And the Lord showed me more, a little thing the size
of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it
thoughtfully and wondered, 'What is this?' And the answer came, 'It is all that
is made'. I marvelled that it continued to exist and did not suddenly
disintegrate; it was so small. And again my mind supplied the answer, 'It exists
both now and for ever because God loves it.' In short everything owes its
existence to the love of God.
Lady Julian of Norwich
Revelations of
Divine Love
You are not here to
verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T.S.
Eliot
Little Gidding
We have no doctrine of our own... We only possess the Catholic doctrine of
the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and these Creeds we hold
without addition or diminution. We stand firm on that Rock.
Geoffrey Francis Fisher
Archbishop of Canterbury
1945-1961
Enter this door
As if the floor
Within were gold,
And every wall
of jewels all
of wealth untold;
As if a choir
in robes of fire
were singing here;
Nor shout, nor rush,
But hush....
For God is here.
Engraved on the doors
of some old churches
of the Church of England
If the Church of England were to fail
altogether yet it would be found in my parish.
John Keble
Vicar of Hursley and
Father of the Oxford Movement