sumangali.org - Part 4

Jan 13th, 2008

John Milton and The Origin Of Space

“With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons and thir change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun When first on this delightful Land he spreads His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour, Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil [...]

Nov 25th, 2007

Greyfriar’s Bobby: A Small Scottish Saint

I’d put off visiting Scotland for over a year, even though York is inexcusably close, and even though a very kind open invitation stood since I moved north from Wales. That’s the trouble with open invitations, and things that are close: they hover just below the top of the list of things one may do, [...]

Nov 11th, 2007

A Beginning, an End, and an Eternity

Is there such a thing as a junkophobe? That’s me. I buy the same thing over and over because I keep throwing useful stuff away; I’m ruthless to the point of impracticality. I can’t tolerate anything old, broken, unlovely, unclean, or out of place. Then what is this old Cheese Doodles packet doing here? Cheap [...]

Nov 4th, 2007

King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

Alleluia: Qui timent Dominum “He healeth those that are broken in heart: and bindeth up their wounds.” This line shines from the page handed to me at the entrance of King’s College Chapel, part of a sung mass I am about to hear. I have been here once before, many years ago, in the company [...]

Oct 12th, 2007

Sri Chinmoy: 1931-2007

My beloved Guru, Sri Chinmoy, passed away yesterday at 7am, at his home in New York. Sri Chinmoy has been my meditation teacher — the inner and outer inspiration of my life — over the last decade. On a human level I am naturally shocked and sad at his sudden earthly parting, but inwardly I [...]

Oct 2nd, 2007

Read Your Own Bedtime Story: Oscar Wilde

English was secretly my favourite subject at school. I say secretly because as a teen it’s only considered proper to laugh at those stuffy poets in tights and ruffs or Brylcreem and cravats, puffing on long pipes in leather chairs. The fact is I, (and maybe secretly everyone) found them brilliantly riveting. I still do, [...]

Sep 30th, 2007

Mouse & Mortality: A Small Poem On Being Small

Beeches shook their auburn curls like closely clustered giddy girls chattering to pose and tease whispering jokes into the breeze Peaceably beneath I trod an early dark and dewy sod wondering that all was good deeply in the wandering wood A fungus there, a cobweb here a brown birdsong above my ear every sense at [...]

Sep 23rd, 2007

A Foreign Tourist At Home: York Minster

I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist. I am not an atheist, far from it. I must get that straight. Straight away. I never have been. I am not a Christian either. [...]

Sep 18th, 2007

Not-In-The-Cave: Concert in the Lake District

I creep in at the back five minutes early, but my shoes squeak on polished wood, damp from the squalls outside. A stillness has arrived before me and sits like a living presence in the room; the arching roof higher, the golden wood warmer, the white walls purer because of it. Many have followed its [...]