On this day, the feast of All Saints, in the year 1541, Michaelangelo‘s Last Judgement was unveiled on the rear wall of the Sistine Chapel.
All Saints
remembering
As a preparation for this November month of the Holy Souls you might appreciate this interview on life and death based on my own experience at the time of the deaths of my parents.
glass half full
While a scooter used recklessly may cause carnage, the person of hope will be able to see the beauty and possibilities offered by a new initiative.
All Saints
On this day, the feast of All Saints, in the year 1541, Michaelangelo‘s Last Judgement was unveiled on the rear wall of the Sistine Chapel. There was no coincidence in...
horizon shifting
Perhaps the most common daily ailment in citizens of the western world is stress. Most mornings many of us wake with the sense that the things we have to do today...
happy feast day
502 years ago today Michaelangelo‘s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes were ‘completed’. I am sure that there was no coincidence in the date: the feast of All Saints was a...
saints interview
An interview for the November feasts of All Saints and All Souls at this link.
Halloween
People have always had a need for annual moments in a year that are highly ritualised around social gatherings with food and drink. Halloween has relatively recently...
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the teenagers
A few years ago I discovered the wonderful way that God uses my imagination in my prayer.
Such openness to imagination when seeking God does not take us away from reality into fantasy but instead brings me into what is most real and inescapably personal and intimate.
Annunciation
A couple of thousand years ago, a young Jewish woman was going about her normal morning routines, perhaps with a mixture of house and garden work, chatting with parents and neighbours, aware of the local drought, the sickness of a neighbour and annoyed by the neighbourhood’s lack of sleep caused by the Romans’ noisy party the night before, when God broke into her routine and entered her life in a new and powerful way.
the real centre
Over the last month I have had the opportunity to work with many people across Aotearoa and further afield. In every retreat and seminar I have been with committed and faith-filled people who often feel as though they are on the periphery of the Church
the adventure
It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing life as a treadmill, day after day ups and downs, a movement through time from youth to old age, then death and beyond.
Too often if feels as if we are helplessly captive carried along by the momentum of all that is expected of us and demanded from us, and we risk falling into an existence mode, a daily rhythm of survival, enduring, coping and so the treadmill rolls on.
the bigger picture
Over the years, and even in recent months, weeks and days, I’ve prayed many prayers which have not been answered as I had hoped.
You’ve probably had the same experience: praying and wondering if and when or how your prayer will be answered.