When a being is hovering between life and death, the opportunities for healing and growth are enormous, and, as importantly, new channels of communication emerge, sacredly and symbolically.

We are occupying two worlds simultaneously. Did you know that?

This is such a special, mysterious time, and we are gifted greatly to be a part of cosmic events of huge significance, now.

The Coronation, shown on the BBC and elsewhere last night, was filled with unspoken reference to the Seventh Ray, and ancient spiritual rites, and it gave me great pleasure over and above it being a fascinating documentary on a great ceremony and the Crown Jewels.

So much of Earth is covered by sea, great blue expanses dotted here and there by land. Their depths are the most mysterious and unexplored places left on the Planet, and they are filled with life.

It is rare that the first day of a new year is accompanied by a full moon, and rarer still that it is a Supermoon: in the first hours of 2018, this great cosmic gift is given to us.

In the snow that lingers here, silence is very loud at the moment.

Like you, perhaps, I have been separated from the world forcibly this weekend, because of snowstorms that have isolated my home in a way I have never known before.

“All that I have is yours” is a statement often and loosely used to indicate a relationship commitment, perhaps, or the generosity of hospitality. Sometimes it is said flippantly or ironically, insincere words that are quickly forgotten.

The monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote with humility and authority about the importance of knowing God, and of seeing God within and without us, in the perfect beauty of nature and in our blood and being. His words exude love, and through those words of poetry and inspiration he leads us to the presence of the divine.