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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Seasons of Life, The Inner JourneyA compassionate and compelling meditation on discovering your path in life. With wisdom, compassion and gentle humour, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference , he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfilment and joy, illuminating a pathway towards vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.£16.00 -
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Untamed Gospel: protest, poems and prose for the Christian year
Church & Leadership, Creativity, Resources for the Christian Year, Scripture & PrayerUntamed Gospel complements The Bright Field and Darkness Yielding, and offers meditations, reflections, stories, prayers and poems for use throughout the church year. Each one focuses on the often startling nature of Jesus' sayings and teachings, the raw honesty of the psalms and other biblical texts, and on contemporary issues, such as mental health and displacement, seen in the light of the demands of the kingdom of God. A rich resource for worship, preaching, teaching and personal reflection throughout the year, Untamed Gospel contains hundreds of reproducible items, including seasonal reflections, stories, homilies, poems and some of Jim Cotter's last writings as he was being treated for cancer: a moving sequence of prayer poems inspired by the psalms.Original price was: £17.99.£13.99Current price is: £13.99. -
Speaking of Sin
Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual GrowthIn Speaking of Sin, Barbara Brown Taylor brings her fresh perspective to words that often cause us discomfort and have widely fallen into neglect: sin, damnation, repentance, penance, and salvation. Asking why we should speak of sin at all, she argues that abandoning words will not make sin go away, and that alienation, deformation, damnation and death will continue no matter what we call them. Abandoning the language will simply leave us speechless before them, and increase our denial of their presence in our lives. Ironically, it will also weaken the language of grace, since the full impact of forgiveness cannot be felt apart from the full impact of what has been forgiven. Contrary to the prevailing view, Taylor calls sin “a helpful, hopeful word.” Naming our sins, she contends, enables us to move from guilt to grace. In recovering this lost language of salvation in our worship and in the fabric of our individual lives, we have an opportunity to take part in the divine work of redemption.£10.99 -
When God is Silent
Influences & Suggested Reading, Leadership, The Inner Journey“Barbara Brown Taylor’s concise, pithy and challenging prose is evidence that she is practicing what she preaches:that Christian pastors take more care with the words they use and treat language with economy, courtesy and reverence. . . .She offers concrete and practical suggestions for ways to improve our relationship with both silence and the words God has given us.” - KATHLEEN NORRIS, for Christian Century Renowned minister Barbara Brown Taylor focuses on the task of preaching in a world where people thirst for communication with a God who often seems to be silent. Originally delivered as the 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures in preaching at Yale Divinity School, When God is Silent addresses questions essential not only to preachers, but also to anyone yearning to hear from God.£12.99 -
Hidden Wings: Emerging from troubled times with new hope and deeper wisdom
Everyday Life, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyYou must become the change you long for. Fine words, a great vision, but where to begin? We caterpillars know. From the moment we are conceived in our parents' mating dance, we already contain the cells that hold our future butterfly. Let us tell you our story... Tumultuous changes are occurring in the world around us, and the structures and values by which we have charted our lives seem to be collapsing. Many of us are struggling to plot a spiritual path through this unfamiliar landscape, and to believe in a positive future. Hidden Wings is a book offering hope and understanding. Using the example of a caterpillar entering the devastating, world-altering stage of the chrysalis, before emerging – transformed – as a butterfly, Margaret Silf helps us to see that these times of chaos could in fact be an opportunity for profound spiritual transformation.£12.99 -
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Drysalter
CreativityWinner of the 2013 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection; Winner of the 2013 Costa Poetry Award; Shortlisted for the 2013 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize; Shortlisted for the 2015 Portico Prize; Michael Symmons Roberts' sixth - and most ambitious collection to date - takes its name from the ancient trade in powders, chemicals, salts and dyes, paints and cures. These poems offer a similarly potent and sensory multiplicity, unified through the formal constraint of 150 poems of 15 lines. Like the medieval psalters echoed in its title, this collection contains both the sacred and profane. Here are hymns of praise and lamentation, songs of wonder and despair, journeying effortlessly through physical and metaphysical landscapes, from financial markets and urban sprawl to deserts and dark nights of the soul. This collection is a compelling, powerful search for meaning, truth and falsehood. But, as ever in Roberts' work, this search is rooted in the tangible world, leavened by wit, contradiction, tenderness and sensuality. This is Roberts' most expansive writing yet: mystical, philosophical, earthy and elegiac. Drysalter sings of the world's unceasing ability to surprise, and the shock and dislocation of catching your own life unawares.Original price was: £12.00.£6.50Current price is: £6.50. -
Learning to Walk in the Dark
