Sheila Bridge Blog
This post is about the immense love of God and how we make it smaller than it actually is. Thinking about the story Jesus told about the wheat and the weeds in Matthew chapter 13 (24-30, 36-43). I want to write about a love that encompasses all: a love that does not wish to reject... Continue Reading →
"Captain's Log Star date 01 01 2021 ..." I grew up with Star Trek, not the movies, the TV programmes with the doors that went 'swish', the devices into which 'beam me up Scotty' was the most frequent and desperate request, the inscrutable and ever logical Mr Spock, the pessimistic doctor 'Bones' (pessimistic inspite of... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago I was able to enjoy a holiday which began with a Sunday off. This particular Sunday was truly a ‘holy day’ which was part of a ‘hol-i-day’. On the Saturday, I driven away from what had been an intense few days. A set of circumstances that had left me aware that... Continue Reading →
You know you are in Ireland ... when there are more Protestant churches than eating places... or perhaps we just got hungry in a particularly fervent part of Belfast? When the first thing you see when you step out of terminal one in Dublin is a large church tower in the middle of the car... Continue Reading →
This is a phrase that has got me through some difficult experiences and some low moments. I've found myself saying it again to a couple of people lately. It may sound like resignation but there is a world of difference between resignation and acceptance (see image). So when I say this phrase I mean acceptance.... Continue Reading →
I am not much of a birdwatcher but I am learning to become a thought watcher and I was intrigued the other day by a metaphor which connected the two ideas. For about six months now I have been practising meditation. Practising is what you do when you are not very good at something and... Continue Reading →
The turning of the calendar from one year to the next always seems to me to be the most slender of reasons for celebration. Surely it is no more hopeful than the beginning of every new day? Why in the world would the changing of a single digit in a date inspire hope for tired... Continue Reading →
The opening episode in the BBC's Blue Planet II series was absolutely extraordinary. So much diversity: fish of all colours, some with crowns on their heads. Sea creatures that look totally as if they'd come from a movie about aliens, dolphins and whales that appeared to be friends and a tiny little fish that knew... Continue Reading →
"Let man's soul be a sphere and then, in this, the intelligence that moves, devotion is" These are lines from a poem by John Donne (1573-1631), hardly contemporary but still wonderfully insightful. We have all sorts of words for worship these days: praise/adoration/contemplation but I think loves this phrase, worship or 'devotion' is 'the intelligence... Continue Reading →
On day two of the retreat (see previous post) we were sent out into the garden to practise 'Terra Divina' - in simple language we were to spend twenty minutes listening to what God might say to us through the natural world. Not knowing much about trees and birds I found this intimidating. However I... Continue Reading →
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