Morning friends - just before the main dish, news of a couple of gatherings:
Christ and Culture, Galway City, Ireland, Sat 15th February
On behalf of More Christ, and the Dominicans in Galway, we invite you to join us for a memorable gathering on the intersection of the Christian faith and Culture, in our time and place. This in-person event will take place at St Mary's Church at Claddagh, in the heart of Galway City, at an iconic location overlooking Galway Bay.
We have a remarkable panel, including Paul Kingsnorth, Martin Shaw, Paul Vander Klay, Fr. Paul Murray, and Fr. Conor McDonough.
Join us for a day of edifying and interactive talks, followed by a unique evening session of poetry, storytelling, and traditional music.
Together, we will delve into how our Christian faith influences and is influenced by the world around us. We will also practice what we preach, by revelling in forms of Christian culture together.
Tickets: Christ and Culture, Galway Saturday 15th February, 2pm-10pm.
If you don’t know Paul Vanderklay, do seek him out on Youtube. He’s refreshing!
Beauty Prepares Us For Eternity
A talk with Martin Shaw for the King’s School of Traditional Arts
Wednesday 12th February 2025, The Garrison Chapel London, 6.30pm-8pm
Tickets: Beauty Prepares Us For Eternity
Form, Enclosures, Reformation
Wildness is my suiting scene.
John Clare
It was getting on towards a midnight Christmas Eve in the church of the poet John Clare.
Out in the Cambridgeshire fields there was a pale mist and a rustle of animal forms: the swoop of the screech owl, the splash of a duck lifting from a garden pond. As I stood in the pew with my aged parents (their description, not mine), John was with us and also not with us. He wasn’t passing the punch and dishing out the carol sheets, but his words, poems, books, even his grave were all within a few yards. There was a lively-Clareness all around.
Two great things Clare said:
I found the poems in the fields
And only wrote them down.
I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.
Then there’s this:
There is a charm in Solitude that cheers
A feeling that the world knows nothing of
A green delight the wounded mind endears
After the hustling world is broken off.
“A green delight the wounded mind endears after the hustling world is broken off.” That’s outrageously great. In the chapel of my heart that’s cut in Welsh slate above the fireplace.