The Stabat Mater is not a hymn so much as it’s a wound set to music - a gash in the human heart where grief spills out in metre and Latin vowels. It’s Mary beneath the cross, yes, but it’s also every parent who has ever outlived their child; every person who has stood by … Continue reading Suffering, Song, and the Sorrows of the Mother of God
Category: My Words
Thoughts and memories-a-plenty!
Bread Upon the Waters
Ecclesiastes 11:1, the art of giving, and the peculiar futility of being alive “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” — Ecclesiastes 11:1 There’s something heartbreakingly hopeful about that line, isn’t there? Something that makes you want to nod sagely, as if you understand it, even though - … Continue reading Bread Upon the Waters
The Longest Day: Fire, Folklore and the Turning Light
There’s a moment, just after midday on the 21st of June, when the sun seems almost drunk with its own radiance. It leans heavily on the earth, like a tired old bishop full of wine and prophecy, and stares down the day as if daring it to get any longer. The shadows are weak. The … Continue reading The Longest Day: Fire, Folklore and the Turning Light
A Referendum on Death
Foreword: A Note on Silence There are some things you are not supposed to say. That killing people, however nicely, is still killing people. That terminal illness does not grant others the right to pre-empt God. That what Parliament calls dignity might look suspiciously like abandonment in disguise. But here I am. And here, I … Continue reading A Referendum on Death
The Phantom in the Linen: On the Ubiquity of White Ladies, Grey Ladies, and Other Draped Nonsense
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in Blanchland, Northumberland - a village so theatrically atmospheric it looks like it was designed by a heritage-obsessed monk with a fondness for mist. I was holed up in The Lord Crewe Arms, one of the North’s most famously haunted pubs - though frankly, the prices gave me … Continue reading The Phantom in the Linen: On the Ubiquity of White Ladies, Grey Ladies, and Other Draped Nonsense
Wording 