraordinary things
if they have the confidence or take the risks.
Yet most people don’t.
They sit in front of the telly
and treat life as if it goes on forever.
~ Philip Adams

THE STONES CRY ALOUD

There is need for awareness
that the mountains and rivers and all living things,
the sky and its sun and moon and clouds
all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans
which they need
as much for their psychic integrity
as for their physical nourishment.
~ Thomas Berry

THE ATONEMENT

A man who was completely innocent,
offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others,
including his enemies,
and became the ransom of the world.
It was a perfect act.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

THE TEST OF TIME

Man has made 32 million laws
since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai…
but he has never improved on God’s law.
~ Cecil B. DeMille

COMPASSION

Compassion is the basis
of all morality.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

THE LIFE OF SACRIFICE

Pain may exist without love,
but love cannot exist without pain.
Offering one’s pains to God
joins them to Christ,
then they become efficacious;
they become structural love-in-action, for the world….
What I do mean to say, at least,
is that our sacrifices,
both the ones we consciously undertake,
and the ones forced on us,
are efficacious,
and that voluntary submission to suffering
gives us great power over the forces of darkness.
Not a bad thing to keep in mind this time of year.
~ Joseph Prever

CENSORING CENSORIOUSNESS

Of all the spirits,
I believe the spirit of judging is the worst,
and it has had the rule of me,
I cannot tell you how dreadfully and how long…
This, I find has more hindered
my progress in love and gentleness
than all things else.
I never knew what the words,
“Judge not that ye be not judged,”
meant before;
now they seem to me
some of the most awful, necessary, and beautiful
in the whole Word of God.
~ F. D. Maurice

CROSSING OVER

And therefore be now content to consider with me
how to this God the Lord belonged the issues of death.
That God, this Lord, the Lord of life, could die,
is a strange contemplation;
that the Red Sea could be dry,
that the sun could stand still,
that an oven could be seven times heat and not burn,
that lions could be hungry and not bite,
is strange, miraculously strange,
but super-miraculous that God could die;
but that God would die is an exaltation of that.
…Love is strong as death;
stronger, it drew in death,
that naturally is not welcome.
If it be possible, says Christ, let this cup pass,
when his love,
expressed in a former decree with his Father,
had made it impossible.
Many waters quench not love.
He would not spare, nay, he could not spare himself.
There was nothing more free,
more voluntary, more spontaneous
than the death of Christ.
~ John Donne
“Death’s Duel”

THE DESERT EXPERIENCE

Character,
like a photograph,
develops in darkness.
~ Yousuf Karsh

THE CONSTANT CLIMB

Human progress
is neither automatic nor inevitable…
Every step toward the goal of justice
requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle;
the tireless exertions and passionate concern
of dedicated individuals.
~ Martin Luther King

WHATEVER THE WEATHER…

I find hope in the darkest of days,
and focus in the brightest.
I do not judge the universe.
~ The Dalai Lama

THE CONTENT OF CONTENTMENT

Increase of material comforts,
it may be generally laid down,
does not in any way whatsoever conduce
to moral growth.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

THE RUGGED PATHWAY

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill;
and to win it without a struggle
were perhaps to win it without honour.
If there were no difficulties
there would be no success;
if there were nothing to struggle for,
there would be nothing to be achieved.
~ Samuel Smiles

ANOTHER TIME… ANOTHER DIMENSION

For many centuries javascript:;
most European countries took 25 March,
not 1 January,
as the day when the number of the year changed,
so that 24 March 1201
was followed by 25 March 1202.
If you had asked a Christian of that time
why the calendar year changed
so awkwardly partway through a month,
he would have answered:
“Today we begin a new year of the Christian era,
the era which began X years ago today
when God was made man,
when He took upon Himself
a fleshly body and human nature
in the womb of the Virgin.”

THE VIOLENCE OF LOVE

We have never preached violence,
except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross,
the violence that we must each do to ourselves,
to overcome our selfishness
and such cruel inequalities among us.
The violence we preach is not
the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work.
~ Archbishop Oscar Romero

THE SACRIFICE OF A GENTLE HEART

There is no need for temples,
no need for complicated philosophies.
My brain and my heart are my temples;
my philosophy is kindness.
~ The Dalai Lama

WHAT IS OUR DESTINY?

