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Practice is doing something you can do in order to be able to do something that you can't do. For example, I currently can't run a marathon, but I can probably run 1 km. So, if I did one day decide to run a marathon, I would do what I can do, that is, wheeze my way laboriously along for a kilometre; then, providing I did that often enough, my abilities would eventually increase to the point where I'd be able to run a marathon. The basic principle is the same for sport, or playing a musical instrument, or learning a language, or any skill you care to name. The principle is also true for our inner lives, hence the phenomenon of spiritual practice. A spiritual life is simple but it's not easy. Read the Sermon on the Mount sometime, and you'll get some idea of what it might be like to be a truly spiritual person. Jesus' description of life in the Kingdom of God might make lovely poetic reading, but I can't do it, and neither, for that matter, can anybody ...

Spring and Autumn are when my lovely city is at its best. The sun is low in the sky, and the days are still and clear without being hot, so it always feels like it's 9 o'clock in the morning. Providing the winter has done it's part, Spring arrives as clearly defined as the hard edged morning shadows: last week, it was winter, but it's definitely not anymore. Every morning now she makes us coffee and takes me out to show me what is happening. I stand on the lawn and look back towards the vegetable garden. Here? Here is where we live? My God! How did this happen? I never did anything to deserve this.   We're even managing to grow orchids, outside, and by "we" I mean "Clemency". The Latin names go in one ear and get lost somewhere before they get a chance to go out the other. But the colours stick.   The trilliums are special, or so I am reliably informed. But I prefer the audacious blues and yellows of the annuals and the bul...