Dry bones dancing…

(reflection on Ezekiel 37)

• A dry and desert stretch of sandy, rock stretched out
• Before my eyes. So barren. Dead. And filled to over-
• Flow with white skeletal frames dried in the sun.
• Bleached to deathly white with endless sunrise, sunset
• By the blist’ring heat. A bone-filled valley.

Death & Life

• I used to think that death and life were opposites:
• Entirely apart – the one opposed the other face to face
• On this mortal plane of wars, disease and rottenness.
• I was wrong.

Kahil Gibran – The Prophet & The Sermon on the Mount

• “When Love beckons to you, follow Him,
• Though His ways are hard and steep.
• And when His wings enfold you, yield to Him…”

• “…For even as Love crowns you so shall He crucify you.
• Even as He is for your growth, so is He for your pruning.”

- Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

His thinking is strikingly profound, and his language is beautiful. Gibran – just like many of us – struggles to understand the complexities of the world and universe that surrounds us.

Raised in a Christian Lebanese environment, some of his language contains fascinating echoes of biblical truths.

‘We Are the Music Makers’ – Arthur O’Shaughnessy

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A wonderful, inspirational poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy. The text is below – or you can listen to the audio here.

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• We are the music-makers,
  And we are the dreamers of dreams,
  Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
  And sitting by desolate streams;
  World-losers and world-forsakers,
  On whom the pale moon gleams:
  Yet we are the movers and shakers
  Of the world for ever, it seems.

• With wonderful deathless ditties
  We build up the world’s great cities,
  And out of a fabulous story
  We fashion an empire’s glory:
  One man with a dream, at pleasure,
  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
  And three with a new song’s measure
  Can trample an empire down.

• We, in the ages lying
  In the buried past of the earth,
  Built Nineveh with our sighing,
  And Babel itself with our mirth;
  And o’erthrew them with prophesying
  To the old of the new world’s worth;
  For each age is a dream that is dying,
  Or one that is coming to birth.

Librivox – Malory – Le Mort D’Arthur

I’ve been working with the team to provide a free audiobook version of Volume Two of Malory’s’ Le Mort D’Arthur. Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D’Arthur while spending time in English prisons for various (colorful!) misdemeanours committed during the reigns of King Henry VI and his successor Edward IV. Malory drew heavily upon French chivalric literature, especially the huge amount of material that had developed around various Arthurian romances. Malory retells, abreviates, extends and adds to the tale; with the end result being the best known Arthurian work in the English language.

The Librivox audiobook is being finalised as I write this: if you would like to be notified when it is available, you can receive an email notification by signing up here.

My contribution included reading book 18.  Click here to listen to an excerpt, or choose the relevant mp3 from the box widget (right sidebar).

God’s Peace

I think I feel the peace e’en through the storm
That shatters everything before the fearsome force
Of its titan breath.

Prayers are arrows that take wing…

• “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Jm 5:16 Read more…

• I said a prayer today: nor was it an idle word.
  Prayers are powerful to do good – and powerless for evil.
  God is not duty-bound to fulfill our prayer – God, as a person, will answer each prayerful request as is His wont.

Librivox – Herodotus – The Histories

I’ve been working with the team to provide a free audiobook version of volume 3 of Herodotus’ Histories. Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote his monumental Histories around 440 BC. Herodotus chronicles the rise of the Persian Empire, and the causes of its conflict with Greece. This work is often described as the earliest history composed in the literature of the West. The vicissitudes of the Peloponnesian War makes a fascinating story: few can read of the Spartan sacrificial “last-stand” at Thermopolae and remain unmoved.

The Librivox audiobook is being finalised as I write this: if you would like to be notified when it is available, you can receive an email notification by signing up here.

My contribution included reading part of volume 3 (book 8).  Click here to listen to an excerpt, or choose the relevant mp3 from the box widget (right sidebar).

Dark side of the soul

• “Come and join the dark side, Luke…”

- Darth Vader

I was listening to Erwin McManus from Mosaic recently, and was intrigued by his descriptions of what he referred to the dark side of the soul. What he meant was the impacts of sin upon our inner man: Jesus being the only effective antidote.

Librivox – Lucretius – On the nature of things

I’ve been working with the team to provide a free audiobook (prose) version of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. Titus Lucretius Carus was an Epicurean, who wrote On the Nature of Things in Latin verse to explain the Epicurean philosophy to his Latin audience. This epic, didactic poem includes fascinating digressions upon atomic theory, the patent falseness and absurdity of contemporary religious practices, and scientific explanations of many diverse natural phenomena: including (and certainly not restricted to) man’s evolution from primitive to complex societies.

The Librivox audiobook is being finalised as I write this: if you would like to be notified when it is available, you can receive an email notification by signing up here.

My contribution included reading part of book 5.  Click here to listen to an excerpt, or choose the relevant mp3 from the box widget (right sidebar).