God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. —Richard Rohr The Contemplative Eye Henry Moore

There comes a moment in every life when you find yourself suddenly wondering about the point of it all — It is a hollowing, a withering, a deadening of the spirit that can manifest as burnout or creative block, as a breakdown or a midlife crisis, or as the persistent low-frequency din of despair.

From Richard Rohr as we mark the 40 days of Easter So, to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: My life and my love will always and forever have the final word.

Happy Easter 2026 Christ is Risen

www.jameswoodward.online/blog/visitin...

Visiting Mount Athos on Holy Saturday 2026 | James Woodward

I have been journeying alongside a religious community this Holy Week. Today is that in between time : Holy Saturday as it sits between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In the Convent, bathed in silence...

jameswoodward.online

It is the incarnation that redeems us all and gathers the whole of creation to God in Christ. So the good news is not that Jesus is perfect man was killed to appease and angry God, but that God has lived a human life, including death, and so affirm the eternal value of the cosmos. Mother Jane SLG

www.jameswoodward.online/blog/on-bein...

On being nourished by curiosity and wisdom. | James Woodward

I am all the poorer for having had this book sit on my waiting to read pile for too many months. Some time away in Holy Week offered the chance to drink from the wisdom in these nine chapters. There a...

jameswoodward.online

Almighty and everlasting God, who in your tender love towards the human race sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection;

www.jameswoodward.online/blog/theolog...

Theology and the Life of the Church : Truss on the Legacy of David Jenkins | James Woodward

This book was just too personal, relevant and compelling not to engage with. David Jenkins was a fundamental part of my vocational journey. He was real, passionate, theologically lucid and a heartful ...

jameswoodward.online

The renewed life, however, does not remain content in grass meadows or by quiet waters…. Instead, those who are citizens of this sacred realm are called forth on pathways of justice to make God’s name—God’s sabbath reign—known throughout the world.

Some personal news about my new season of life ! I am full of deep gratitude for these rich and fulfilling years : and best wishes for those involved in this process for all that has been : thanks For all that will be : Yes

But grace is also contagious. An act of kindness inspires another act of kindness. A random smile is exchanged for an opened door.A single act of forgiveness can feel like it heals the world. Grace begets grace. Love rubs off on those who are loved….

The truth is that we’re all on a wilderness journey out of some form of slavery. On a personal level, we know what it is to be enslaved to fear, alcohol, food, rage, worry, lust, shame, inferiority, or control.

All journeys require an open mind—a mind that is not conditioned by past knowledge and experience, but open to possibility. Questioning opens the doors of our imagination, enabling us to consider alternatives to the status quo. Unless one is capable of imagining one cannot free oneself from bondage

In Moses, we see the connection between action and contemplation. Contemplation is the link to the Source of Love that allows activists to stay engaged for the long haul without burning out. Moses shows us that this marriage of action and contemplation is essential and possible.

The desert helped these Christians lean more deeply into undermining their assumptions and cravings for what is and what should be. —Rachel Wheeler

There is no way of talking about prayer or the spiritual teaching of the Desert Fathers -they had the hard work & experience of a lifetime of striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind, and soul to God, and that is what they talked about. Prayer was a life continually turned towards God. Ward

The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.

Innocence The innocence and purity of heart which belong to paradise are a complete emptiness of self in which all is the work of God, the free and unpredictable expression of [God’s] love, the work of grace. In the purity of original innocence, all is done in us but without us.

The way back to Eden, the space between “paradise lost & gained” the place where we live our lives, can be one of love and suffering, humility and awe. It can also be a return to wonder - to the movement or the dance of belonging and becoming. It is the place where we laugh and cry and sing. @CAC

Our goal is not to create enemies but to proclaim the vision of God that is so big that everyone is welcome - it also means that those who have been oppressed are free from oppression, and those who have done the oppressing are free from being the oppressor, that everyone is set free.

scarcity or abundance? The worldview of abundance. We have to choose it, because it doesn’t come naturally. I’m convinced that it’s the worldview of the gospel. It’s a big world out there. There’s always another creative way to look at things. Do we remember to look at life that way? #Rohr

The consequences of justice and righteousness are shalom, an enduring Sabbath of joy and well-being. But the alternative is injustice and oppression, which leads inevitably to turmoil and anxiety, with no chance of well-being.

Almost all of Jesus’s parables begin with the same phrase: “The reign of God is like….” Jesus fully knows he is speaking in simile, metaphor, story, and symbol. Many Christians have not granted him that freedom, and thus we miss or avoid many of his major messages. We are much poorer for it.

From Rohr This is what Walter Brueggemann, in Theology of the Old Testament, calls a “credo of five adjectives” that continually recurs in the Hebrew Scriptures: This God that Israel—and Jesus—discovered is consistently seen to be “merciful, gracious, faithful, forgiving, and steadfast in love.”

The view from here

There is no pressure on infinite holy mystery to create and continuously support a world. How could there be? It is done freely, as a flaming, generous act of love, the plentitude of infinite love overflowing. —Elizabeth Johnson

Creation (what God did and continues to do daily) and the carrying out of shalom (what we are to do daily) are inextricably interwoven. We have the opportunity each day to participate in God’s shalom activities.

One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.”

A great paradox of being alive in this civilization is that we have come to dread and devalue the triumph of having lived, forgetting that to grow old is not a punishment but a privilege — that of having survived in order to begin the continuous creative act of holding on while letting go. #oldage