Oh you gotta get a glory! In the work you do, A Hallelujah chorus In the heart of you. Paint or tell a story, Sing or shovel coal, But you gotta get a glory Or the...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
The world’s danger
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 worthless?
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...
Choose my Path
However dark it be; Lead me by thine own hand, Choose out the path for me. Smooth let it be or rough, It will be still the best; Winding or straight, it leads Right onward to thy rest. Choose thou for me my friends, My sickness or my health; Choose thou my cares for...
My name is ‘I am’ not ‘I was’
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’....
A flash of rare delight
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.
Mysteries yes: look with astonishment
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,...
Listening now and forever?
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...
In the beginning was the word
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).
A birth, and our death?
… 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,...
Within myself I lose, or win
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).
In despair is the music still playing?
O God, can a man find you when he lies with his face downwards And his nose in the rubble that was his achievement? Is the music playing behind the door of despair? Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67).