Nunnington Hall today: an extraordinary house with an extraordinary garden.
The sea fog wasn’t quite the beach weather we had in mind, but it did add to the atmosphere.
Herman Ellis Dyal’s photoessay of his dwindling church’s decaying building is remarkably poignant.
I’m brushing up against a veil I can’t get past – cut off from the mystery. I long for a bush going up in flames. I long for my great cloud of witnesses, who may be in one of these rooms, if I just keep looking.
(via Jeff Chu’s newsletter)
Virginia Woolf writing to her sister Vanessa Bell soon after T. S. Eliot had become a Christian:
Then I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.
Bluebells in yesterday’s spring sunshine (though not that blue in this case!)
I loved visiting the Propsteikirche in Leipzig. An extraordinary building: unapologetically liturgical but it leaves an overwhelming sense of light and space.
Lambs in Bilsdale today, with the Wainstones in the background.
A jumble of bridges crossing the Tyne during a quick lunchtime walk.
Hildegard of Bingen captures something of the strangeness of prayer:
I saw a great splendour in which resounded a voice from Heaven, saying to me, “O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear. …” Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast, not like a burning but like a warming flame, as the sun warms anything its rays touch.
Currently reading: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism by Jason M. Baxter 📚
A powerful mural in Leipzig, where the East German regime started to disintegrate. „Wir sind das Volk“.
Rock formations, Redcar beach
Redcar tractor
Coverdale
Great Roova, Coverdale
Goldsborough from Teesdale
Hiking between Husthwaite and Coxwold.
Hartlepool rainbow
20 + C + M + B + 23