Resources - Written - Search Results
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 - To Hear
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Hear
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We can close our eyes, but we cannot close our ears. Without ear-lids we are in a sense always open to the world, to its noise and joy, its confusion and its deep cries. Our eardrums cannot but resonate with what is around us. We thrum, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we dro…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Sleep
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Sleep
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
It may seem strange to some of us to think that entering into sleep could be prayer. Many of us say prayers before we turn off the light, but we seldom think of consciously giving ourselves over to the losing of our daytime awareness for the mysteries of sleep and dreams. Attende…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Touch
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Touch
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
In the courtesy of beholding, and with a certain kind of respectful distance, we can come to know that everything and everyone has a vast solitude within. Quite often we do not want to feel this essential aloneness. It is fearful. We want to touch and be touched. We want to be ve…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To See
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To See
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We see with more than our eyes. This is a mystery. We know that even a blind person can see in that larger sense. To see with carefulness and love is a great act of faith. So often we are too lazy or too distracted to see with care. Images come into our retinas, and our minds hav…
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…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Breathe
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Breathe
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
When we are born, we are born into a relationship with air, with breathing. How closely the words wind, air, life, and spirit are linked in human thought. We are creatures into whom life is breathed. A word we have for inhaling is inspiration. When we are fully inspired, not only…
Mark for Everyone - The Feeding of the Five Thousand
Mark for Everyone - The Feeding of the Five Thousand
by SPCK - Tom Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 6.30–44 The Feeding of the Five Thousand... ...Some break. Just when we think Jesus is anticipating modern therapeutic ideals – taking a good rest after a combination of an exhausting piece of work and sudden bad news – it all goes horribly wrong. The short…
Mark for Everyone - The Twelve Sent Out
Mark for Everyone - The Twelve Sent Out
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 6.7–13 The Twelve Sent Out... ...‘No time for coffee this morning,’ I told my teenage son today. ‘You’ve got a train to catch. You need to be at that meeting.’ He had emerged, sleepily, half an hour before his train left; it takes at least 20 minutes to get…
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers for the Sick and Elderly
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers for the Sick and Elderly
by SPCK - Ian Black
Five prayers for the Sick and Elderly: Going into nursing care In hospital or a hospice Accepting our own mortality Terminal illness Anxiously watching and waiting Lord of all our days, you hold our life from birth to death and bless us in each stage. Be with us in this new jo…
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers - Volunteering and Overseas Work
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers - Volunteering and Overseas Work
by SPCK - Ian Black
Two prayers - "Volunteering" and "Overseas Aid and Work". Lord God, you call everyone to follow you and to give freely of their time and gifts. Bless all who respond to your generous love through voluntary service in the church and wider community... Taken from Prayers for All Oc…
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers - Homelessness and Poverty
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayers - Homelessness and Poverty
by SPCK - Ian Black
Two prayers "Homeless" and "Poverty". Lord of the highways and byways, whose compassion flows with grace and mercy and whose Son Jesus Christ gave dignity to all whom he met, raise up the broken... Taken from Prayers for All Occasions by Ian Black
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayer - Weather
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayer - Weather
by SPCK - Ian Black
Weather Lord God of the universe, you set the seasons to enable the earth to yield fruit and provide for life to flourish. As the sun warms and ripens the crop, may it not scorch or burn... Taken from Prayers for All Occasions by Ian Black
Prayers for All Occasions Book - Prayer - Spiritual Renewal