What does God require in the ninth and tenth commandments? Ninth, that we do not lie or deceive, but speak the truth in love. Tenth, that we are content, not envying anyone or resenting what God has given them or us. (New City Catechism) The one beside you in the field, Continue reading “Catechism 12”
Tag Archives: love
“Were you there…?” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Three
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? None of us today can answer “yes”. Yet the truth and power of that moment is never diminished, how much time stretches between us and it. Today’s track from Page CXVI’s “Lent to Maundy Thursday” combines two old hymns: “Were You There?” and “O The Deep, Deep LoveContinue reading ““Were you there…?” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Three”
You Shall Love – A Valentine’s Day Anthology
Well, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Whoever St Valentine was or was not, his feast day has come to be associated with romantic nights out and Hallmark cards. It isn’t the best expression of love that we have, but it’s still a day when our culture focuses quite publicly on a very specific kind of love,Continue reading “You Shall Love – A Valentine’s Day Anthology”
My Cup Overflows
Too good, my God, the way You hold my sliding self in You, too good the way you lavish love, too good the way You chide. Too soft, my God, Your voice, Your touch, and yet You thunder truth; too faint, sometimes, the hand that guides and yet Your all abounds in always-hoping, patient kindness,Continue reading “My Cup Overflows”
Your Love Is Loud
Your love is loud: it shatters drums And bursts the walls; it shakes, benumbs The membranes and the tubes and nerves. It races through canals and swerves With swimming, soaring ocean thrum. In majesty it overcomes The orchestra, the endless hum Of all that mind and ear preserve: Your love is loud. Now listen asContinue reading “Your Love Is Loud”
What It Is
is a giving, a direction, a relation to God, a movement within the eternal. At His core is what we fail to be, to do, to know. And so we love to show what we are not and what He is: relationship, community, righteous love, perfected from the start,Continue reading “What It Is”
Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)
The first of our Auden poems for the month is the wonderful “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”, a poem that Auden wrote in 1939 around the time of his conversion to Christianity. It was famously written shortly after his profound and emphatic “September 1, 1939”, the poem he wrote on the outbreak ofContinue reading “Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)”
Fulfilment
He remembered us in our low estate His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:23) The esteem of love which esteems greatly, sacrifices all for the receipt of nothing, and gives self when Self is notContinue reading “Fulfilment”
Theology Part 4: Psalm
God, my love is vapour, my heart’s dust. I pass and fade like dew, like day; I tremble like the dawn. God, my all is empty, I have no grace to give my neighbour or give You. SoContinue reading “Theology Part 4: Psalm”
Theology Part 3: Pursuance
Go and do likewise; what you have seen, now do, and do with joy, and what you have heard once whispered in your ear, proclaim it from the rooftops; now shout the truth that rings in your ears; proclaim in word and deed and in the beat of your changed, now Continue reading “Theology Part 3: Pursuance”
The Consolations of Writing 