Reflections from the belly
I absolutely love words, and I just found an absolutely lovely one. Uhtceare, pronounced oot-key-are-a, means ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying.’* It may be Old English, but it’s a word for our times as so many of us are doing just that: tossing and turning as we fret about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Continue reading “Matthew | Slow reading | A remedy for uhtceare”
I’m finding it difficult to climb out of bed in the morning. A global pandemic, the monotony of shutdown, the changes to family, work and congregational life, climate catastrophe: unsurprisingly, I find the state of the world overwhelming. I just want to lie in bed and do nothing; to ignore kids, work, climate and let the world hurtle its way to destruction. There are days when I feel nearly paralyzed by grief and fear. Continue reading “Luke | Slow reading | Paralysis”
Some days are better than others: but this was not one of them. I woke up with my heart pounding, intensely aware of my anxiety. I felt it, named it, and prayed about it, then swung my legs out of bed and began my morning routine. Anxiously, I drank some water; anxiously, I did a workout; anxiously, I had a long hot shower … and still my heart pounded with fear. Muttering to myself that it would be a stupid waste of time while I was in this state, nevertheless I sat down to my daily practice: slow reading Scripture then sitting in silence, imagining myself in the Scripture and looking always towards God. Continue reading “Mark | Slow reading | Out of my mind with fear”
In which we introduce the idea of a sacrament, and describe a prayer exercise.
In Christian understanding, God is immanent. This means that, while God cannot be contained by anything, yet God is present in all things. In other words, creation is a sacrament: a sign of God’s presence which has an effect. Continue reading “Psalms | Slow reading | Consider the sky”
Over the last few months, some half a dozen people have asked me how to read the Bible. Some have been in churches for decades, others have barely been in churches at all, but they are united by one thing: They want to read the Bible for themselves – but they have experienced the Bible as an instrument of control in the past, and so they are afraid. Continue reading “Lectio Divina: Divine reading”
Alison and the whale 