Perseverance without Perception
A few weeks ago, I was invited by Tanya Marlow to contribute a guest post to her blog series on God and Suffering. She has had her own battles over a long time - and does the wider community a…
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 85 (October 2015)
Sacred Treasure This is serious - Turkish Protestant churches sent death threats - directly affects a number of churches that I've regularly spent time with in Turkey. PRAY. My former All Souls colleague Jo Jackson has written a couple of…
Q Combinations 7: Lewis, Fujimura and Elemental Love
It was a while back when I encountered this poem from the polymathic Lewis, that master of words and fantasies and reality. It is an astonishing poem (some suggest his greatest). I love its elemental vitality - and the complete absence…
Q Combinations 6: Auden and Brueghel (a bit of a cheat, this time)
So I should be upfront about this one. It's a cheat - because I'm not the instigator of this particular combination - the poet was. And it's one of his best-loved - although the subject matter is not cheering, it's certainly…
Q Combinations 5: Kamienska & Wyeth and a winter hope
If the last Q combo was a chronological mismatch of artist and poet, this one is seasonal. Today’s still been pretty warm for a British September day, so it’s perhaps rather incongruous to be thinking about winter. But a dear friend and colleague, Jennifer, sent me this all too brief poem last week, and so I felt it was a perfect combo contender.
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Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 84 (September 2015)
Sacred Treasure
- Did God Betray You? Really helpful piece about suffering and faith.
- We’re all sadists now: Carl Trueman on provocative but insightful form
- Tim Neufeld on cracking form about U2’s current tour: Ancient Psalms for a State-of-the-Art Tour
Q Combinations 4: Donne, Chagall and a possible prayer of Jacob’s
This is a complete mismatch chronologically – but there seems an undeniable synergy here (to me at least). For Jacob (the deceiver) is the one from whom the nation is named and the one privileged with extraordinary divine encounters. (more…)
The Black Dog (10 Years On)
A while back, I wrote a daily post over a week on the reality of the Black Dog (the image Winston Churchill famously used to describe his own battle with depression). The individual posts are on my old Wordpress blog,…
The Black Dog (10 Years On): THE WEEK’S LINKS IN ONE PLACE
So here are all this week’s Black Dog posts linked in one place…
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The Black Dog (10 years on) 8: SOME LITERARY COMPANIONS…
William Nicholson wrote Shadowlands, the play (which became the film) inspired by C.S.Lewis’s extraordinary testimony A Grief Observed. In it, he gave Lewis this lovely line, one he never actually uttered, but may as well have done.
We read to know we’re not alone
The Black Dog (10 years on) 7: SOME TOP TIPS…
As I wrap this little sequence of ruthless self-exposure up, various omissions and oddities have occurred to me, so the easiest thing is probably to string them together in a miscellany that’s almost Pauline in its randomness (though naturally without his claims to authority). (more…)
The Black Dog (10 years on) 6: SO YOU WANT TO HELP…
I’m glad. In fact, if you didn’t, I’d be quite concerned for you! But be warned. This isn’t for the faint-hearted. It will try your patience and frustrate your sympathies. You’ll definitely have days when you’ve had enough. Perhaps months. So you’ll shrug that you did everything you could but to no avail. [There are only so many hours in a day, and you’ve got your own issues.] So you’ll assume it needs someone else to take up the baton. If that’s the case, then may I make a gentle plea with you? Don’t get involved in the first place… (more…)