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Contemplative Prayer
Influences & Suggested Reading, Scripture & PrayerThomas Merton's classic study of monastic prayer and contemplation brings a tradition of spirituality alive for the present day. But, as A M Allchin points out in his Introduction to this new edition, Contemplative Prayer also shows us the present day in a new perspective, because we see it in the light of a long and living tradition. Merton stresses that in meditation we should not look for a 'method' or 'system' but cultivate an 'attitude' or 'outlook': faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, trust, joy. God is found in the desert of surrender, in giving up any expectation of a particular message and 'waiting on the Word of God in silence'. Merton insists on the humility of faith, which he argues 'will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalisation of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history'.£11.99 -
Walk Humbly: encouragement for living, working and being.
Everyday LifeDrawing on startlingly perceptive observations of contemporary life and reflecting a deep knowledge of philosophical and relgious wisdom, Walk Humbly will inspire readers to think deeply about the essence of their lives. This book offers eight practical encouragements for simpler, richer living. Each exhoration - be humble, be grateful, be your own size, be gentle, be a person of praise, be faithful, be one body, be a blessing - is accompanied by thought-provoking, insightful comments.£10.99 -
Merton’s Palace of Nowhere
Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneySpiritual identity is the quest to know who we are, to find meaning in life and to overcome that sense of "is that all there is?" At the heart of this quest are found Thomas Meron's illuminating insights leading from an awareness of the false and illusory self as the way to a realization of the true self. For twenty-five years, Merton's Palace of Nowhere has been the standard for exploring, reflecting on, and understanding this rich vein of Merton's thought.£14.00 -
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Becoming a Disciple
Scripture & PrayerIn this little book Daniel Bourguet guides our meditations on three scriptural passages that lead the reader along the pathway ordained by Christ into the depths of his being. Successively, the disciple first follows behind Jesus along the way of perfect love (Mark 1:14-20); then experiences what it is to bear the yoke with Christ and there find rest (Matt 11:28-30); and finally enters the mystery of communion in which he is in Jesus and Jesus abides in him (John 15:1-17). It is a pathway passing from vocation to struggle and then to fellowship, but leading always to joy. In Becoming a Disciple, we see the fruit of Bourget's years of intercession, spiritual direction, and insightful exegesis--all of this at the feet of Christ. Here we see how the Gospels lead us into intimate encounters and authentic discipleship£16.00 -
A Retreat with Thomas Merton
The Inner JourneyThe celebrated spiritual writer Thomas Merton remains one of the most influential voices of our day. His many books have become modern spiritual classics and he opened up the riches of the monastic tradition for many. Here, Esther de Waal devises a seven day personal or group retreat programme using extracts from Thomas Merton's writings and a selection of the photography for which he was also renowned. She creates a retreat that can be made at home, at a centre or on holiday, over a week or a period of weeks. The focus of each of the seven days is: The Call; Response; The Solitary Within; Encounter With Christ; The Demands of Love; Common and Natural and Ordinary; Integration.£14.00 -
Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2: Farther Up and Farther In
Celtic Daily Prayer & Liturgy, Celtic Daily Prayer & Liturgy, Celtic Prayer, Celtic Sites & Saints, Celtic Studies & Spirituality, Music & Creativity, Northumbria Community Resources & TeachingCeltic Daily Prayer Book 2: Farther Up and Farther In is the long awaited companion volume to Celtic Daily Prayer Book 1: The Journey Begins, also reissued in a new binding. It contains a further two years of daily readings together with a new set of meditations for each day of the month plus prayers and liturgies that speak into real life as we have experienced it. With the exception of the Daily Offices and Complines, which have been re-issued with melody lines for those parts where a sung version exists, the material included is new. Here you will find additional resources for the Times and Seasons of the year and for Rites of Passage. Here too are liturgies and prayers for the significant events and decisions in life. For those seeking fresh resources for corporate worship there are four new Communion services, an Advent liturgy that could work equally well in either a church or home group setting and fourteen new ‘Follow the Example’ liturgies with suggestions for occasions when they may prove helpful. Beautifully bound in a specially commissioned hardback cover with ribbon markers, this book is built to last. Just as well as we anticipate it becoming as much a part of our journey, alone and together, as its treasured elder sibling! See a sample:CDP Book 2 Sample£25.00Celtic Daily Prayer is also available as an INTERACTIVE E-BOOK published by HarperCollins and available for a variety of devices. It can be purchased from:Amazon hereiTunes heregoogleplay herekobo books hereThe e-book has app-like features and includes the Daily Prayer and Compline liturgies, the Meditations for the Day from Book 2 and all four years of Daily Readings from Books 1 and 2. Please be aware that currently the introduction to the theme for each month is not included (we are looking into that). The e-book does not contain any of the communion liturgies or prayers for times and seasons, rites of passages and other themed prayers and liturgies from either Celtic Daily Prayer 1 or 2.However, also included within the e-book are the Scriptures for each day’s readings in full from the New Revised Standard Version Bible and music from the Celtic Daily Prayer CD - ALTHOUGH PLEASE NOTE THAT THE MUSIC FILES WILL NOT PLAY ON ALL DEVICES. -
