Pen and Ink Reflections
  • Blog
  • about
  • other reflections
  • contact
  • Sunday 27 June 2021

on John O'Donohue: contemplate, connect, create

4/2/2017

4 Comments

 
Picture
‘There was an ancient music on the earth before humans ever came here.  Imagine what the first music of the wind was like when the earth was born out of nothing.  Imagine the wind being released for the first time, and finding itself running into silver mountains, dark mountains, skimming over boiling oceans.   And if you enter into the dream which brought you here, and awaken its beauty in you, then the beauty will gradually awaken all around you.’

- so begins the introduction to the film ‘Celtic Pilgrimage’ which shares much of John O’Donohue’s life and work.  And, in a way, like many of his sayings, those gorgeously fashioned few words alone might really be enough for us to ponder tonight.  For the heart of much of his insight and encouragement to live is contained in them: the vitality of creation and the landscape; the call to imagination and to enter into the dreams of our life; and the centrality of beauty and of wonder.  John O’Donohue’s life and work was an invitation and example of how to attend to such presence and to travel as adventurous pilgrims into them… 

I guess that I might give a brief biography of the man.  Yet I am disinclined to do so at any length.  For O’Donohue himself was frequently saddened by the modern encouragement for us to tell our stories in that way.  Too often, he felt, this is to so reduce our life to banality and cliché.  Our biography is not our identity, he would say.  We are so, so much more, and this hardly even begins to touch on the hidden mystery of our selves.  Within each of us lies an immense invisible world we hardly explore.  Of course therapy has its place, especially where we need to entwine ourselves from aspects of our biography which we and others have created and which hems us in.  Yet even the best therapy is not true spirituality, which is as much to do with letting go of the search for ‘authentic’ biography of any kind.  As John O’Donohue commented, true spirituality not to do with your or my own little humanoid self-improvement project.  Too much religion is indeed ‘psychology in disguise’.

Now, of course, his biographical details do matter, yet in another way. This might be best expressed in his beautiful short poem Fluent, where he wrote that:

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.


That, for me, is a deeply Celtic aspiration, though not confined of course to the Celtic world.  For it reflects a view of being that is about flow, in deep communion with the natural world, open to fresh discovery, unencumbered by an insistence on straight lines and narrowly imposed ‘order’.  In John O’Donohue’s case, it indeed fits well with his deep embodiment in the west of Ireland, where he was born in 1956.  It is also profoundly in tune with his doctoral and post-doctoral studies into Hegel and Meister Eckhart.  And it is an expression of his deep Christian, indeed Catholic priestly, spirituality, as well as an expression of his other vocations: as a poet, and as an ‘anam cara’ a soul-friend.  Yet it also points us beyond, to new thresholds of presence, where each of us may cross into deeper meaning and relationship. 
What do we seek to find in him I wonder?  I hope it is not merely a set of words and images to inspire, brilliant though they typically are.  Even less, I hope we do not seek some distillation of Celtic Wisdom.  In my view, John O’Donohue offers a rich and particular combination of Irish life, inclusive spirituality and incisive reflection which leaves most other expressions of Celtic faith in its wake.  Yet his real achievement was the painstaking and joyful hewing of this from the depths of his own experience, as an invitation to our own faith and lives, not as a monument for Celtic spiritual fetishism.  Inspired by his exploration and expression of spirit, the question is: what will we do with our own?

John O’Donohue put it this way:

‘I feel ‘that there are two ways that you must always keep together in approaching the God thing. One is, and this is what I like about the Christian tradition — and this is where I diverge a little from the Buddhist tradition even though I love Buddhism as a methodology to clean up the mind and get you into purity of presence. What I love is that at the heart of Christianity, you have this idea of intimacy, which is true belonging, being seen, the ultimate home of individuation, the ultimate source of it and the homecoming.’  That, he said, ‘is what I call spirituality, the art of homecoming. So it’s St. Augustine’s phrase, “Deus intimior intimo meo” — “God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.” Then you go to Meister Eckhart, and you get the other side of it, which you must always keep together with it, where in Middle High German, he says, “Gott wirt und Gott entwirt” — that means, “God becomes and God un-becomes,” or translated it means that God is only our name for it, and the closer we get to it the more it ceases to be God. So then you are on a real safari with the wildness and danger and otherness of God. And I think when you begin to get a sense of the depth that is there, then your whole heart wakens up. I mean, I love Irenaeus’ thing from the second century, which said… “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” And I think in our culture that one of the things that we are missing is that these thresholds where we can encounter this, and where we move into new change in our lives, there are no rituals to help us to recognise them or to cross them worthily.’

