Start:Stop - Business as usual

Monk (Mönch) by Katharina Fritsch, 1997/1999 (Art Institute Chicaco)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, when we stop for a few moments and start to reflect on a passage from scripture. My name is Phillip Dawson. You can find an audio version of this reflection at this link. This week we begin with a passage from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. Described as his ‘theological masterpiece’ Paul’s reasons for writing the letter - to diverse congregations he did not establish and had not visited - are unclear; but in it, he sets out his view on the demands that living a life in a Christian community entails:

The Practice of the Presence of God. Conversations and Letters of Brother Lawrence

Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c1809

Why do we need to “practice the presence of God” when we know that God is with us at all times?

The answer to that question lies at the heart of four conversations with and fifteen letters by Brother Lawrence, a lay brother of the Discalced Carmelite Order who lived in France in the seventeenth century and were published posthumously, becoming a spiritual classic.