Spirituality and Religion | James Woodward

Take this Journey with Rohr

2 May 2019 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Richard Rohr The Universal Christ SPCK 2019 ( £9.99) It is an often stated conviction expressed by a wide variety of individuals and groups that the Church, Organised Religion and (important for us here at Sarum College) Theology are in decline. The statistics certainly bears this assertion out. However this should not be our final word that may spread gloom and despondency as we human beings are often drawn into the inhabiting such negativity as life, places and institutions change….

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The Moral Heart of Public Service

10 September 2017 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

The Moral Heart of Public Service – Edited by Claire Foster Gilbert Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2017) ISBN 9781785922558 £18.99 Westminster Abbey takes its location to serve our national life with utmost seriousness. As well as attracting visitors from across the world the Abbey also seeks to engage with a range of major institutions and public figures, not least the British Parliament. The Westminster Abbey Institute was founded in 2013 to build and develop mutual concern about the world we live…

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How do we access the spiritual?

15 July 2016 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2015; 280 pages; £19.99 ISBN 9781849054973 I review this book (the second week of July 2016) when two particular conversations were at the forefront of my mind. The first was the smooth transition between Cameron and May into 10 Downing Street and the office of Prime Minister. What followed was much speculation about who would hold some of the key offices of state including the office of health secretary. This speculation triggered a great deal of social…

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In the End – our choice for Love ?

13 May 2015 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

You see, only love can move across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, like a great river and water itself. When you die, you are precisely the capacity you have developed to give and to receive love. Your recognition of this is your own “final judgment” of…

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Dressing Up?

27 October 2014 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

We all have an ambiguous relationship with Authority or power and so we should as Christians. I wonder when you last felt powerless? To be powerless is something we all fear briefly clothed, but God laughs when we take it too, so we anxiously remind ourselves of all our virtues and capabilities. Our instinct as human beings is to build our sense of worth, our self-confidence and value on our past achievements, looks, wealth, status, job or family. In other…

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Here on the Cross is Love and Life

18 April 2014 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Jesus final words finished. His life is finished. His ministry is finished. The scriptures are finished. The reconciliation of God and creation is finished. This is good news – everything is lost except the heart of God laid bare. We might just get close enough to glimpse that sacred heart laid bare. And we might just get to read what is written on that heart, pierced and finished for the love of us. The love of you, love for you,…

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Always Growing and Moving?

12 February 2014 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Generous orthodoxy is aware of the need to keep listening and learning in openness to the Spirit and to the world for the sake of the gospel, it seeks to keep conversations going and not to end them. Generous orthodoxy does not so much specify a particular point or position as it establishes a spacious territory defined by certain distinct boundaries in which there is space to live, move, and breathe while exploring the wonders and mysteries of the faith….

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HAPPINESS AND ITS DISCONTENTS

7 February 2014 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

In our era, the idea that we should lead happy, balanced lives carries the force of an obligation: We are supposed to push aside our anxieties in order to enjoy our lives, attain peace of mind, and maximize our productivity. The cult of “positive thinking” even assures us that we can bring good things into our lives just by thinking about them… There is something quite hollow about the ideal a life unruffled by anxiety. It’s why I think that…

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The sacred

28 January 2014 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

The sacred is the interference of the uncreated in the created, of the eternal in time, of the infinite in space, of the supraformal in forms; it is the mysterious introduction into one realm of existence of a presence which in reality contains and transcends that realm and could cause it to burst asunder in a sort of divine explosion. The sacred is the incommensurable, the transcendent, hidden within a fragile form belonging to this world; it has its own…

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What is Gospel?

7 October 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

The Gospel is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest despair, failure, sin, weakness, losing,failing, frustration, inability, helplessness, wandering, and falling short. God meets you there— right there— right exactly therein that place, and announces, I am onyour side. Gospel insists that God doesn’t wait for us to get ourselves polished, shined, proper, and without blemish— God comes to us and meets us and blesses us while we are still in the…

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Does belief change in old age?

20 September 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Belief and Ageing Spiritual pathways in later life Peter G. Coleman (Editor) Paperback, 192 pages Policy Press Bristol 2011 ISBN 9781847424594 2011 Most of the books on my shelves about religion and ageing are written out of the United States of America. There are many individuals and groups who are investing resources in research in this area on the USA. This stands in sharp comparison to the UK and Europe where religion is on the decline and seems increasingly…

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Disturb us….

10 July 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

This is a wonderful prayer attributed to an early Anglican explorer, Sir Francis Drake, whose chaplain held an Anglican service on the shores of the West Coast in 1579. Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst…

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Challenging Power?

24 June 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

From yesterdays sermon: (Luke 8. 26-39 ) Christians everywhere have for centuries both colluded with power and authority and challenged it by shining the light of the Gospel on it when it got out of hand. I believe we too today are called as Christians to challenge power when it becomes self-serving or even a self-replicating system of domination and oppression. When such authorities become uninterested in matters of social justice, the dignity of the individual, equality of opportunity,…

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Easter Wings

4 April 2013 James Woodward Comments 2 Comments

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store, Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poore: With Thee O let me rise, As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day Thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me. My tender age in sorrow did beginne; And still with sicknesses and shame Thou didst so punish sinne, That I became Most thinne. With Thee Let me combine, And feel this day…

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Easter

1 April 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise Without delays, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise With him mayst rise: That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more just. Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part With all thy art. The cross taught all wood to resound his name, Who bore the same. His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key Is best to celebrate this…

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long shadows

30 January 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Now that I know How passion warms little Of flesh in the mould, And treasure is brittle,– I’ll lie here and learn How, over their ground Trees make a long shadow And a light sound. Louise Bogan, Knowledge

Transcendence

28 January 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

God’s difference from us constitutes his transcendence. Transcendence does not – and never did in classical thought – mean spatial separation or ‘out-thereness’. Transcendence means, and always has meant, difference. God’s transcen- ( dence opposes pantheism, not intimacy. God is always here. The truth of God’s transcendence still stands. God is near, but God is different. God is here, but man is dependent. God’s otherness is the otherness of Creator to creature, of Saviour to sinner; and it…

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The challenges of buidling community

24 January 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Some fragments ofreflection on the divisions of the Church during the week of Paryer for Christian Unity. Our experiences of moral failure, group meltdowns, personal pettiness, and partisan harshness in congregations and communities make us wonder if our efforts in building community are worth the trouble. We often invest great hope in our Christian communities, and when there are serious ruptures, it feels as if part of the kingdom has been trampled. How is it that people who want closer relationships…

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And be thankful??

9 January 2013 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

Hundreds of years ago, Thomas a Kempis worried about our tendency to overlook the small gifts on the way to wanting more, and urged those who longed to grow in Christ-likeness, “Be thankful for the smallest blessing, and you will deserve to receive greater. Value the least gifts no less than the greatest, and simple graces as especial favors. If you remember the dignity of the Giver, no gift will seem small or mean, for nothing can be valueless…

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On the Mystery of the Incarnation

27 December 2012 James Woodward Comments 0 Comment

It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word. Denise Levertov (1923–1997)