Let me, briefly, offer three pathways in which John O’Donohue helped us cross over worthily: three pathways which help me, and which may entwine with others you see; three ways beginning with c.

Firstly, John O’Donohue helps us to contemplate. This, for him, was grounded in the elemental, such a missing part of so much of modern life, including churches.  As he put it:

‘I think it makes a hue difference when you leave your house: whether you think you are walking into location, which is simply dead space which you are crossing so that you can get to where you need to go; or whether you believe you are walking into a living universe. If you believe the second, then your walk becomes a different thing.’  

There are many aspects of this we could explore, not least the deeper spiritual linkages this might give many of us with Australian Indigenous people, who, like the ancient Celtic tradition, see spirit alive and embodied in the landscape, full of mystery places and spaces.  Each one of us, even in a city, John O’Donohue suggested, needs at least one special place where we can go to come home to this presence. For, as he teased out, such a contemplative approach helps us see time, colour and other taken-for-granted features of our world afresh.  It helps us prevent 'the laying down of tarmacadam in our minds for the ‘motorway of fundamentalism’. It is a work of silence and solitude, birthing wonder. 

Secondly, John O’Donohue helps us to connect.  For dualism was simply not an option for him.  Just as we isolate the visible and invisible worlds at our peril, so secular and sacred, pagan and Christian, masculine and feminine, the heaviness of our earthly clay and the ethereal whispiness of spirit are not separate, but one. He embodied this wonderfully in his own life, where he was just at ease in himself, with others and his surroundings, when he was sharing fun, song, dance and whisky, as when he was at prayer, pondering a line of poetry or alone on a mountain top.  For to him, our external and internal landscapes inform one another, and, most profoundly of all, birth and death belong together.  Indeed, John himself died at the comparatively early age of 52, having written extensively about how death can be viewed as a gift and as a new birth for those who have travelled well: something he learned, as a priest, from attending others on their deathbed.   In death, as in life, the human task was to come home to the presence in which we already live, to the love which knows and loves us before, through, and beyond everything. 

Making these kind of connections has of course been part of religion’s role down the ages, which makes its diminution in the modern western world a great loss.  For John O’Donohue, this was partly because the ‘frightened functionaries’ of organised religion had allowed religion to become so boring and restrictive.  The tragedy of child abuse in the Irish Catholic Church was for him also a further shattering.  For the Irish Catholic Church had of course been the sacred container of meaning and identity when all was taken from its people by centuries of colonisation: language, land and all the rest.  Such communion however rests on a trust which cannot be manufactured, or at all easily restored when it is gone.  So, in such circumstances, how then does the western world reconnect with presence today?  It is not an easy question to answer.  Yet, in word and deed, perhaps John O’Donohue is a prophet for us here too.  There is, he said, still much genuine striving for, and manifestation of holiness in churches.  However this is not enough.  Rather we need to reconnect the vocation of priestliness as the vocation of every human being.  Indeed, the best thing he ever did, he said, was to become a priest, and the second best thing was to leave the public Catholic priesthood, when his bishop gave him and ultimatum to choose between writing and another full-time pastoral charge.  He saw the arts, especially, and engagement with people in their places of work, as paths forward, together with active environmental and social justice action.  To those who have been given much, he used to say, much is expected: for ‘the duty of privilege is absolute integrity.’ 

Which leads me, thirdly, and finally to the outflowing of John O’Donohue’s fluency, his encouragement to us to create.  For faith, he affirmed, was really a ‘helpless attraction to the divine’.  Sadly however, he said, in the western world we have placed such emphasis on the mind and the intellect of God, and particularly, the will of God, that ‘we have devastatingly neglected the imagination of God – the divine imagination – because that is the true source of all beauty.’  For the truth is, ‘if you look as God as an artist, then it totally alters what you think about God.’

