part time priest

meditating

I’ve been meditating. Despite having been brought up on Richard Foster’s seminal book Celebration of Discipline (1978) I’d never quite got the difference between prayer and meditation, but the exponential rise in interest in mindfulness has put meditation back on the map for me (though now I have to work out the difference between the two m-words…)…

singing advent

We’re on number two of seven of the Advent Antiphons in our stately march (aka mad rush) through the final days of Advent before Christmas. The ‘O Antiphons’ developed in the early church as sung prayers before and after Mary’s hymn, the Magnificat. They refer to different names of Jesus from the Old Testament Wisdom…

touch

I’m not keen on being cheek by jowl on the London Tube – I think it’s the nearest I’ve come to that crushing feeling you get in big crowds. I generally like people, but not up too close and personal – the shoving, the unfamiliar smells, unwittingly looking up someone’s nostril etc. You feel people…

fuzzy feelings

Do you ever get that nice fuzzy feeling when you’ve been Christmas shopping and now you’re feeling really in the mood? It happens when the warmth of shops, the loveliness of the gifts and the frothy coffee inside you win out over the queues, the heavy bags and the aching feet. I get it looking…

wreath

I’d never made one before but I would get wreath envy when passing other people’s front doors. You know, the front doors that are highly polished in a traditional green, red, black or dark blue, with the best shiniest brass twinkling in the sunlight, and a living moss ring with, say, classy sweeping fronds of…

the pink one

This Sunday is the third in Advent and in liturgical churches up and down the land, while most other normal people go shopping, someone will be lighting a pink candle, aka ‘the pink one’, for Gaudete (Rejoice!) Sunday. When someone used to mention pink, I would think of girls’ tutus, or sugary nougat, or a…

advent poem (i)

This, This is why it’s good to be alive – the rising and scattering of wings up into the early mist, stabbing white on grey on white; the creeping fingers of sycamores circling the late November wood. And advent soon to dawn. His coming will be silent, swift, piercing the dark, stripping us bare –…

advent poem (ii)

We tripped, and falling forward into Advent we blundered into waiting, unprepared the altar purpled; candles spluttering a welcome for the hesitating king. As candles marked the time we took to walk the plodding path, something unfolded there: our ancient fathers knowing floods would come prepared to sail to a different home and prophets…