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyNew from best-selling author Barbara Brown Taylor, perhaps best known for An Altar in the World, comes Learning to Walk in the Dark. In this hardback book she writes with wisdom, grace and beauty as she seeks to rehabilitate what we have learned to fear - the dark. Here she reflects on how our lives do not only work when everything is brightly lit; twilight and deep darkness have treasures of their own waiting to be discovered. Babara Brown Taylor writes: 'Darkness is shorthand for anything that scares me - either because I am sure that I do not have the resources to survive ti or because I do not want to have to find out. If I had my way, I would eliminate everything from chronic back pain ti the fear of the devil from my life ad the lives of those I love. At least I think I would. The problem is this: when, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life, plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water, I have not died. The monsters have not dragged me out of bed and taken me back to their lair. Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. Learning to Walk in the Dark is a wise spiritual companion and guide for those times in life when we don't have all the answers. Recognising our tendency to associate all that is good with light, and all that is evil and dangerous with darkness, Barbara Brown Taylor asks whether God doesn't work at night too? With her characteristic grace and generosity, she invites us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to discover all that the darkness has to teach us. She takes us to underground caverns, subterranean chapels, basement night clubs and unlit cabins in the woods on moonless nights. Through darkness, we begin to see the world and sense God's presence around us in new ways, guiding us through things seen an unseen, and teaching us to find out footing in times of uncertainty. Like seeds buried in the ground, we will find how darkness is essential for our own growth and flourishing.£12.99 -
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Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
Advent & Christmas, Resources for the Christian YearAdvent is a season of waiting and anticipation in which the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling. Its focus is on the coming of Christ – in humility in the manger at Bethlehem, in majesty as the fulfilment and finality of all things, and in the countless moments of encounter and transformation in the time between these two great comings in which we live. The other sense we have of the word 'advent' is in the word 'adventure'. 'Let us take the adventure that God sends us,' say the knights in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, recognising that the God in whom we live and move and have our being may come and meet us when and where he pleases. Poetry can help us fathom the depths and inhabit the tensions of Advent's many paradoxes: past and future, dark and light, waiting and consolation, emptiness and fulfilment, ancient and ever new. In the spirit of the season, this anthology includes the familiar and adventures upon the new. Malcolm Guite selects and reflects on a poem for each day. The selection ranges from spiritual classics such as Edmund Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert and Christina Rossetti, to new and contemporary voices such as Luci Shaw and Scott Cairns. His own acclaimed sequence of sonnets for great Advent antiphons is also included. This anthology moves through Advent into its fulfilment in Christmas, and on to Epiphany where the choice of poetry is influenced by the stargazing pagan wise men. Here are works by non-Christian poets who seem, nevertheless, to see in the heavens such signs as declare the glory of the Lord.Original price was: £12.99.£9.00Current price is: £9.00. -
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 -
Landmarks: An Ignatian Journey
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyLandmarks help us to find ourselves when we think we are lost. When we don't know where to begin, they give us a starting point. When we thing we know where we are, they give us the confidence to keep going. And if we think we have arrived, they remind us that there is always something more, somewhere beyond... This is a book of landmarks to the heart's journey. Written out of the author's own prayer and lived experience, and inspired but her practical explorations of the insights of St Ignatius Loyola, it opens up questions which concern us all. How can we recognise God's ceaseless action in our lives and begin to discern His will? What does 'fallenness' mean for us today? How can we live true to ourselves and make decisions in freedom? How do we penetrate our deepest desires and become free of the lesser attachments that obstruct them? Big questions - but as Margaret Silf shows, there are clues to be discovered in every moment and situation: at home, at work, in the garden, in the market, in the bath! Landmarks will help us discover and deepen our own individual journeys. Written for both groups and individuals, it is illustrated with drawings and diagrams, and contains exercises and suggestions for prayer and reflection. Be warned, however. Landmarks are not for armchair pilgrims. They are for the People of the Way.£12.99 -
A Call To Be
Scripture & PrayerA Call to Be is a little 16-page book of prayers and liturgy for those who minister. Not just clergy but for everyone who hears God's call to be who He wants them to be. It is for:£3.50- people who visit,
- people who bake,
- people who pray,
- people who listen,
- people who teach,
- people who write,
- people who serve,
- people who give,
- people who put God and others first,
- people who love God and others unconditionally,
- people who have a desire to see God's Kingdom prosper on earth...
- people being who God wants them to be.
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Cranky Beautiful Faith
Church & