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read this! (Thanks Mark).

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Lovely imagery in the daily readings I sometimes use, for December 9.

The author, drawing on Amy Carmichael, talks of our hopes for the future as pictures we paint. Some fade, and as they do so they sap our energy. We need to leave behind our old hopes/pictures/images and notice the new ones that God is giving us.

He moves on to the idea that our whole lives are like a picture that God is painting.

A verbatim quote would be even better, but I'm cautious about copyright - so, what can I say? Buy the book! (Much of their material is on-line, but I have not been able to track down the comments on the daily readings, which the above is an example of.)

All this is from Celtic Daily Prayer, published by the Northumbria Community and printed by Harper Collins (in the U.K.) 1994 onwards. My edtiion is ISBN 0 557 02845-9, but later editions also include Night Prayer. The short orders for Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer are easy to use, and over the twelve or so years that I have been using it I have found the daily readings inspirational.

As I renew my subscription, I realise that it is a year since I started this blog, care of Blogharbor. It's been fun to develop an on-line journal, although I sometimes lose the plot of why I am doing it!

This is probably because I always intended it to be a "whole life" blog, for me to chat about what I'm up to and what is interesting me. I'm not sure what this does for you the reader, as I realise that the kind of things I talk about keep changing!

When I started the weblog I had a quote from Anthony de Mello in mind, from his book The Song of the Bird.

The disciples were full of questions about God.

Said the master, "God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth."

The disciples were bewildered. "Then why do you speak about him at all?"

"Why does the bird sing?" said the master.

There is a postscript to this, which you'll have to buy the book to read!

Amazon UK link