When others horde, share. When others sneeze, do not be startled. When the numbers rise, take heart. For your life is more than your days on earth and your planet is more than a virus. When the shops are packed with people and the shelves are emptied of products, do not push and shove andContinue reading “Other Ways to Practise Resurrection, Or, How to Beat a Pandemic: After Wendell Berry”
Tag Archives: life
Grief Before Grief
Here death is a vulture:devours face and memory,claws at carrion, feeds on fullnesslike life was flesh,fit for the taking.But life is a millionintangible moments, alldazzling and passingin Eden-sunk griefand Life won’t go silently,fighting reduction,while Death – old materialist -denies Life ever was.We have seen it, and held it.We bear its witness.We stroke its unresponsive handandContinue reading “Grief Before Grief”
Pancake Tuesday
Normally a Saturday ritual, it seemedwe should mark this day with pancakes too,a breakfast-table recollection of how feasting and fasting so often cohere. Even, I thought as I mixed egg and milk the night before, even mark the way that air fills the batter like pockets of life, as these very ordinary, meager elements ofContinue reading “Pancake Tuesday”
Bloom
Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. (Psalm 126:5) You’ll be glad to hear your tree is sprouting leaves and in the midst of blossom, tiny fruit. Your little brother’s learning all the names for almond, flowering gum and bottlebrush; yet you by now will know far more than this. TheContinue reading “Bloom”
Advent 4: The Fruit
Climb the rugged beam to see the scurry of life around the tree: lion and baby, adder and lamb, sheltered in this outstretched hand. Thick with promise, the leaves gather birds and the birds whisper secrets in long-forgotten words. Turn your ear from self to sky to hear the heavens in reply: There’s hope forContinue reading “Advent 4: The Fruit”
Lent: Man of Sorrows 1
What fuels my pride is nothing like what You gave up – true God, true man – when you bowed as low as bowing goes, as low as heaven spans. What strikes my face is feather-like beside the spear that pierced Your side; my burdens roll onto the floor beside the death YouContinue reading “Lent: Man of Sorrows 1”
Lent: Emmaus 3
Too fast you walk down the mountainside; momentum gathers, yet of a false and fleeting kind. A fig tree full of leaves, but fruit sorely lacking, you see the glory but faint at the sight of blood. Slow down. It is a long road and your companion lingers; His death puts brakes on our downwardContinue reading “Lent: Emmaus 3”
Catechism 7
What does the law of God require? Personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience; that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbour as ourselves. What God forbids should never be done and what God commands should always be done. (New City Catechism) And what does He require of you,Continue reading “Catechism 7”
The Consolations of Writing 