Phil White

@revdphilippa.bsky.social

787 Followers 1869 Following

Liturgy, church music, knitting, poetry, cool saints, hymn-writing, small children. Not in that order. Sometimes also sleep. She/her. God is love and mercy is greater than we can imagine.

Cover of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
A photo of text from the book mentioned, in which the highlighted sentence reads 'Liturgical creativity is an area in which no Anglican has had any fun or job satisfaction since Thomas Cranmer.'
Cover of Long Road from Jarrow by Stuart Maconie
Cover of Beyond Common Worship: Anglican identity and liturgical diversity (Mark Earey)
The cover of Worship and the Mystery of God: The Anglican Divines and the Reality of Divine Presence (John Shepherd)
Cover of (one translation of) (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names
Cover of Ghost Flower by Jessica Conwell
Cover of The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
The cover of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
A doll dressed as a nun. I realise this is not a very detailed description, but picture a doll dressed as a nun and you have it. She's sitting on a shelf in a display cabinet behind glass, which is good because she's about the creepiest thing you could imagine.
A fluffy black and white cat curled up in a puddle against a white wall. His feets and tail are tucked in and so is his nosie. One paw is out. It is fluffy and white and you want to play with it. (Don't. He is very serious about his sleeping.)
Cover of 'Love Divine: A Novella' by Ysenda Maxtone Graham.
My upper arm, with a fresh tattoo of a swan. The swan is sitting on water, but his wings are just at the point of unfurling. He's looking across (at a healed tattoo of blossom). My arm is pretty red because it was just finished when I took the photo.
A still from the 1990s 'Jeeves and Wooster.' Stephen Fry, playing Jeeves, is on the left, wearing a dark suit and looking disapproving. Hugh Laurie, as Bertie Wooster, is on the right, wearing a grey suit with red tie and straw hat and looking silly. Jeeves, for those who don't know, is the archetypal literary valet, and when the reading talks about 'his valets and their clothing' it makes me picture this. Which I suspect was not intentional.
Josephine Tey - The Singing Sands
The cover of the Father Brown Complete Collection by GK Chesterton.
The cover of 'Going to Church in Medieval England ' by Nicholas Orme.
Cover of 'Craddock on the Craft of Preaching', a compilation of essays/ lectures by Fred Craddock.
The cover of James, by Percival Everett.
Cover of The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud.
The original 1980s cover for The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. It's a Puffin book. The font for the title is Uncial-esque (aping very early medieval ceremonial text), and the cover shows a figure standing in a snowy landscape. It's a humanoid creature with an owl's head and deer's antlers. The head is seen through a prism and coloured, but not naturalistically, and the rest is black and white. It is a creepy and fascinating image.
A hand (mine, ft. Christmas sparkly nails) holds a glass in front of a lit Christmas tree. The glass contains a pale golden liquid with sparkly bits in it. This is the 'spiced plum gin liqueur in a bauble' which I found at the back of the cupboard from several Christmases ago. I am hoping that the sparkly bits are intentional.
My hand, with sparkly red fingernails. I'm stroking a fluffy black and white cat.
A meme with two images of a dog looking at a computer screen. In the top image he is looking cheerfully at the screen, saying 'What a lovely day on the internet' and in the bottom image he looks directly at you with a disappointed expression and says 'Good lord.'
Centrally, the Paschal candle. It is lit, and in a candle stand decorated with flowers. Paschal candles traditionally have motifs on them, and this one has a red cross with a rainbow and a dove. It's on the edge of the chancel in Christ Church - on the right is a pillar, on the left the chancel ceiling which is white and wedding-cakey.
A photograph of a carved wooden panel from the Cathedral of St Julien in Le Mans. It depicts Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection. Mary is on the right, kneeling and looking stricken. Christ is on the left, standing and reaching towards her. He wears an inexplicable floppy hat.
A Google alert giving me a headline from the Daily Telegraph, reading 'Safeguarding courses for flower arrangers? The Church of England is heading for oblivion.' Illustrated with a sweet old lady doing flowers, of course.
Fire in a biscuit tin. Last year's palm crosses being burnt for this year's Ash Wednesday ash. You can't tell they were once palm crosses, and the quantity of fire is probably beyond a safe amount.