So can we each be artists, who create, out of the connections we make, through our contemplative being?  This is the continuing challenge John O’Donohue with which leaves us.  Our calling is not the protection of our individual woundedness, but to enter more deeply into our own lives, and, with others, cultivate and re-express the danger and wildness of God.  As he put it:

‘Either we are in the universe to inhabit the eternity of our souls and grow real, or else we might as well dedicate our days to shopping and kill time watching talk-shows… Let's not let our days fall away like empty shells and miss all the treasure… Each day is a secret story woven around the radiant heart of wonder. The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within you.’ 

Perhaps this was again best summed up for him by his experience of attending the dying, where he often saw great transformation in the course of a short hour or so.  What was truly sad was when people came to their death having hardly lived, having remained trapped by their fears or by conforming to social expectations.  Yet others came to their death as they had lived their lives: full of courage, flow and the openness to fresh surprise.  So, how has your life been?, John asked one particular rogue as he prepared to slip away, with great expectation for the next, quite unknown stage, to come.  ‘By Jesus’, the man said, ‘I knocked one hell of a squeeze out of it!’  Perhaps that should be part of John O’Donohue’s own epitaph: someone who was variously a farmer’s son, a priest, a poet, a philosophe, a mystic, a great friend and enjoyer of fun - full of insight, compassion and laughter - who got a hell of a squeeze out of life, and spirituality and all that is bound up in it; and a friend who calls us too to enjoy that same squeeze too.  May we become more fully part of God’s blessing.

Let me then conclude, as he often did himself, with one of John O’Donohue’s best loved blessings, “Beannacht,” (pronounced ‘bannock’) which is the Gaelic word for blessing:

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.


And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.


When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.


May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.


And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your
life.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Jo Inkpin, for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series, Sunday 2 April 2017 (St.John’s Cathedral, Brisbane)
4 Comments
Ling
4/8/2024 03:53:09 pm

Wow. Beautifully written and so much to ponder. Thank you Jo for your thoughts.

Reply
Josephine Inkpin
4/8/2024 05:19:58 pm

Thankyou

Reply
Fergal
6/26/2024 02:13:21 am

If feel that you truly understand John's presence and ethos and have relayed this in new way to me.

Thank you

Reply
Talent Beyond Boundaries link
1/15/2025 04:16:09 am


A beautiful triad that reflects John O'Donohue's spirit. Delving into how each element intertwines could deepen the exploration of his legacy.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    sermons and reflections from Penny Jones & Josephine Inkpin, a same gender married Anglican clergy couple serving with the Uniting Church in Sydney

