Week beginning 12th October 2026

Our words for the week are the poem ‘The facts of life’ by Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama

That you were born
and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.
That you will lie
if only to yourself.
That you will get tired.
That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.
That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.
That you will live
that you must be loved.
That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.
That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.
That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes even better than good.
That life is often not so good.
That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.
That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.
That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constricting.
That you will probably be okay.
That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.
So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.

Week beginning 5th October 2026

Our words for the week are by Jalaluddin Rumi; ‘A Necessary Autumn inside Each’.

You and I have spoken all these words, but as for the way
we have to go, words

are no preparation. There is no getting ready, other than
grace. My faults

have stayed hidden. One might call that a preparation!
I have one small drop

of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean.
There are so many threats to it.

Inside each of us, there’s continual autumn. Our leaves
fall and are blown out

over the water. A crow sits in the blackened limbs and talks
about what’s gone. Then

your generosity returns: spring, moisture, intelligence, the
scent of hyacinth and rose

and cypress. Joseph is back! And if you don’t feel in
yourself the freshness of

Joseph, be Jacob! Weep and then smile. Don’t pretend to know
something you haven’t experienced.

There’s a necessary dying, and then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged

rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up
where you are. You’ve been

stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender

Week beginning 28th September 2026

“Hokusai Says” by Roger Keyes

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
Hokusai says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive —
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.                           

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you                                    
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

Week beginning 21st September 2026

Our words for the week are by the artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church Jan Richardson.

You have looked
at so many doors
with longing,
wondering if your life
lay on the other side.

For today,
choose the door
that opens
to the inside.

Travel the most ancient way
of all:
the path that leads you
to the centre
of your life.

No map
but the one
you make yourself.

No provision
but what you already carry
and the grace that comes
to those who walk
the pilgrim’s way.

Speak this blessing
as you set out
and watch how
your rhythm slows,
the cadence of the road
drawing you into the pace
that is your own.

Eat when hungry.
Rest when tired.
Listen to your dreaming.
Welcome detours
as doors deeper in.

Pray for protection.
Ask for guidance.
Offer gladness
for the gifts that come,
and then
let them go.

Do not expect
to return
by the same road.
Home is always
by another way,
and you will know it
not by the light
that waits for you

but by the star
that blazes inside you,
telling you
where you are
is holy
and you are welcome
here.

Week beginning 14th September 2026

Our words for the week are by American poet Lynn Park

Take the time to pray
It is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden
So the doorway can swing open easily
You can always go there

Consider yourself blessed
These stones that break your bones
Will build the altar of your love

Your home is the garden
Carry its odour, hidden in you, into the city
Suddenly your enemies will buy seed packets
And fall to their knees to plant flowers
In the dirt by the road
They’ll call you Friend
And honour your passing among them
When asked, “Who was that?” they will say,
“Oh, that one has been beloved by us since before time began.”
This, from people who would have trampled over you to maintain their advantage

Give everything away except your garden,
Your worry, your fear, your small-mindedness, your envy.
Your garden can never be taken from you.

Week beginning 7th September 2026

Our words for the week are ‘Any Morning’ by the poet William Stafford.

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown

Week beginning 31st August 2026

Our words for the week are from the book Anam Cara by John O’Donohue, ‘A blessing for solitude’.

May you recognise in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.

May you realise that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.

May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.

May you realise that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life, there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.

May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride and expectation that God sees you in every moment.

For International Day of Friendship, 30th July

“When you are lost in your own life.

When the landscape you have known falls away.

When your familiar path becomes foreign
and your find yourself a stranger
in the story you had held most dear.

Then let yourself be lost.
Let yourself leave
for a place whose contours you do not already know,
whose cadences you have not learned by heart.
Let yourself land on a threshold
that mirrors the mystery of your own bewildered soul.

It will comes as a surprise,
what arrives to welcome you through the door,
making a place for you at the table
and calling you by your name.

Let what comes, come.

Let the glass be filled.
Let the light be tended.
Let the hands lay before you
what will meet you in your hunger.

Let the laughter.
Let the sweetness that enters the sorrow.
Let the solace that comes as sustenance
and sudden, unbidden grace.

For what comes, offer gladness.
For what greets you with kindly welcome, offer thanks.
Offer blessing for those who gathered you in
and will not be forgotten –

those who, when you were a stranger,
made a place for you at the table
and called you by your name.”

Welcoming Blessing by Jan Richardson

For the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, 22nd July

“Then Peter said to Mary, “Sister, we know that you are greatly loved by the Saviour, more than any other woman. Tell us those words of His that you remember, the things which you know and we don’t, the teachings we never heard.”

Mary answered, saying: “What is hidden from you I shall reveal to you. Whatever is unknown to you, and I remember, I will tell you.”

And she began saying these words to them. She said, “Once I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him: ‘Lord, [Rabbouni,] now I see you in this vision.’

He answered me and said: ‘Blessed are you Mary, for you do not waver at the sight of me. How wonderful you are! For this is where the treasure lies – in [that place where heaven and earth meet, where deep understanding arises in the heart and mind], ‘the nous’.”

… The Soul said: “Now I have recognised this: that everything is impermanent, the whole of creation will be dissolved. All worldly things, all heavenly things, everything passes, everything will be released… I have been set free from one world with the aid of another world, from one pattern through the moulding and shaping of a greater pattern. I have been liberated from the chains of forgetfulness which are both temporary and temporal. From this moment on, now and for all seasons, I am released into silent restfulness, where time rests in the eternity of time.”

After saying these things Mary settled into silence: that place of sanctuary to which the Saviour’s words had brought her.”

From The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, translated by David Curtis