Easter

easter is the most wonderful time of the year. forget christmas with its razzamataz and glitz. easter is more difficlut to sanitize and detach from the mystery of its first meaning. i was struck again today how strange belief in a crucifed jewsih peasant is and how the cross still is endlessly mysterious and wonderful. there was a great bbc 1 programme about the cross this morning. in it they talked to an artist who has painted over 100 crucifixions. he siad he was looking for the face of christ.

john v taylor says that jesus never learnt to withhold love. he was the ultimate man for others. all the forces of mockery, violence, lies, could not stop jesus living for others even until the very end that was in the same moment the beginning.

Welsh Dragon

the dragon breathes again!

well done to the welsh on a stunning grand slam. having been born in 1981, i have never seen the welsh as anything other than the whipping boys of the rugby world, with a few great players (scott gibbs, neil jenkins, ieuan evans, jonathon davies, scott quinell). so i still can't quite believe that they have done it.

great to see a bit of adeventure and flair rather than just big english and french forwards running over people and bullying teams into defeat. long live shane williams, if only he was english!

bring on the all blacks in the summer..

called to suffer?

at work today, for a human rights charity working with persecuted christians, a palestinian christian couple came to lead our devotions. he is working in the states promoting awareness about the plight of christians in the holy land and is involved with reconciliation efforts. he has been holding meetings in westminster with an israeli christian setting out their vision for reconciliation.

that and the lead up to easter got me thinking about the role of suffering in conflict resolution and reconcilation. paul talks about carrying around the death of christ and completing the sufferings of christ. is our suffering redemptive in some way? would mandela have had such powerful role if he had been imprisoned for say six months? what about martin luther king and gandhi?

i am coming to think that in any relatioship the path to shalom is not paved with rights and demands for justice but with a more costly way which lays down rights and gladly accepts injustice, until the other - whether it is a nation, wife, friend, child - is sensitized. suffering maybe acts like a scouring brush which takes off the flaky outer layer of rhetoric and posturing and reveals, in a special few, a dazzling mirror which reveals not only the integrity of heart of the sufferer but also causes the other to see themselves as they really are.

what lies beneath...

tomorrow...

when tomorrow brings a hefty sigh,
of wilting dreams and tears to cry,
then remember me ever today
the one sublime in summer's hay.

in spring's bright hope - and forgetfulness,
there you find me. still
in sleepy river dawns, there i am. present.

brightness mingles with dank stale air,
oh come, and rend the heavens bare,
come oh present one and stay a while

stay a while

gerard manely hopkins

i have recently discovered the glories of this brillaint but tragic poet. a child prodigy who gave everything up (after being described as the star of balliol college oxford) to be join the society of jesus, he generally hated his job and died earlier than he should. he also didn't write anything for years. how can such a man produce such beautiful poetry?

here one of his most famous - a good one for us city dwellers on a drab march day.

the world is charged with the granduer of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shres man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
THere lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And through the lat lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Becasue the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.

Welcome...

hello and welcome to my life.

it is a slightly strange sensation putting yourself out into the ether; slightly uncomfortable thoughts of disembodiment... please be kind to my virtual reality!

so why join this blogging craze? well, apart from being a hopeless fashion victim, the main reason was that the blog seemed to me to be a great place to spill my thoughts which otherwise kind of dissapate into a mush of barely half formed ideas. so the idea of an adoring audience (spot the dillusions of grandeur) waiting with baited breath for daily dose my thoughts seemed an ideal antidote. and in the absence of the adoring audience, i could kid myself.

i would love to hear from anybody whom the god of google decides to send across my path.

bievenue et au revoir