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    2 Peter
    Abide
    ABM
    Aboriginal
    Abraham
    Abundance
    Abuse
    Active
    Acts Of The Apostles
    Adam And Eve
    Adultery
    Advent
    Advocacy
    Aelred
    Affirmation
    Affliction
    African American
    African-American
    Agency
    Aidan
    Alan Webster
    Albanian
    Albert Wendt
    Alex Pittaway
    Alice In Wonderland
    Alla Renee Bozarth
    Allegory
    All Saints
    Ambiguity
    American Pie
    Amos
    Andrew
    Angel
    Angela Santos
    Angels
    Anger
    Anglican
    Anglican Method
    Animals
    Anna
    Anne Askew
    Annunciation
    Anoiniting
    Anselm
    Anthony Bloom
    Antioch
    ANZAC
    Apartheid
    Apocalyptic
    Apology
    Apophatic
    Archbishop Of Canterbury
    Aristotle
    Armenian
    ARRCC
    Art
    Artist
    Ascension
    Ash Wednesday
    Asian
    Asylum Seekers
    Atonement
    Attraversiamo
    Augustine
    Aunty Ali Golding
    Aunty Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
    Australia
    Authenticity
    Authority
    Awaken
    Baby
    Baha'i
    Bakerwoman
    Balmain
    Baptism
    Barabbas
    Barefoot
    Barnabas
    Barnard Castle
    Barth
    Bartimaeus
    Basis Of Union
    Battle Of One Tree Hill
    Beach
    Beatitudes
    Becoming
    Bede
    Being
    Believing
    Belonging
    Beloved
    Benjamin Oh
    Berlin
    Bethleham
    Betrayal
    Bible
    Bill Bryson
    Binary
    Birmingham
    Birth
    Bishop
    B.J.Hipsher
    Black
    Black Theology
    Blessed
    Blessing
    Blessing Of Animals
    Blessing Of The Waters
    Blood
    Boat
    Boaz
    Bob Dylan
    Body
    Bones
    Bonhoeffer
    Border
    Borg
    Born Again
    Boudicca
    Boundaries
    Bowl
    Breach
    Bread
    Bread Of Life
    Breath
    Brexit
    Brian McLaren
    Brian Swimme
    Bride
    Bridegroom
    Bridge
    Brigid
    Brisbane
    British
    Brixton
    Brokenness
    Bronski Beat
    Bruegemann
    Buber
    Buddha
    Buddhist
    Buderim
    Bunyan
    Byard's Leap
    Caesarea Philippi
    Call
    Calvin
    Cambodia
    Camino
    Campfire
    Cana
    Canaanite
    Candle
    Candlemas
    Cappadocian Fathers
    Care
    Careers
    Carefully
    Carnival
    Carol
    Carter Heyward
    Catherine LaCugna
    Catholic
    Celtic
    Centurion
    Challenge
    Change
    Charismatic
    Charles Wesley
    C.H.Dodd
    Cheesemakers
    Chelsea Watego
    Chess
    Chick
    Child Of God
    Children
    China
    Chosen
    Chosen Family
    Christ
    Christian
    Christian Aid
    Christianity
    Christmas
    Christology
    Christ The King
    Church
    Church Of England
    Circumcision
    Citizen
    City
    Class
    Clay
    Climate
    Climate Change
    Climbing
    Cloak
    Clobber
    Clothing
    Cloud Of Unknowing
    Coin
    Colonialism
    Colossians
    Come
    Commandment
    Common Good
    Communion
    Community
    Companion
    Compassion
    Condamine
    Confession
    Confirmation
    Conflict
    Confrontation
    Confucius
    Congregationalist
    Connect
    Contemplate
    Contemplative
    Contemporary
    Context
    Conversion
    Conversion Therapy
    Corinth
    Coronavirus
    Cosmology
    Cost
    Councils
    Country
    County Durham
    Courage
    Covenant
    Covid 19
    Covid-19
    Crack
    Cranmer
    Create
    Creation
    Creed
    Creek
    Crib
    Cricket
    Criminal
    Critical
    Cromwell
    Cross
    Crossan
    Crossing Over
    Crucifixion
    Crumbs
    Csg
    C.S.Lewis
