Jameswoodward’s Weblog

He is a drunk leaning companionably
Around a lamp post or doing up
With intermittent concentration
Another drunk’s coat.

But close your eyes and it is sunset
At the edge of the world. It is the language
Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots,
The heart-beat slowing down.

John Fuller

Have you ever looked into the face of a tiny baby and wondered what will be in store for that child – how his or her life will unfold across the years?

There is an exquisite painting which hangs in the great museum of The Louvre, in Paris. It is called ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’, by George de la Tour. It shows the Nativity Scene: a dark stable, with Mary, Joseph and the shepherds gazing on the sleeping child Jesus, wrapped in linen and lying on straw. Joseph holds a lighted candle and a lamb feeds on the straw. Joseph’s frail little light reveals the rapt attention of those shepherds, the loving gaze of Mary and his own fascination with the new-born baby.

Are they all wondering who the child will become as he grows? What life has in store for him? Are they asking themselves ‘Will there be a world in which the child can grow and flourish and become a man?’?

Do you wonder this for your own children and grandchildren, for the children who worship here at Temple Balsall week by week? What kind of world are we bringing them in to? What dangers? What opportunities?

De la Tour’s picture is remarkable because it suggests so poignantly all those very natural human concerns that we might share with the little group gathered around the baby as they look upon the beauty and vulnerability of a tiny child.

But this child, the child of the painting, seems to emit his own strange light – not the light of Joseph’s candle, but a beautiful, searching, spiritual light which shows up the faces of Mary and Joseph and the rough shepherds. The light of the Christ-child shows not only the questions and anxieties in the faces looking down on him, but also their spiritual wonder and prayer and joyful expectation. Somehow this ordinary child casts a light into the darkness which shows the ordinary mother and ordinary husband and ordinary rough old shepherds as extraordinary beautiful, spiritual beings – children of God, reflecting God’s image. The child’s light shows them in God’s light – yes, their flaws and failures and weariness as human beings, but also that they are beloved in God’s eyes, God’s children, vulnerable themselves, in need of love.

De la Tour’s picture, the lovely Crib-scene set up here in church, the Nativity story we celebrate again tonight in word and song, casts us in God’s light. It exposes us: shows up our loss of innocence, our cynicism and selfishness – how taken-up we are in our own concerns, how anxious. And yet that same light of the Christ-child reveals our longing to love and be loved, our capacity for concern and for compassion, the goodness in us which is ours as God’s children.

This child-light has the power to draw us in: it invites us to question, yes, and also to worship and to wonder; to see and search for that which can set us free for grace and love. The Nativity shows the heart of love; the sheer awe and wonder of God’s life. It promises the joy, a deep and lasting joy, which comes from knowing that we are loved by God in Christ.

As you look on the Christ-child tonight, what is your prayer? What do you seek for yourself, your loved-ones, for the world we share?

My prayer is that this story of divine love might throw light on our lives – that we might be enlightened to live for what is good and true. I pray for a deeper sense of wonder and awe and worship in all of our lives – of seeing the goodness that lies at the beating heart of God’s world. I pray that a spirit of awe may shape the picture of our lives.

May the light of Christmas and mystery of God’s love bring you joy. And may that joy uphold you and sustain you.

A happy and blessèd Christmas to each one of you and those you love. Amen

For the central truth, or mystery, of the Christian faith is primarily not a matter of words, and therefore ultimately of ideas or concepts, but a matter of fact, or reality.

The heart of the Christian mystery is the fact of God made man, God with us, in Christ; words, even his words, are secondary to the reality of what he accomplished. To be a Christian is not simply to believe something, to learn something, but to be something, to experience something.

The role of the Church, then, is not simply as the contingent vehicle—in history—of the Christian message, but as the community, through belonging to which we come into touch with the Christian mystery.

An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.

Denise Levertov, The Breathing

salt rose, topaz, archery, carnations,
the birth of fire. You are none of these.
You are the holy secret darkness, that space
between shadow and soul. There, where love is.

You are the flower that only blooms
within; hidden, but made of light.
A tactile fragrance, an enhancement
deep within the earth, my body.

How or when or where is not
what it’s about, this love; it is direct,
no pride, no problems, and no otherwise.

No me nor you. Your hand’s touch
is my hand; when your eyes close
I sleep.

• “Playfulness can get you out of a rut more successfully than seriousness,”

• “Triangles are the plaque in the arteries of communication and stress is the effect of our position in the triangle of our families “

• “If you are a leader, expect sabotage”

• “The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assump­tion that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. If you want your child, spouse, client, or boss to shape up, stay connected while changing yourself rather than trying to fix them”

Edwin H.Friedman

And thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.

And thus signifieth He when He saith: THOU SHALT SEE THYSELF if all manner of things shall be well: as if He said: Take now heed faithfully and trustingly, and at the last end thou shalt verily see it in fulness of joy.

From Julian of Norwich (1342 – c.1413), Revelations of Divine Love

60 000 books

People

Space

wide tables

Comfortable chairs to sleep

serious reading space!

One of the most obvious features of modern life in the West has been a radical questioning of tradition, of everything received from the past. Wisdom distilled from living in previous eras has often seemed irrelevant and out of date, unsuited to modern conditions and problems. Add to all this the floods of information, images, and other stimuli that pour out from radio, television, video, compact discs, computers, the Internet, print and other media, and the result is that our attention is generally dominated by input from the present day.

 The quantity, intensity and novelty of all this helps to make both the past and the future seem distant and even unreal – another world. We speak of a feature of modern culture common to Europe and North America, but these regions are home to numerous people of non-western traditions who also have experienced, though in sometimes different ways, its dissenting impact.

Such, moreover, is the power and reach of global communication, the same information, images and stimuli play upon and interact with very different cultural traditions

  Here’s some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets them up for failure in the real world. 

RULE 1 Life is not fair – get used to it.

RULE 2 The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3 You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with car phone, until you earn both.

 RULE 4 If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.

 RULE 5 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping they called it Opportunity.

RULE 6 If you mess up,it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

 RULE 7 Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

RULE 8 Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

 RULE 9 Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

 RULE 10 Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

 RULE 11 Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.