Thirty two years ago today, my mother died. This year’s anniversary is significant because I’m now the same age as her when she passed. (I’ve mentioned this before, recently.) If I return home in a few week’s time, I’ll visit her grave. No doubt I’ll talk to her, even though I know she won’t hear me. (I do it for…

9.00 am: Continued reading:

7.45 am: There are days when you wake to discover an unexploded bomb in the Inbox. Today, there were two. Both were dispiriting and potentially dangerous, but not undefusable. They made me realise just how risky being a Higher Education employee has become these days. You daren’t put a foot wrong. Personal liability is a real threat in some circumstances.…

Though troubles assail,And dangers affright;Though friends should all fail,And foes all unite,Yet one thing secures us,Whatever betide:The Scripture assures us,‘The Lord will provide‘(John Newton, ‘The Lord Will Provide’ (1775)). 8.00 am: A communion. 8.45 am: With tea (no. 2) in hand, I reviewed the day ahead, determined my priorities, apportioned them to those times when my best energies would be…

What keeps sleep at bay throughout the night?: regrets about poor decisions; the anticipation of a fall; self recriminations over things that are long past and unalterable; the dissimulations of the heart; the soul’s torpor; the inexplicable circumstance; the unfulfilled longing; and the calculation of loss. 6.30 am: Awoke: This morning, the fruit was dropped onto the Rice Crispies before…

The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joys (Proverbs 14.10). Sunday, June 23. 11.15 am: I attended St Padarn’s Church, Llanbadarn Fawr, just over the parish boundary, in the morning. 3.20 pm: Having bid farewell to a lunch guest, I took to the streets and jogged from that part of the Promenade upon which Terrace Road…

My resting thoughts are one long prayer these days. 7.45 am: Morning: cold but sunny: 8.30 am: A communion. 9.15 pm: I composed a prayer for friendship, before carrying on with the CD text. There was the prospect of a bitty day ahead: writing, tidying, domestics, electrics, and a walk in the sunlight to my habitual watering hole for a…

Summer Solstice, 8.00 am: A communion. Overnight, I’d received an encouraging email from a friend from an ocean away. In our exchange, we discussed the sometimes uncomfortable experience of living ‘The Way’. I responded: You’re entirely correct in your counsel: doubts, uncertainties, and a failure of vision are the realities of the walk of faith. But, in the final analysis,…

7.30 am: A communion. There’re periods in our lives when the future appears to taper, as opportunities are either lost or denied us, and hopes and anticipations prove groundless. The best in life lies behind, or so it seems. The monotonous predictability of the present acts like a drag upon our motivations, and sullies what little optimism remains. Our prayers…