    Cuddesdon
    Culture
    Cunnamulla
    Cuthbert
    Cynthia Bourgeault
    Cyprian
    Dalai Lama
    Dales
    Dame Edna Everage
    Dance
    Darkness
    Darlughdach
    Dave-andrews
    David
    David And Elizabeth Inkpin
    David Bowie
    David Jenkins
    David-mach
    David Steindl Rast
    David Steindl-Rast
    David Whyte
    Day Of Mourning
    Deacon
    Dean Inge
    Death
    Death Row
    Delight
    Demon
    Demonic
    Denial
    Denise Levertov
    Desert
    Desire
    Desmond Tutu
    Deuteronomy
    Devil
    Dharug
    Dianella
    Diarmaid McCulloch
    Difference
    Disability
    Disciple
    Discipleship
    Dispossession
    Dissident
    Disturber
    Diversity
    Divorce
    Docetism
    Doctrine
    Don Cupitt
    Donkey
    Dorcas
    Dorothy McRae-McMahon
    Dorothy Soelle
    Doubt
    Dragonflies
    Dragonfly
    Dream
    Dr Who
    Duncan Andrews
    Duns Scotus
    Durham
    Durkheim
    Eagle
    Earth
    Earth Bible
    Easter
    Easterfest
    Eating
    Ecology
    Ecopella
    Eco-theology
    Ecstasy
    Ecumenical
    Eden
    Education
    Egg
    Ego
    Egypt
    Elder
    Eli
    Elijah
    Elisha
    Elizabeth
    Elizabeth Johnson
    Elizabeth Stuart
    Elton John
    Emancipation
    Embodiment
    Emerging
    Emily Dickenson
    Emmanuel
    Empire
    Empowerment
    Empty Tomb
    End Times
    Energy
    Engagement
    Entry
    Environment
    Ephesians
    Epiphany
    Equality
    Esau
    Eternal
    Eternal Life
    Ethics
    Ethiopian
    Etty Hillesum
    Eucharist
    Eudaimonia
    Eugene Peterson
    Eugene Stockton
    Eunuch
    Evangelical
    Evangelism
    Evelyn Underhill
    Evil
    Evolution
    Exile
    Exodus
    Exorcism
    Express
    Extinction Rebellion
    Eyes
    Ezekiel
    Failure
    Fair Trade
    Faith
    Faithfulness
    Fame
    Family
    Famine Of Grace
    Fast
    Father
    Father George Grainger
    Fathers Day
    Fear
    Feeding Five Thousand
    Fellowship
    Feminist
    Fig Tree
    Figurative
    Filipino
    Fire
    First Nations
    Fish
    Fisher King
    Fishers
    Flesh
    Flora And Fauna
    Flourish
    Flourishing
    Follow
    Foolish
    Footwashing
    Foremothers
    Forgiveness
    Fountain
    Fox
    Francis
    Franciscans
    Frankincense
    Frederick Barker
    Freedom
    French
    Friend
    Friends
    Friendship
    Fruit
    Fruits
    Fukuyama
    Fulfilment
    Fundamentalism
    Fundamentalist
    Funeral
    Funk
    Future
    Gadigal
    Galgala
    Galilee
    Galileo
    Game
    Garden
    Garry Deverell
    Gary Deverell
    Gate
    Gateshead
    Gaudete
    Gay
    Gaze
    Gazelle
    Gender
    Gender Identity
    Gender Variant
    Genealogy
    Generosity
    Genesis
    Gentile
    Gentleness
    George Fox
    Gerard Manley Hopkins
    Gerasene
    Ghost
    Gift
    Gil Bailie
    Glennie
    Glenn Loughrey
    Gloria Kapinsky
    Glory
    Gnosticism
    Goa
    God
    Gold
    Golden Rule
    Gondwana Theology
    Good Friday
    Goodness
    Good News
    Good Shepherd
    Gospel
    Grace
    Graeme Rutherford
    Graham Greene
    Graham Warren
    Grain
    Grandchamp
    Grandchild
    Grandmother
    Gratefulness
    Gratitude
    Great Commandment
    Great Commission
    Greenham Common
    Greenness
    Green Way
    Gregory-of-nyssa
    Grief
    Growth
    Guanyin
    Gungor
    Habel
    Hackney
    Hagar
    Haggai
    Hanna Cheriyan Varghese
    Happiness
    Harry Potter
    Harvest
    Headlam
    Healing
    Heart
    Heaven
    Hebrew
