Arts Articles
Psalm 119
O Lord, thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant Butterflies are happy for our garden. Something coppery there, a Small Heath, and a Wood White skipping, luciform.
Poem: Friend
I never knew you were a Quaker. I might have guessed. A silence in the midst of argument; A pause for thought. A sense that something else was going on Quietly, all the time.
Unique selling point
Fall of dregs-from-the-wine-vat petals: unprogrammed, let’s say, or aleatory blossom. The thought (today’s) is this: unique selling point of religion is (still) holiness. Petals in blood-spill asymmetry make it more arduous for reason to prevail. Stamens sift rich sand in timbre, shock flakes are tumbled pumpkin.
‘Caroline provided Virginia with a role model of an independent woman.’
In Simon Webb’s review of Virginia Woolf’s biography of Roger Fry in the Friend last month, he was right to point out that Virginia Woolf was not a Quaker. But she had much closer contact with Quakerism than is often realised – in particular with something quite like Quakerism...
For America in a time of a drought
The rain in the old cemetery is simple. It falls on yarrow, clover, ragwort dispensing pearls into the grain of day, into the Yorick skull-clot of Devon clay. The tissue of the warm-wooded dead is wormed with the first drop of its showers, runs into the finger-hold of tiny oaks,...
Ahab in Rehab
Call me male-ish I enjoyed playing doldrums in our school orchestra. And there weren’t really any significant repercussions until I also took up the Bermuda triangle.
‘Our own creativity can best come from deliberately-chosen places of quiet and silence.’
Advices & queries 29 tells us that ‘Old age… can… bring serenity.’ But lockdown has taught me that it might be more widely available. The world’s religions frequently suggest we need places of waiting – places where we accept and go with the flow of life. Lao Tzu asks: ‘Do you...
Busily sculpting my foolish old life
Busily sculpting my foolish old life, well past sell-by date, Freedoms many: to curse expected trains that were cancelled or late. Adventures worldwide, limitless movement, grateful for all I could shape – Fanned delusional flames of eternal youth.
Poem: Hope heals*
Hope is a thing with feathers Hope is trusting and believing Hope is something that someone feels Hope is thinking of sunshine when it’s a cold winter’s day and raining Hope is what makes us human Hope is a light Hope is being determined and happy to do...
As led
They are Quakers. So it will not matter That I am late, or that I bring the dog.