“To be childlike…”, wrote the great German romantic poet Novalis, “To be childlike: that is best of all.” Novalis wrote these words shortly before his death of tuberculosis in 1801,…
Our observance today, Trinity Sunday, is the conclusion of our week-long celebration of Pentecost. This is (as the Prayer Book reminds us) the octave day of Pentecost. Last Sunday we…
In or about the year 412, the North African Bishop, St Augustine, received a letter from a widow concerned about the words of St Paul from the second lesson this…
I suggested a few weeks ago that to pray is to be made poor. I did not mean by this, of course, that it is to be made materially poor,…
I would like to begin our reflections this morning by inviting us to cast our minds back to the Gospel lesson for the Sunday after Easter. Though for us it…
In a recent book about his annual pilgrimage to Mount Athos (also called the Holy Mountain – the famous monastic settlement in Greece), the American poet Scott Cairns describes numerous…
In 1941 two American songwriters wrote the now famous World War II standard “(Bluebirds over) the White Cliffs of Dover.” Made unforgettable by Dame Vera Lynn’s recording in 1942, the…
It matters immensely that Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in this morning’s Gospel while it is still dark. From the very beginning of the Bible, darkness is suggestive of…
Just as in the story of creation we read that God rests on the Sabbath day, the seventh day (Saturday), so too in the story of our Lord’s Passion Jesus…
In 1642 the first significant battle of the English Civil War was fought as Royalist forces marched on London. The armies were composed, as has so often been historically true,…