    Hebrews
    Hedgerows
    Helder Camara
    Hemorrhaging Woman
    Hen
    Henri Nouwen
    Henry Scott Holland
    Henry Vaughan
    He Qi
    Heresy
    Herod
    Hesitation
    Hijra
    Hildegard
    Hindu
    Historical
    History
    Holding
    Holiness
    Holy Saturday
    Holy Spirit
    Holy Trinity
    Holy Week
    Home
    Homophobia
    Honour
    Hope
    Hosea
    Hospitality
    House
    H. Richard Niebuhr
    Humanity
    Humility
    I Am
    Icon
    I Corinthians
    IDAHOT
    Identity
    Ilia Delio
    Image
    Imagination
    Imagine
    Immanence
    Imperialism
    Incarnation
    India
    Indigenous
    Indooroopilly
    Inn
    Inspiration
    Interbeing
    Interfaith
    International Women's Day
    Interplay
    Interpretation
    Intimacy
    Invitation
    Iona
    Irenaeus
    Isaac
    Isaiah
    Islam
    Israel
    I-Thou
    Jack Haas
    Jack-in-a-box
    Jacob
    Jairus
    James
    James Alison
    James Haire
    Jamie Beck
    Jamie Dunk
    Jan Berry
    Janet Morley
    Jan Richardson
    Jar
    Jarel Robinson-Brown
    Jarowair And Giabal
    Jarrow
    Jeremiah
    Jeremias
    Jerusalem
    Jester
    Jesus
    Jesus Christ
    Jesus Prayer
    Jewish
    Jews
    Jezebel
    Jihad
    Jim Leftwich
    J.Kameron Carter
    Joan Chittister
    Job
    Joel
    Joe Primo
    John
    John-17
    John Arlott
    John Bell
    John Coleman
    John Naish
    John O'Donohue
    John's Gospel
    John The Baptist
    John Wesley
    Jonathan
    Josef Zacek
    Joseph
    Joseph Butler
    Josephine Butler
    Josephus
    Journey
    Joy
    Jubilee
    Judaism
    Judas
    Judgement
    Judith Wright
    Jujitsu
    Julian
    Julian Of Norwich
    Jurgen Moltmann
    Justice
    Jyllie Jackson
    Jyoti Sahi
    Kairos
    Kaleidoscope
    Kataphatic
    Katherine Appleby
    Keble
    Kenosis
    Kerry Holland
    KIerkegaard
    Kindness
    King
    Kingdom
    Kingship
    Kite
    Koan
    Kosuke Koyama
    Krishna
    Labyrinth
    Lamentations
    Land
    Language
    Lantern
    Laotzi
    L'Arche
    Last Supper
    Laughter
    Law
    Lazarus
    Lead
    Leadership
    Leap
    Leap Of Faith
    Learning
    Leaves
    Legion
    Leichhardt UC
    Lent
    Leonard Cohen
    Leonardo Da Vinci
    Leper
    Lesbian
    Les Murray
    Levertov
    Levite
    Lewis Carroll
    LGBTI
    LGBTIQ
    Liberation
    Liberty
    Life
    Light
    Lightness Of Being
    Liminality
    Lincolnshire
    Lindisfarne
    Lion
    Lionel Blue
    Lismore
    Listening
    Literalist
    Liturgy
    Living Dance
    Living Stones
    Lloyd George
    Logos
    London
    Longing
    Lord
    Lord's Prayer
    Lore
    Love
    Love Of God
    Love Your Enemies
    Luke
    Luther
    Lutheran
    Macarthur
    Macrina
    Macrina Wiederkehr
    Mad
    Magi
    Magic Realism
    Magnificat
    Mahatma Gandhi
    Makaratta
    Malcolm Guite
    Manchester
    Mandala
    Manger
    Mantle
    Maori
    Maranatha
    Maranoa
    Marcella Althaus Reid
    Marcella Althaus-Reid
    Mardi Gras
    Margaret Silf
    Marginalised
    Marianne Williamson
    Mark
    Mark 13
    Mark Copland
    Market Rasen
    Mark Jordan
    Marriage
    Martha
    Martin Luther
    Martin Luther King
    Martyr
    Mary
    Mary Crowther
    Mary Magdalene
    Mary Of Bethany
    Mary Oliver
    Mary Poppins
    Mary Sumner
    Masculinity
    Materiality
    Matthew
    Matthias Gruenewald
    Maundy Thursday
    Maya
    May C.Popa
    MCC
    Meaning
    Meditation
    Meewah
    Meister Eckhart
