I must...

I must Create a System
Or be enslav'd by another Man's.
I will not Reason & Compare:
My business is to Create.

William Blake

The old church knew...

The old Church knew that life is here our portion
to be lived in fulfilment.
The stern rule of Benedict,
the wild flights of Francis of Assisi,
these were coruscations in the steady heaven of the Church.
The rhythm of life itself was preserved by the Church,
hour by hour, day by day, season by season, year by bear, epoch by epoch,
down among the people,
and the wild coruscations were accommodated to this permanent rhythm.
We feel it in the south, in the country,
when we fear the jangle of the bells at dawn, at noon, at sunset,
marking the hours with the sound of Mass or prayers.
It is the rhythm of the daily sun.
We feel it in the festivals, the processions, Christmas, the Three Kings,
Easter, Pentecost, St John's Day, All Saints, All Souls'.
This the wheeling of the year, the movement of the sun,
through solstice and equinox,
the coming of the seasons, the going of the seasons.
And it is the inward rhythm of man and women, too,
the sadness of Lent,
the delight of Easter,
the wonder of Pentecost,
the fires of St. John,
the candles on the graves of All Souls',
the lit-up tree of Christmas,
all representing kindled rhythmic emotions in the souls of men and women...
Oh, what a catastrophe for man
when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year,
from his union with the sun and the earth.
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a
personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising
and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection
of the solstice and the equinox!
This is what is the matter with us.
We are bleeding at the roots,
because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars,
and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom,
we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life,
and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.

D.H.Lawrence. 1885 - 1930

I am not...

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self.
And the wounds to the soul take a long, long time.
Only time can help.
And patience, and a certain difficult repentance
Long difficult repentance, realisation of life's
Mistake, and the freeing of oneself
From the endless repetitions of the mistake
Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

D H Lawrence

God wants...

God wants to be thought of as our Lover
I must see myself so bound in love
as if everything that has been done
has been done for me.
That is to say, the Love of God
makes such a unity in us
that when we see this unity
no one is able to separte oneself
from another

Dame Julian of Norwich

Politically correct...

Political correctness is an excuse used by old farts who want an excuse not to change...

Debbie, age 16

I adorn...

I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work
I am the yearning for good.

Hildegard of Bingen

 

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