Coracle Trust E-Reflections archive
All E-Reflections to date:
A word from the light, a flash from the dark
The light flows toward the earth,
the river toward the sea,
and these do not change.
The air changes, as the mind
changes at a word from the light,
a flash from the dark
Sabbaths 2000 VI (extract) in Given by Wendell Berry
Choosing a Way
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Beginnings of Identity
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Identity and Expectations
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own.
Marking the Way
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
Not Love Perhaps, ASJ Tessimond
You are lovely
The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness.
Beauty and the obscured image
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and freshness of a dream.
Pursued by symbols
He called a little child and had him stand among them.
And he said: ‘I tell you the truth,
unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’
Journeying with Innocence and Imagination
As a child I imagined the life beyond this life
as one enormous room, all mist and kinship,
now I would have to insist on walls and factions,
hidden compartments, corridors leading off
to secret gardens seeped in changing light
John Burnside, Retractationes from Gift Songs
I’m not finished with my changes
In that first hardly noticed moment to which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
And now with God’s help I shall become myself
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have emerged.
I will never leave or forsake you
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Morning Song, Sylvia Plath
Intimacy and Autonomy
Everything on earth has its own time and its own season,
There is a time for birth and death,
….
embracing and parting.
There is a time for finding and losing,
keeping and giving,
Ecclesiastes 3: 1,5-6
God is here to bless you
Welcome,
Child of love,
God is here to bless you.
Celtic Daily Prayer, Dedication of a child
New E-Reflection series:The Phases of Life
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who i was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
The Layers, Stanley Kunitz*
The Return to Wonder
i thank You God for most this amazing
day…and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any…
...human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
E. E. Cummings, I thank you God
In defense of joy
We must have the stubbornness
to accept our gladness
in the ruthless furnace of this world.
One wild and precious life
Tell me, what is it you plan to do,
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
All things are passing away
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Teresa of Avila, 16th C. Spanish saint
The uncurling of the soul towards God
The trees are coming into leaf/
Like something almost being said/
.../
Last year is dead, they seem to say/
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The Trees (extract), Philip Larkin
The walk into darkness
In any part of our journey there may be a tangible sense of a beginning or of an end. But what about the path in between? Are there not periodic dips into darkness, or to use another Christian mystical term 'desert'? But what does this darkness brings us to?
The way was wholly lost
'Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.' Psalm 119:105. Often we don’t know where we are going. This Psalm, in fact, seems to suggest that our true path is not clearly marked or easy to locate. So should we know clearly where we are going?
Life is rarely lived in a straight line
We have started Lent. We are on the road towards the cross and a renewal. Even if Jesus knew where this path might or would take him there were twists and turns on the way.
What is our ending?
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. (1 John 3:2)
What is our beginning?
Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.
Beginnings and endings: Day after day, everyday (Week 4)
Everything that happens
has happened before
and all that will be has already been –
God does everything
over and over again. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)
Beginnings and endings: A comment on Haiti (Week 3)
I looked again and saw people being ill treated everywhere on earth. They were crying, but no one was there to offer comfort, and those who ill treated them were powerful. I said to myself, 'The dead are better off than the living. But those who have never been born are better off than anyone else, because they have never seen the terrible things that happen on this earth.... Once again I saw that nothing on earth made sense’ (Ecclesiastes 4:1-4)
Beginnings and endings: The tremor of danger and the sense of promise (Week 2)
After the wise men left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Hurry! Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother," "Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." That night, under cover of darkness, Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod’s death. (Matthew 2:13-15)
Beginnings and endings (Week 1)
They returned to their country by another route. (Matthew 2:12)
E-Reflections: Introduction
At the start of the new year we embark on our first set of E-Reflections, on the topic of Beginnings and Endings. These will be brief and hopefully evocative.
Clutching the sky’s sheets
When He touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets,
the way other lovers
do
The sky’s sheets, Saint Teresa of Avila
Benign yearning at the heart of the universe
The inward stirring and
touching of God
makes us hungry and yearning;
for the Spirit of God hunts
our spirit;
and the more it touches it, the greater our hunger
and our craving.
The inward stirring, Blessed John Ruysbroek, Flemish 14th century
All our seeing rinsed and cleansed
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed.