    Melbourne
    Melchizedek
    Melodrama
    Memory
    Men
    Mental Health
    Mercy
    Merry Clayton
    Messiah
    Metanoia
    Methodist
    Michael
    Michael Cook
    Michael Leunig
    Midnight Oil
    Midwife
    Migrant
    Mikko Harvey
    Milton
    Mind
    Ministry
    Minster
    Miracle
    Mirror
    Mission
    Moab
    Moltmann
    Monastery
    Monk
    Morality
    Moses
    Mother
    Mother Hen
    Mothering
    Mother-in-law
    Mothers Union
    Mountain
    Multicultural
    Multifaith
    Multuggerah
    Munoz
    Music
    Muslim
    Mustard Seed
    Myall Creek
    Myrrh
    Myrrh Bearers
    Mystery
    Mystic
    Myth
    NAIDOC
    Nakedpastor
    Name
    Naomi
    Natalie Adams
    Nathaniel
    Nathan Tyson
    Nativity
    Nature
    Nazareth
    Neighbour
    Nelson-mandela
    Net
    New Age
    New Creation
    New Life
    Newman
    New Year
    New Zealand
    Nicene Creed
    Nick Cave
    Nicodemus
    Night
    Nikita Gill
    Noah
    Noel Preston
    Nonbinary
    Nonjudgement
    Nonviolence
    Norman
    Norman Habel
    Numbers
    Nungalinya
    Oasis
    Obed
    Obedience
    Ocean
    Offering
    Oil
    Oppression
    Ordination
    Origen
    Orpah
    Orthodox
    Oscar Romero
    Oscar Wilde
    Other
    Otter
    Outcast
    Overcoming Violence
    Oxford
    Pablo PIcasso
    Pacific
    Pain
    Palestine
    Palm Sunday
    Pamela Lightsey
    Parable
    Parable Of The Angry Master
    Parable Of The Talents
    Parent
    Parish
    Parsifal
    Participation
    Party
    Passion
    Pastor
    Pathway
    Patience
    Patriarchy
    Patrick
    Patrick Oliver
    Paul
    Paul Yore
    Peace
    Peacemaker
    Penitence
    Penny Jones
    Pentatonix
    Pentecost
    Pentecostal
    People Of God
    Perfume
    Persecution
    Perseverance
    Persistence
    Peter
    Peter Millar
    Pharaoh
    Pharisee
    Pharisees
    Philip
    Philippians
    Philippines
    Pig
    Pilate
    Pilgrim
    Pilgrimage
    Pitt Street Uniting Church
    Plague
    Plato
    Plautilla Nelli
    Play
    Poetry
    Political
    Politics
    Polyamory
    Poor
    Pope
    Pope Francis
    Possibility
    Post Colonial
    Poverty
    Power
    Praise
    Prayer
    Preacher
    Preaching
    Pregnancy
    Presbyterian
    Presence
    President
    Pride
    Priest
    Prince Of Peace
    Proclamation
    Progressive
    Promise
    Prophecy
    Prophet
    Prophet Mohammed
    Protecttion
    Protest
    Protestant
    Proverbs
    Providence
    Psalm
    Puppet
    Purification
    Purity
    Purity Of Heart
    Purpose
    Quaker
    Queer
    Rabbi
    Race
    Rachael Mann
    Rachel Collis
    Racism
    Rage
    Raiinbow
    Rainbow
    Ramadan
    Rapture
    Ravenna
    Reason
    Rebekah
    Recapitulation
    Reconciliation
    Redemption
    Reformation
    Reformed
    Refugee
    Rejection
    Rejoice
    Relationality
    Relationship
    Religion
    Religious Experience
    Religious Freedom
    Remembrance
    Repentance
    Republic
    Resilience
    Resistance
    Resource
    Rest
    Resurrection
    Revelation
    Revolution
    Richard Rohr
    Rich Young Man
    Righteousness
    Risk
    Rita Mae Brown
    River
    Rock
    Roman
    Romans
    Rose
    Roses
    Rowan Williams
    R.S Thomas
    R.S.Thomas
    Rumi
    Russia
    Ruth
    Sabbath
    Sacrament
    Sacramental
    Sacrifice
    Sadducees
    Safe Church
    Safety
    Saints
    Salt
    Salvador Dali
    Salvation
    Samaritan
    Samuel
    Sanctification
    Sanctus
    Sanguin
