Arts Articles
Wassail
Oddling bee, take your bearings, quickener, burr and bless from bud to breaking brier. Caper through lamb’s tails, weave and waver
‘Singing is transformative. It lifts our spirits; it heals; it is creative.’
Imagine being in bed and finally asleep after a tense day. Then, before dawn, before the cocks crow, a terrible loud hammering on the door. Your children wail, startled from their sleep. Men burst in and then there is chaos. Now you are elsewhere, still in your night clothes, not...
‘Small Things’
I am not sure what they are using. Small things to trick the morning into night? Or to trick the night into morning?
The holy city
Therefore I have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium. WB Yeats.
After God
Get real, raven, on your highest perch – winter sun can catch your beak yet, O, silhouette on the empty sky. Larch has lost her colour now. Cattle hold their peace. Lichen prospers on the ancient cherry.
‘Perhaps textile art can be a form of prophecy?’
It can be difficult to engage deeply with environmental challenges. But if our faith has real value, it should help us to address challenges like these, and guide us in our actions. The Loving Earth Project (LEP) aims to help people address some of the challenges of environmental breakdown without...
‘In the fullness of the Spirit there is room for all forms of creativity.’
For nearly thirty years I have had the privilege of making music with people in day centres, mental health hostels, hospitals, residential homes and prisons. I have been witness to the power of music to overcome disability, like the Parkinson’s sufferer putting a tambourine on his shaking leg and...
The Christmas ghosts
In the keenest of winter-black air I hear them march up East and Manor Streets: Basil with his barrow cock-eyed over sliced up tree stumps; Megan, a gin glass tipped across her breast; balding Bertrand haughty in his black hat tilted to the sweep ...
Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay
Jackdaw, take your turn – ravens are breaking bread before you, under the ministering eye of morning’s winter moon.
A Quaker Woman Sends a Christmas Card to a President
This woman burns a mouse-bitten pinch of wax that passes for a candle, as she focuses the diamond of her mind on Donald.