Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 20 – The Dead Mourn not for her as gathered to the Past. Her past has power upon the coming years,  And she herself, O mourner, will outlast  Her dust, this marble, and all human tears. (Tennyson) I hate the black negation of the bier,  And wish the dead, as happier… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 20 – The Dead

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 19 – Love and Death To the faithful, death is only the last best sacrament.   However imperfectly, with whatever grievous failures, they have held their lives, they have not held them as their own; and neither terror nor dismay is in their hearts when the call comes to relinquish them.   They know that… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 19 – Love and Death

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 18 – Dying Bring none of these; but let me be,  While all around in silence lies,  Moved to the window near, and see  Once more, before my dying eyes, Bathed in the sacred dews of morn  The wide aerial landscape spread The world which was ere I was born,  The… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 18 – Dying

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 16 – Nature leads us to Rest As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,  Leads by the hand her little child to bed,  Half willing, half reluctant to be led  And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 16 – Nature leads us to Rest

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 15 – Twilight Shades Sometimes, as we travel on to our distant Home, strange things pass by us on the way;-  beautiful imaginings which come when we are alone with Nature, spiritual thrills of the heart, which arise from common things, thoughts which awake in us a mystic wonder, telling of another… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 15 – Twilight Shades

The clouds are round us, and the snow-wreaths thicken.
O, Thou dear Shepherd, leave us not to sicken 
In the waste night our tardy footsteps quicken :
At evening bring us home

And if the eye must fail of light, 
The ear forget to hear,
Make clearer still the spirit’s sight,
More fine the inward ear!

‘Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
Nor the furious winter rages;
Thou thine earthly task hast done, 
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.’