Two kinds of iced cupcakes for my son's birthday. The cooling rack on the left has yellow (vanilla) with turquoise icing (glace) and a sprinkle of stars and a jelly tot on each. The rack on the right has brown (chocolate) with white icing (white chocolate ganache) sprayed with silver glitter and a jelly tot on the top. The cakes themselves are not a notable success but I'm hoping the icing can salvage this in the eyes of the 7 and 8 year old class for whom they are destined.
My second tattoo, pictured as soon as finished (so a bit red). It's a posy of six wild flowers, three violets (purple, five petals around a yellow centre) and three snowdrops (drooping white heads).
The stunning gatehouse of the Château de Carrouges. It's red brick (but old red brick - fifteenth century), square, with a turret at each corner (topped with a conical black-tiled roof) and a black-tiled pitched roof in the centre.
A navy blue notebook with a vinyl sticker on it. The sticker is 'Mother's Comfort' by Art of Marza; it's a modern Orthodox icon showing the Blessed Virgin Mary embracing a Jesus aged seven or eight, who holds her tight and looks scared.
A page from an order of service (Southwell, as it happens), showing 'my' hymn for the thirtieth anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood. Text: '1. Called to worship, called to service, called to bring God’s presence near; called to preaching, prayer and blessing speaking peace to conquer fear. Thirty years of joys and sorrows, priestly service gathered here. 2. We have walked where Christ has called us, borne our cross and suffered pain. To God’s call we have been faithful, and in loss have found our gain. For indeed our God is faithful, and we give our thanks again. 3. Called to tell salvation’s story, brought in safety through the sea; brought into the new creation, from the weight of sin set free. Called to speak of God’s forgiveness — at our voice let sorrow flee. 4. Here we stand where earth and heaven meet in praise and offering; here we make Christ truly present, hearts and lives the gifts we bring. Where our hands share blood and body, hearts and souls and voices sing. 5. In this House of prayer and teaching, where our songs of praise arise, Lord, receive our great thanksgiving joy that echoes to the skies. All for God and all with gladness, which our service sanctifies.'
Two pieces of Nalbindung (nail binding), a Viking fibre craft (distinct from both knitting and crochet). The lower piece is circular with yarn tails on either side; the upper piece is rectangular with one tail. The yarn is cream and there's a binding pin visible to the right. They are on a red table. Produced at the hen do in a brilliant workshop at Jorvik.
A toddler standing in her cot, trying to climb out. She's wearing a pretty dress and her back is to the camera.
A glass raised in a toast (the liquid inside is clear) in front of a decorated Christmas tree. My favourite decoration is the woven blue angel on top; you can also see other angels, several stars and a lot of tinsel.
An ear (mine: white, female, 38) wearing a gold stud earring in the shape of a rose. This is in the nature of a visual pun. On Gaudete Sunday the liturgical colour is rose (this is emphatically not pink, although indistinguishable from pink to the naked eye).
White woman with short brown Karen-esque hair (definitely from a TV show which I'll remember if you tell me the name of it) claps her hands to her face and cries 'I'm old!' with a great deal of horror.
A bright late autumn day. There are trees to the left of the picture and around the top, mostly green, although there are a lot of brown leaves on the ground. On the right of the picture is the edge of a man made lake, and in the foreground standing on the edge of the lake is a heron. He is very still. His plumage is grey and his face and beak are white. He is looking straight ahead.
The shrine of St Frideswide in the Latin Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. We see the shrine in close up. In the foreground a white pillar candle is burning on the marble slab that forms the floor of the shrine. In the middle ground we see a pillar of the shrine and others behind it. In the far corner is the Peter Eugene Ball statue of Frideswide. Her face is golden and turned upwards.
A handsome black and white cat with a white ruff like an Elizabethan bishop sits on a laptop and looks pensively at the camera.
Latimer, a fluffy black and white cat, stretches as he wakes up. He is curled up in the drying rack by the sink.
Picture of a cup of herbal tea with a red tag reading 'have wisdom in your actions and faith in your merits'
A screenshot from Duolingo (Welsh). The Welsh word 'offeiriad' is given with four possible, illustrated translations - Car (a red cartoon car), Left (a finger pointing), Priest (a grey haired white man with a dog collar holding a large cross) and Sandwich (a cartoon sandwich).
A black and white cat curled up asleep in the middle of a table covered in bits and pieces.