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Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Most days we use the stairs of our homes without a thought about their possible meaning beyond enabling us to climb. And often we don’t even think about that obvious use. Yet stairs and ladders have always been powerful spiritual images. Humans have forever wanted to transcend th…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We don’t seem to pay attention to the floor unless it is missing, unless it has a spill or an obstruction on it. Mostly we are confident that the floor is present and we merrily step upon it. Many things become floor-like to us—certain steady relationships, certain habits, certai…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To have a roof over our heads is to have a home. Days of storm, days of intense sun, gray days, pleasant days—the roof is there and we are sheltered. How easily we take that fact for granted, yet all around us there is homelessness—a roof-less population. In appreciating that we …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
If we have been out in the dark, how comforting to see a lighted window; if we have been shut in, how refreshing when the light finds us. Without windows a house is a tomb. We need light and air. We need the new day to enter our homes, to bring us out of the night’s slumber and o…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Many people who meditate sit facing a wall—facing a limit in order to find the limitless inside. Many pilgrims have traveled to stand beside the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or to be witnesses by the walls where the names of the dead are inscribed. We need walls to help us with memo…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Not many homes have an actual hearth, a place for fire to burn freely. Most of us live in apartments or houses without fireplaces. Nevertheless, every dwelling has a subjective center for fire. It is the place where we gather, the place we are warmed. It is no accident that the w…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To dwell is to live in a place, to remain in it. Any space we truly occupy becomes, through dwelling, a home— becomes, through time, a sanctuary. There is, in the word dwell, a sense of repose. When we really inhabit our homes we gain a sense of time, and are then more able to kn…
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Preparation for Home Communion
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Preparation for Home Communion
by SPCK - Ian Black
Before Taking Holy Communion to the Housebound ...As they are fed with your Word fill them with your grace, enfold them in the fellowship of your Church and remind them of your eternal love, that they may rejoice in your salvation... Taken from Prayers for All Occasions by Ian Bl…
Job for Everyone - The Mysteries of Nature
Job for Everyone - The Mysteries of Nature
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Mysteries of Nature Job 38 39- 39: 30 Often the first thing I hear in the morning is the squawking of a group of parrots who wander around our city, the descendants (says the urban legend) of pet birds that escaped from or were released by their owners. When I sit at my desk,…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Third Sunday of Easter Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Third Sunday of Easter Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Third Sunday of Easter - Year A Acts 2.14a, 36–41 1 Peter 1.17–23 Luke 24.13–35 In his poem, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’,1 W. B. Yeats pictures a man so consumed with longing for home that even in the middle of a busy street, all he hears is the sound of the lake, more real …
Times and Seasons - We will remember them
Times and Seasons - We will remember them
by Andrew Pratt
We will remember them I saw them coming back down the long and winding road. It was a strange home coming. Few cheered. Trudging by they wheeled round the church. The sandstone clock tower had seen it all before. Time had been marked by the tombstones in the church yard. Continue…
Home is people, not a place.