Sacred Strangers: what the Bible’s outsiders can teach Christians
Culture & Mission, Everyday Life, Scripture & PrayerThe Bible is laced with stories in which strangers behave better than believers. What do these encounters with "others"--people from different cultures, religions, genders, economic and social classes--teach us about our own spiritual values, about the faith and God behind them? In Sacred Strangers, Nancy Haught leads readers through these stories, line by line, offering insight to open hearts to sacred strangers at a time when personal encounters can make us or break us--as people and citizens of the world.£10.99 -
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Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture
Culture & Mission, Influences & Suggested ReadingThis book is for exiles: Christians who find themselves caught in that dangerous wilderness between contemporary secular Western culture and and old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism. Frost presents a plea for such Christians to embrace a dynamic, life-affirming, robust Christian faith that can be lived confidently in a world that no longer values such a faith.£15.99 -
New Seeds of Contemplation
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyNew Seeds of Contemplation is one of Thomas Merton’s most widely read and best-loved books. Christians and non-Christians alike have joined in praising it as a notable successor in the meditative tradition of St. John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the medieval mystics, and some have compared Merton’s reflections to those of Thoreau. New Seeds of Contemplation seeks to awaken the dormant inner depths of the spirit so long neglected by Western man, to nurture a deeply contemplative and mystical dimension in our lives. For Merton, ‘Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.’£16.99 -
A Silent Action: engagements with Thomas Merton
Spiritual GrowthThomas Merton's life, especially once he had become a writer, was to a great extent one of dialogue with people who were distant, both geographically and historically. In these probing and perceptive studies, Rowan Williams looks closely at the key intellectual and spiritual relationships that emerge in Merton's writings, exploring the impact on him of thinkers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, William Blake, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Olivier Clement, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Paul Evdokimov, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vladimir Lossky, John Henry Newman, Boris Pasternak and St John of the Cross.£11.99 -
Availability and Vulnerability: A way for living
Core Teaching, Northumbria Community Resources & TeachingThe Rule of the Northumbria Community with an introduction by Trevor Miller, one of the leaders of the Community. A new Way for Living that offers hope in the changed and changing culture of today's world.£4.00 -
Living on the Border: Reflections on the Experience of Threshold
Celtic Studies & Spirituality, Spiritual Growth, The Inner Journey, Traditional MonasticismThere is a traditional saying of ancient wisdom: 'A threshold is a sacred thing. In some places of the world, in some traditional cultures and in monastic life, this is still remembered. It is something, however, that we often forget today. To take time to pause at a threshold - be it a place, or a moment between one action and the next - is to show reverence for the handling of space and time, and respect for those who we meet. Pausing allows us to let go of all the demands and expectations of the previous activity, and to prepare for the encounter with another. Esther de Waal explores what this ancient wisdom has to teach us about our public lives in the world today.£12.99 -
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Into the depths: A Journey of Loss and Vocation
Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyIn January 1984, Sr Mary Margaret Funk, a Benedictine nun from Indiana, paid a visit to Maryknoll missionary nuns working in Bolivia. On what should have been a routine trip to the local town for a convocation ceremony, a flash flood swept away the jeep in which she, three nuns, a priest, and a disabled boy they had adopted were travelling. Only she and the priest survived What happened that night catapulted Sr Meg into twenty-five years of prayer and self-examination. She relentlessly explored her relationship with the transcendent and immanent God, the profundities of her religious tradition, her commitment to spiritual practice, and her very human failings. It was a journey that left her spiritually naked before the terrible love of God; a journey to keep one's heart open to the transforming wounds of suffering. In the great tradition of spiritual confessions from Augustine to Thomas Merton's The Seven-Story Mountain, Into the Depths is a fearlessly honest and simply told account of one woman's struggle to engage at the deeper levels with the most profound questions of faith.Original price was: £12.99.£8.99Current price is: £8.99. -
The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyThe Inner Experience is the first complete, authorised edition of Thomas Merton's final work. It was a manuscript he always intended to revise, but did not until 1968 when he incorporated brief but important 'corrections and additions' to the text. Drawing on his own Christian experience, as well as the Eastern writings and traditions that so significantly influenced him in the last decade of his life, Merton shows the expansive nature of contemplation; that contemplation is not simply a part of life, but the entirety of it. This, his last major work to be published, is vintage and vital Merton.£12.99 -
Streams of Living Water