    Santa Claus
    Santiago De Compostela
    Sarah
    Sarah Bachelard
    Satan
    SBS
    Scarcity
    Schism
    Schleiermacher
    Scholasticism
    School Of Hard Knocks
    Science
    Scotland
    Scott Stevens
    Scripture
    Sculpture
    Sea
    Season Of Creation
    Second Coming
    Secularism
    Security
    See
    Seed
    Sense8
    Sermon The Mount
    Service
    Seth Godin
    Sex
    Sexuality
    Shadow
    Shakespeare
    Shalom
    Shame
    Shannon Kearns
    Sheep
    Sheep And Goats
    Shell
    Shelly Rambo
    Shema
    Shepherd
    Shepherds
    Shirley Erena Murray
    Sibyls
    Silence
    Simeon
    Sin
    Sinner
    Slavery
    Smalltown Boy
    Snake
    Socrates
    Soil
    Solae
    Solidarity
    Song
    Son Of Man
    Sophia
    Soul
    South Africa
    Sovereignty
    Sower
    Spirit
    Spiritual
    Spirituality
    Spong
    Sport
    Stan Grant
    Stanhope
    Statement From The Heart
    Steff Fenton
    Stendahl Rast
    Stendahl-Rast
    Stephanie Dowrick
    Stewardship
    St Francis College
    Stillness
    St John's Cathedral
    St Luke's
    St Mary's In Exile
    Storm
    Story
    Strangeness
    Studdert Kennedy
    Subversion
    Success
    Suffering
    Suffering Servant
    Sufficiency
    Sunflower
    Sydney
    Sylvia Sands
    Symbol
    Synagogue
    Syrophoenician
    Tabitha
    Table-fellowship
    Taize
    Talents
    Tall-poppy
    Tanya Marlow
    Teacher
    Tears
    Teenager
    Teilhard De Chardin
    Temple
    Temptation
    Ten Commandments
    Tennyson
    Tension
    Test
    Text
    Thanksgiving
    The-glennie-school
    The Land Song
    Theodicy
    Theology
    Theosis
    Theotokos
    The Way
    Thomas
    Thomas Aquinas
    Thomas Berry
    Thomas Merton
    Threshold
    Thunderbirds
    Tillich
    Time
    Tomb
    Tongues
    Toowoomba
    Torah
    Torres
    Torres Strait
    Tractarian
    Tradition
    Transcendence
    Trans Day Of Visibility
    Transfiguration
    Transformation
    Transgender
    Transition
    Trash
    Trauma
    Treasure
    Treaty
    Tree
    Trinity
    Trump
    Trust
    Truth
    T.S.Eliot
    Tufty
    Tutu
    Tweed
    Tyehimba Jess
    Tyne
    UAICC
    Ukraine
    Uluru
    UN
    Unclobbering
    Uniting Church
    Unity
    Universe
    Usury
    Vaclav Havel
    Valwyn Wishart
    Vanstone
    Vatican II
    Veridiitas
    Victory
    Vincent Van Gogh
    Vine
    Violence
    Virgin Birth
    Virgin-mary
    Virgins
    Viriditas
    Vision
    Visitation
    Vivid
    Voice
    Wachowski
    Waiters-union
    Waiting
    Waking
    Wales
    Walking
    Walking On Water
    Walter Wink
    War
    Warrego
    Warsaw
    Watch
    Water
    W.B.Yeats
    Wear
    Weardale
    Wedding
    Weeds
    Welcome
    Wellness
    Wellspring
    Wendell Berry
    Wesleyan-quadrilateral
    Westminster Confession
    White
    Whiteness
    White Ribbon
    Wholemaker
    Widow
    Wild Bird
    Wilderness
    Will
    William Countryman
    William Temple
    Willliam-blake
    Wind
    Wine
    Winston-halapua
    Wisdom
    Woe
    Wolf
    Woman
    Woman At The Well
    Woman Bent Over
    Womanist
    Womb
    Women
    Wonder
    Wonderwall
    Wontulpbibuya
    Word
    Word-of-god
    Works
    World-council-of-churches
    World Pride
    World-youth-day
    Worship
    Wounds
    Woy-woy
    Wrestling
    Xenophobia
    Yabun
    Yahweh
    Yes
    Yoga
    Yoke
    Zacchaeus
    Zebedee
    Zechariah
    Zogron
    Zwingli

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly