Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

I saw a stable low and very bare, A little child in a manger. The oxen knew him, had him in their care. To men he was a stranger. The safety of the world was lying there And the world’s danger.    Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907). 

Experience is a futile teacher, Experience is a prosy preacher, Experience is a fruit tree fruitless, Experience is a shoe-tree, bootless, For sterile wearience and drearience Depend, my boy, upon experience. Experience! Wise men do not need it! Experience! Idiots do...

Lord, let me live as I will. I need a little wild freedom, A little giddiness of heart, the strange taste of unknown flowers… I love to bound to the heart of all thy marvels, Leaping your chasms and My mouth stuffed with intoxicating grasses; Quiver with an...

I sense the excitement in his mind: The prodigal taking all that he had And moving out, a feeling of freedom in the air, Stretching the strings that held him back, Rejecting home Familiar, undervalued, And stepping out into the world….   Yet every new excitement...

I was regretting the past However dark it be; And fearing the future. Suddenly my lord was speaking; ‘My name is I am.’ He paused. I waited. He continued’ ‘When you live in the past, with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I was’....

Enjoyment is a flash of rare delight, While only Christ illuminates for me The fear and darkness of this Earth’s strange night.   Audrey Milner (1924-2017), Southwell.

Truly we live with mysteries too marvellous               to be understood…. Let me keep my distance, always, from those               who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say               ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment,...

The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice: now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever,  which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron...

We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.   T.S. Eliot (1888-1965).

… were we led all that way for Birth or death? There was a Birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places,...

Not in the clamour of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumph and defeat.   Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82).