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyIsn't it a shame that the rich tapestry of Christian belief and practice has so often been rigidly carved up, crammed into denominational boxes and padlocked shut? Richard Foster addresses this by identifying six major strands of Christian spirituality within the worldwide church that have contributed at various times and places across the centuries. They are: The Contemplative tradition - or the Prayer-filled life, The Holiness tradition - or the Virtuous life, The Charismatic tradition - or the Spirit-empowered life, The Social Justice tradition - or the Compassionate life, The Evangelical tradition - or the Word-centred life, The Incarnational tradition - or the Sacramental life, Foster's celebration of spiritual life incorporates history's most significant Christian figures and movements. It serves as a refreshing example of how real peopl have evaded preconceived ideas and lived wonderful Christ-centred lives in spite of constricting labels.£10.99 -
Encountering Exile
Re-imagining Church, Scripture & Prayer, The Inner JourneyThe decline of the Church in the West means many Christian leaders are forced to taste a bittersweet draught of hopes fulfilled and deferred, liberally laced with failure and even shame. Our world seems so different to the joyful simplicity of the new Church of the New Testament. Where else in the Scriptures could we look to cope and hope?' George Lings investigates. This booklet is part of the Encounters on the Edge series. A downloadable PDF version of the booklet is also available.£2.00 -
Advent and Christmas Wisdom with Thomas Merton
Advent & Christmas, Resources for the Christian YearAdvent and Christmas are special times for all Christians. The spiritual longing of the Advent season can only be satisfied by the joy and celebration of a Christmas focused on Jesus' birth in our hearts. Advent and Christmas Wisdom with Thomas Merton give readers the opportunity to experience Advent and Christmas in a way that unwraps the spiritual joy, allowing it to shine brighter that all the tinsel and trappings that can blind our eyes to the deeper meaning of the season. This book is arranged for use on every day of the Advent and Christmas seasons. Each day's reflection begins with a scriptural quotation, continues with a thought from the writings of Thomas Merton, and concludes with a prayer for the day. Merton's writing capture the familiar themes of the season: the Incarnation, anticipation, angels, giving, and many others - each drawing us closer to the joy of welcoming the Saviour into our lives. An appendix includes a suggested plan for using each day's meditation as part of a morning or evening prayer.£11.99 -
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The Wisdom of the Desert
Desert Monasticism, Influences & Suggested ReadingThe Wisdom of the Desert was one of Thomas Merton's favourites among his own books - surely because he had hoped to spend his last years as a hermit. The personal tone of the translations, the blend of reverence and humour so characteristic of him, show how deeply Merton identified with the legendary authors of these sayings and parables, the fourth century Christian Fathers who sought solitude and contempation in the deserts of the Near East. The hermits of Scete who turned their backs on a corrupt society remarkably like our own had much in common with the Zen Masters of China and Japan, and Father Merton made his selection from them with an eye to the kind of impact produced by the Zen mondo.£13.00 -
The Seven Storey Mountain
Influences & Suggested Reading, Traditional MonasticismThe complete and unedited edition of Thomas Merton's famous autobiography, one of the greatest works of spiritual pilgrimage ever written. Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) was a Trappist monk, writer, peace and civil rights activist.£21.00 -
Caim: A4 signed print
Creativity, Spiritual GrowthBackground: Artist Mary Fleeson tells us that...'"Caim" was originally designed as a CD cover for an album of prayers set to music by the same name, therefore the imagery reflects themes of the music included, however as is often the case the illustration evolved into something which speaks beyond the obvious inspiration. The hand seems to reach out in a loving, gentle gesture to caress the face of the Creator, symbolised by the star (Revelation 22:16 ‘I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.’). The complex knotwork intersperses three overlapping circles which represent the Trinity and the patterns and colours are life patterns, weaving and merging, coloured by experiences, actions and reactions.' Printing and Sizing: This item is 210mm x 297mm and is printed on 300gsm card stock using our in-house printer. Each print is individually signed by Mary Fleeson and is packaged in a cellophane wrapper with a descriptive backing sheet explaining more about the piece and the Scriptorium.£12.50 -
The Forgotten Desert Mothers
Desert Monasticism, Monasticism & New MonasticismAn introduction to the sayings, lives and stories of early Christian women. "Written in clear, heartfelt language, this book does two things beautifully. It revives lost memories of women leaders in the early evolution of Christian spirituality, thus filling in one more missing piece of women's history. And it calls the reader to a path of spirituality sorely needed in today's clamorous world: slow down, be quiet, listen for the voice of God deep within your heart. The book's attractiveness is enhanced by a time line, ordination rite, glossary and calendar of feasts in addition to notes and bibliography. Altogether an appealing contribution."£15.99- Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J. Fordham University
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Contemplation in a World of Action
The Inner JourneyThe spiritual and psychological insights of these essays were nurtured in a monastic milieu, but their issues are universally human. Thomas Merton lays a foundation for personal growth and transformation through fidelity to "our own truth and inner being". Our desire and need to attain "a fully human and personal identity" is the focus of Merton's concern.£24.99 -
Celtic Daily Prayer Colouring Book
Celtic Daily Prayer & Liturgy, CreativityTo compliment our Celtic Daily Prayer Books 1 & 2 Great for holidays, retreats, quiet times and calming restless minds, this colouring book contains seven of the section divider illustrations drawn for the Northumbria Community's Celtic Daily Prayer books by Francesca Ross. They are each matched with a meditation from the books, surrounded by a knotwork border especially designed to go with it.£5.00