Devotional – Page 9 – The Consolations of Writing

Ordinary Wednesday: Do you see what I see?

My home city of Melbourne is now in the unenviable position of experiencing its fifth lockdown, and many of us are finding ourselves making comparisons with “previous lockdowns” we have known. This particular lockdown has the misfortune of falling at the same time as the beginning of our long, long winter lockdown last year. AndContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Do you see what I see?”

Ordinary Wednesday: In due season

My eldest is a budding geographer. At nearly four years of age he loves reading books about the earth and its continents, its flora and fauna. We often find ourselves having quite technical discussions about the reasons why some plant or animal species are dying out, or why we have seasons. The seasons have beenContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: In due season”

Ordinary Wednesday: I am not a calm blue ocean

Something I have been thinking about a lot this year is how to be what rabbi and psychologist Edwin Friedman called a “non-anxious presence”. Friedman observed that tight-knit communities like families and churches often had such complex networks of relationships and emotional histories that addressing one relational issue was often difficult because of all theContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: I am not a calm blue ocean”

Ordinary Wednesday: Nature’s Hat-stand

Today would have been the 100th birthday of one of the most important people in my life: my maternal grandfather James Savage, known to his friends as Jim and to me and my cousins as Pep. Born in 1921 to an Irish Australian father and Scottish Australian mother, he grew up in working-class Sydney duringContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Nature’s Hat-stand”

Ordinary Wednesday: Everlasting Dust

While I try to go through each day with my eyes open to the little signs of glory and truth that lie around me in the everyday, some days nothing much catches my eye or sinks in. Today was one of those days, my attention too divided for anything in particular to arrest me. SoContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Everlasting Dust”

Ordinary Wednesday: In the Wednesday of my life…

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but,Continue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: In the Wednesday of my life…”

Ordinary Wednesday: Windows

“Which window will it be today?” Many parents of small children will quickly recognise those words which precede the moment in Play School when we “look through the window” to discover something new and exciting. I have spent much of today sitting by a windowsill with very limited ability to see. Our outside office sitsContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Windows”

Devotional Seeing: Thoughts for Ordinary Time

Through the ninety-something days of Lent and Easter this year I set myself the discipline of taking a photo each day and posting it with a spiritual reflection. It was an enormous task and one that I often regretted setting for myself. But it began to do something in me that has continued now thatContinue reading “Devotional Seeing: Thoughts for Ordinary Time”

Neurochemistry

I’m not sure how science describes it butsometimes a neuron seeking safe passage yetfinding nonesimplyenters black spacewhere nothing is thought or feltas reprieve from thinking,feeling too much.And in that spaceis only staticonly the humming oflost signals.Emptied, what canspeak or console?What can reconnect?Devils silenced, but sothe voice of angels.In this deadness no strong manneed cast theContinue reading “Neurochemistry”