‘Why I Rejected the Report Calling for Assisted Suicide in the UK One of the commissioners who worked on a report into assisted dying has rejected its conclusions. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth A report by the Commission on Assisted Dying which claimed there is a “strong case” for allowing assisted suicide was “not in the position to […]
Blog
The Commission on Assisted Dying – news reports
Posted on by James Woodward
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1324331373.html From the Yorkshire Post Doctors may get power to help terminally ill people end life Published on Wednesday 4 January 2012 18:52 Doctors could be given the right to help terminally-ill people to die, under proposals in an influential report published today. Adults who are likely to have less than a year […]
The Commission on Assisted Dying Report
Posted on by James Woodward
As I return from a relaxing post Christmas break I am preparing for what is bound to be a media storm tommorrow morning as the Report from the Commission is published “The current legal status of assisted dying is inadequate and incoherent…” My own position will be made clear in the Report but here are […]
the double bass
Posted on by James Woodward
He is a drunk leaning companionably Around a lamp post or doing up With intermittent concentration Another drunk’s coat. But close your eyes and it is sunset At the edge of the world. It is the language Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots, The heart-beat slowing down. John Fuller
The Light that Christmas Sheds
Posted on by James Woodward
Have you ever looked into the face of a tiny baby and wondered what will be in store for that child – how his or her life will unfold across the years? There is an exquisite painting which hangs in the great museum of The Louvre, in Paris. It is called ‘The Adoration of the […]
God made Man?
Posted on by James Woodward
For the central truth, or mystery, of the Christian faith is primarily not a matter of words, and therefore ultimately of ideas or concepts, but a matter of fact, or reality. The heart of the Christian mystery is the fact of God made man, God with us, in Christ; words, even his words, are […]
patience
Posted on by James Woodward
An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than […]
made of light
Posted on by James Woodward
salt rose, topaz, archery, carnations, the birth of fire. You are none of these. You are the holy secret darkness, that space between shadow and soul. There, where love is. You are the flower that only blooms within; hidden, but made of light. A tactile fragrance, an enhancement deep within the earth, my body. […]
When things start going really well, watch out
Posted on by James Woodward
“Playfulness can get you out of a rut more successfully than seriousness,” “Triangles are the plaque in the arteries of communication and stress is the effect of our position in the triangle of our families “ “If you are a leader, expect sabotage” “The colossal misunderstanding of our time is […]
in fulness of joy
Posted on by James Woodward
And thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing […]
My favourite libraries – The Harper Library in the University of Chicago
Posted on by James Woodward
60 000 books People Space wide tables Comfortable chairs to sleep serious reading space!
Our Relationship to the past?
Posted on by James Woodward
One of the most obvious features of modern life in the West has been a radical questioning of tradition, of everything received from the past. Wisdom distilled from living in previous eras has often seemed irrelevant and out of date, unsuited to modern conditions and problems. Add to all this the floods of information, images, […]
Advice? From Bill Gates!
Posted on by James Woodward
Here’s some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets them up for failure in the real world. […]
Gaze
Posted on by James Woodward
Gaze at the river. It is time and water. Remember that time is itself a river Know that we too recede always into the past. See all of our faces flow by, like a river and feel that to wake up is only to dream again and that each of those dreams is as real […]
Durham
Posted on by James Woodward
“Grey towers of Durham, Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles, Half church of God half castle against the Scot, A nd long to roam these venerable aisles, With records stored of deeds long since forgot”. Sir Walter Scott
The Promise
Posted on by James Woodward
Promising myself before bedtime to contend more urgently with the problem. From nothing nothing comes. Behind everything – something, somebody? In the beginnning violence, the floor of the universe littered with fragments. After the enormous brawl, where did the dove come from? From what acorn mind these dark boughs among which at night thought loses […]
The harrowing of hell
Posted on by James Woodward
‘Keep your mind in hell, and despair not’ is indeed a basic formula for the ideal truth inherent in Christlikeness. ‘Take up your cross’, says Jesus to his disciples, ‘and follow me’. For that is how God is revealed – first and foremost, on the cross. Properly interpreted, the symbol of the harrowing of hell […]
look at love
Posted on by James Woodward
Look at love… how it tangles the lover and the beloved look at spirit how it fuses with earth giving it new life why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad? pay attention to how things blend why talk about all the known and the unknown see how unknown […]
generosity
Posted on by James Woodward
Lord, said David, since you do not need us, why did you create these two worlds? Reality replied: O prisoner of time, I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity, and I wished this treasure to be known, so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart; its darkened back, the world; […]
Expectant
Posted on by James Woodward
O come, O come thou living word, and pierce our hearts with healing sword, from God’s own mouth proceeding far to lance the fest’ring wounds of war. Rejoice! Rejoice! To mend our strife Shall come in flesh the God of life. – Jim Cotter, Expectant – Verses for Advent