A Year of Inspirers (9) – Celebrating George Herbert

“Love bade me welcomeBut my soul drew back...” So begins one of George Herbert’s great poems, called “Love (III)”. Although Herbert is not very well known as a poet, he writes with a powerful simplicity.  He understands love, suffering and inner struggles. Many of his lines have inspired me.  This is how his poem "The …

A Year of Inspirers (8) – Sister Wendy Beckett

Sister Wendy's programmes on "The Story of Art" are still available on Youtube, and her books inspired in me an appreciation of art - especially how art can speak to our spirituality. This poem comes from an unpublished collection of poems all inspired by her commentaries on paintings, and the paintings themselves that inspired her …

A Year of Inspirers (7) – Michelangelo’s Vision of Humanity

The Sistine Chapel is one of the wonders of human art that is so hard to comprehend. How could one man create such a complex vision of human life? If you look just below the centre, you will see an image which often feature. It is the creation of humanity: Just below this you will …

A Year of Inspirers (5): Henri Nouwen & “The Return of the Prodigal Son”

Henri Nouwen has inspired me in so many ways. He was born on 24th January 1932. “Return of the Prodigal Son” is a wonderful book by him that inspired a whole collection I wrote, called “Returning to the Father”. Fleeing Again and again I have fled the hands of blessing . Made myself deaf to …

A Year of Inspirers (4) – Inner Fire

“The Fire of Love” is a great name for any book. Richard Rolle, its author, is remembered on 20th January. His wonderful work on mysticism has inspired me again and again. ~ Be absorbed in that blessed love . Blazing in your Soul . That fires such sweetness and such devotion . Know nothing but …

A Year of Inspirers (3) – The Power of Love

He wrote the most wonderful words about love: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove …

A Year of Inspirers (2) – Martin Luther King, and the Three Dimensions of Being Human

18th January is Martin Luther King Day. In a sermon, Martin Luther King defined the length, breadth and height of life: “the length of life … is the push of a life forward to achieve its inner powers and ambitious”“the breadth of life is the outreach, the outward concern for the welfare of others”“the height of life is the upward reach …

A Year of Inspirers 2021 (1) – love and illumination, and the desert – T.S.Eliot

For me, T.S.Eliot is the writer of time, of love, of spirituality, and of "the desert". He writes about the spiritual desert -"The Waste Land" - as he calls it in one of his most influential early works. Lines from "Choruses from The Rock" These lines were inspired by his poetry: Movements of Time I. …

A Year of Inspirers (19): St. John of the Cross

This is one of the most amazing diagrams I have ever come across... St. John was a poet and an artist as well a great spiritual teacher, and I love this mysterious diagram he drew to illustrate "Mount Carmel". The middle section near the bottom has the words "nothing nothing nothing....", which inspired this short …

A Year of Inspirers (18) – St. Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila is remembered on 15th OCtober. I first came across St. Teresa of Avila through her book "The Interior Castle", and it revolutionised the way I thought. "The soul's beauty and capabilities are so immeasurably great" she writes.   For me, that said that I mattered, that what was inside was precious and valuable, …