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@julianmaddock
Choosing Joy
When an idea comes to us from different directions, the universe has a message for us. In the last few days, the idea that joy is a practice, rather than a hoped-for feeling, has come to me. From one direction, my dear friend, Carl/Skye McColman, recently wrote a piece on his Substack about the duty of joy. He quotes Dorothy Day: It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of…
Negative Capability
We were talking about Negative Capability: capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries and doubts without any irritable reaching after fact or reason. (Keats) We were talking about it in relation to creativity and being an artist. It is the ability to wait. One might be very active but within this activity, there is an openness to what may come without “any irritable reaching” for a finished…
The gifts and the giver
TIME AFTER TIME I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more. You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess. I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out. ~…
Disclosure II
Brahms: A German Requiem I am sitting on a chair. I am not comfortable. My bottom is sore. I am unsure of this selection of music. It is one person’s choice of their favourite pieces and performances, much of it firmly within the core canon of the Western classical tradition: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and the rest of the gang. Each piece tells a story, a narrative. The sonata form:…
Disclosure I
[This is a first attempt to articulate experiences in Ceremony and how they have opened me to more of God.] Thursday 17 March 2022 Gorecki: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, I Qobuz | Spotify | YouTube I am sitting cross-legged on a meditation cushion. My eyes are closed as I listen to the music. I am grounded on the cushion. I have rarely been this focused, centred, present, and free from…
Coming Out
It all started with an email. Of course, it had been going on before that. Annette and I had been reading Gabor Maté, particularly When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. On 29th October 2021, an email dropped into my inbox: Psychedelics and Compassionate Inquiry with Dr Gabor Maté. [The original details are no longer available on the Internet, but this is the current programme.] It…
Authority and Tradition
I have been pondering how authority and tradition work together. I have thought for many years that spiritual direction offers an opportunity to relocate the locus of authority from without to within. I mean by this that, rather than constantly looking to scripture, church tradition, books on theology and spirituality, or teachers, preachers, and leaders to learn about God, a person…
One needful Lenten discipline
Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. John 3.5 I have understood something new about Lent this year. It starts with a question: Why did Jesus go into the wilderness immediately after his baptism? I’ve always imagined Jesus discerning who and what he was over thirty years and coming to baptism to make this inner knowledge visible. He…
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Oasis Day: Journey into Lent
Oasis Day: Journey into Lent
Oasis-Days-Publicity-Journey-into-Lent-8-MarchDownload
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There is no one but us
There is no one but us
A light has gone out. When I heard the news, my first thought was, “Who is going to proclaim truth now?” Annie Dillard’s unsettling retort to Psalm 24:3-6 came immediately to mind: Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but…
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Retreat days for Advent
Retreat days for Advent
Tuesday 2nd or Saturday 4th December 2021 If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road pregnant with the holy, and say, “I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.” St John of the Cross Advent is a time of waiting. A birth is due and, like all births, is full of promise, expectation, and imagination of how life will be when… This is as it…
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Only basic goodness gives life to technique
Only basic goodness gives life to technique
Years ago, I dipped into Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was hit between the eyes by this sentence: Only basic goodness gives life to technique.p. 21 I am not good, but I’d like to be, and this sentence has stayed with me as a standard to live up to. It chastens me. I drafted the piece below a few years after that, early on in my involvement in training people to…
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A letter to three faith leaders
A letter to three faith leaders
Dear Archbishop Justin Welby, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, I write as a Christian and a member of the Church of England. I hear that you have written to the House of Lords about your disquiet over the Assisted Dying Bill. There are two things I wish to say in response to this. Firstly, I am deeply grateful that you are engaging with politics in this country. There…
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8 ways to be with thoughts in prayer
8 ways to be with thoughts in prayer
How’s it going in surrendering yourself to the Mystery that has intimately accessed your heart and has brought you to this place that it might translate you into itself?James Finley If you ask me just precisely how one is to go about doing the contemplative work of love, I am at a complete loss. All I can say is I pray that Almighty God in his great goodness and kindness will teach you himself.…
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Lost and found
I went to Durham Cathedral recently with a friend and my daughters. I don’t remember having been before. I’m not much of a visitor of buildings. I’m happier in the woods or by the river. Nevertheless, I liked the space, its age, the beautifully carved columns, the heft. At the east end, there is a tomb with the relics of St Cuthbert (634–687). I went to have a look for interest’s sake, not…
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Ignatian Scaffolding
In case you haven’t guessed, I am a big fan of Ignatian Spirituality. And with that couplet is the genesis of a problem. By using the phrase ‘Ignatian Spirituality’, I am already creating something that I’m not sure has much substance. I’m a fan of God and Jesus. I’m a fan of prayer. I’m a fan of The Spiritual Exercises that Ignatius wrote. But when people talk about Ignatian Spirituality and,…
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Retreat Day: "What do You want me to do?"
Retreat Day: “What do You want me to do?”
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking Many of us long to know what we should do with our lives and how we should live on a day by day basis. Those of us with a religious bent want to know what God wants. We look for meaning and purpose in our lives, to know that we are on the right path and in tune…
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