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable,
and although problems & catastrophes may be inevitable,
solutions are not.
~ Isaac Asimov

THE SHAKING OF FOUNDATIONS

In the first week of Lent,
meditating on the short video,
“MISSING MOSES”
Godlines explored the concept of liberation…
the nature of personal & political enslavement
& the imperative of bringing freedom in the world.
The video was created
prior to the tremendous events
that have recently swept through Egypt
& its neighbours…
events that have given the cry
“Let my people go!”
added resonance.
Today we must ask again
in the context of Libya
what the ethics should be
of bringing freedom to those held down
by oppressive regimes.
In this second week of Lent
Godlines explores another aspect of the video
that has again been given acute relevance
by recent events in Japan.
The video imagines a series of catastrophes
~ similar to the ten plagues of Egypt ~
hitting England & our apparently secure
corner of Europe.
Commenting on the catastrophes
that strike at our creation’s stability,
the Bishop of London’s words in the video
anticipate unknowingly
the trauma that has come
with all that has been unleashed on Japan:
In the story of the plagues of Egypt, he says,
we perceive “a sense of peril & the fragility
of the created order
& of how easy it is
for limits to be burst
& eruptions to happen.”

THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM

Let every nation know,
whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price,
bear any burden,
meet any hardship,
support any friend,
oppose any foe
to assure the survival and success of liberty.
~ John F. Kennedy

JOSEPH THE WORKER

In literature and art,
Joseph tends to get a bad rap.
More a figure of the background,
if portrayed at all in art,
he is often pictured
as a bit of a doddering old man…

But there is something refreshingly honest
about the way the Church celebrates him today.
We are recalled to the theme of humility and service,
to a kind of magnanimity of spirit,
which signals an important feature
of the Lenten journey of our lives.
It is not about living in the spot-light of attention.
That can so easily become the way of pride and vainglory.
“Look at me looking at you looking at me,”
if I may summarize the culture
of voyeurism and narcissism
so frequently on display in our world and day!

It is through Joseph being open to angelic direction
rather than to human reactions
such as anger and outrage
or the fear of scorn or mockery
that results in his playing a crucial role,
albeit in the background,
in the economy of our salvation.
Joseph, too, will name the child, Jesus,
he will take the child and his mother
and flee into Egypt.
Joseph is the quiet but steady figure
who exemplifies the labours of love and service
that undergird our own calling.

These are the quiet labours
that do not scream “look at me, look at me.”
Instead, the labours of Joseph
have that largeness of soul,
that magnanimity of spirit,
that looks to Jesus.
Such is the true nature of humility.
And only so can we be blessed.
~ from an address
by David Curry
Rector of Christ Church, Windsor
in Nova Scotia

TO ONE’S OWN SELF BE TRUE

Liberty
is the prevention of control by others.
This requires self-control
and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences;
education, knowledge, well-being.
~ Lord Acton

YOU WERE CALLED TO FREEDOM

If you want to be free,
there is but one way;
it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty
to all your neighbours.
There is no other.
~ Carl Schurz (1829 – 1906)

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

The ultimate measure of a man
is not where he stands
in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands
at times of challenge and controversy.
The true neighbour will risk
his position, his prestige and even his life
for the welfare of others.
~ Martin Luther King
“Strength in Love”

REBIRTH

Liberation is a childbirth,
and a painful one.
~ Paulo Freire

DIVINE STRENGTH THROUGH HUMAN WEAKNESS

The most amazing fact about Jesus,
unlike almost any other religious founder,
is that he found God in disorder & imperfection:
and told us that we must do the same
or we will never be content on this earth.
~ Richard Rohr
“The Naked Now”

JAPAN: PAUSING FOR PRAYER

When in the presence
of this sort of raw power
and this sort of raw loss,
I can say nothing which
would be more appropriate than
or improve upon
silence.
~ Kenaz Filan

FACING FACTS
RATHER THAN FICTIONS

The popularity of disaster movies
expresses a collective perception
of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces
which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment.
Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning
might be translated thus:
We are innocent of wrongdoing.
We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us.
We are, thus, innocent even of negligence.
Though those forces are insuperable,
chance will come to our aid
and we shall emerge victorious….
~ David Mamet