There’s something very disturbing in that first line of our first reading: ‘It happened that God put Abraham to the test’. Especially when we discover the ‘test’ is: go and slaughter your son. Now although the story has a happy ending—if you discount the bills for Isaac’s lifelong therapy—I’m still left with a niggling doubt—maybe, …
Monthly Archives: June 2005
Sunday Week 12 Year A
“I hear so many disparaging me, ‘Terror from every side!’”—so says Jeremiah. … Fear runs through the heart of today’s readings. Jeremiah sounds a little paranoid—they are all talking about me, plotting against me—but it seems he was right to be afraid. And the charge his enemies bring against him too is one of fear—they …
Breathing, I Pray
I’ve been reading an excellent new book on praying by Ivan Mann who used to be part of our team here and now lives and works on Cumbrae Island. Ivan uses his own story and experience to make prayer as basic as breathing, freeing it from jargon, technique and theory and, along the way, instilling …
Wednesday Week 9 Year I
Listen to them pray. Listen to Tobit and to Sarah. They are both beyond the protocols of prayer. Tobit wants to die. His life is a misery. He is blind. He has to rely on charity to keep him, or—worse of all it seems to him—women’s work. And he’s going a little mad with it …