the battle

The Tube Train

Cyril E. Power (1872–1951)

Prayer is the battle;

it is a matter of indifference where you are.

Whichever way God engineers circumstances,

the duty is to pray.

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

a heart without words

detached mosaic

from lost Oratory of John VII

 (Santa Maria Antiqua, June 2016)

In prayer it is better

to have a heart without words

than words without a heart.

John Bunyan

image : Alice Christie

wide, sweet spaces

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1

(Whistler's Mother)

James McNeill Whistler

Musée d'Orsay

Lord, let not our souls be busy inns
that have no room for thee or thine,
But quiet homes of prayer and praise,
where thou mayest find fit company,
Where the needful cares of life
are wisely ordered and put away,
And wide, sweet spaces kept for thee;
where holy thoughts pass up and down
And fervent longings watch and wait thy coming.

Julian of Norwich (1341 - 1415)

a few moments

Roses

P. S. Krøyer 1893

There should be, even in the busiest day, a few moments when we can close our eyes and let God possess us. There should be moments at least when we become more conscious of his presence, when we become more conscious of it as the only reality, the only thing that will last forever.

The Comforting of Christ
Caryll Houselander (1954)

quoted by Magdalen Smith in Fragile Mystics (2015)

the living garden

I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living garden.

St. Thérèse de Lisieux

image : Alice Christie

how to find God

North Transept, Salisbury Cathedral

J.M.W. Turner

There is no better advice on how to find God

than to seek him where we left him:

do now, when you cannot find God,

what you did when last you had him,

and then you will find him again.

Meister Eckhart

image : © Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum

a summary of Christian faith

Micro Engraving

Ephraim W. Bouvé, Boston, c. 1840

"If somebody said,

give me a summary of Christian faith

on the back of an envelope,

the best thing to do

would be to write Our Lord's Prayer."

Rowan Williams

BBC interview

the little daily dose

Tulip Stair

Queen's House, Greenwich

I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general

but for just so much self knowledge at the moment

as I can bear and use at the moment;

the little daily dose.

C.S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

letter to Lulu

“To God how did you get invented? From Lulu xo ”

"Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn't expected.
[...]
I know he doesn't usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf.
Lots of love from me too.

+Archbishop Rowan"

Extract from a letter to Lulu, aged 6, written by Archbishop Rowan Williams, subsequently published in The Times on Good Friday 2011

image : Alice Christie

never give up prayer

Never give up prayer,

and should you find dryness and difficulty,

persevere in it for this very reason.

God often desires to see

what love your soul has,

and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.

St. John of the Cross

image : Alice Christie

a slow train

Train Landscape (1940)

Eric Ravilious

"I find myself perfectly content in a slow train that crawls through green fields stopping at every station. Just because the service is so slow and therefore in most people’s eyes bad, these trains are almost empty — I get through a lot of reading and sometimes say my prayers. A solitary train journey I find quite excellent for this purpose."

C.S. Lewis

the inner journey

St Gregory the Great

...each of us is a kind of double person on a double journey.  The outer journey, the public journey, has to do with people and places and events, with doing and achieving. The inner, private journey has to do with a different kind of exploration, and it needs different words with which to describe it: words like faith and trust and wonder. Words like penitence and forgiveness and self-giving love. Words which have to do with that giving attention to God and to his world and to people that is the centre of all religious belief and practice.

Michael Mayne

Prayer (2011)

a collection of talks given by Michael Mayne,
at the annual ecumenical Day of Prayer,
Westminster Abbey(1996)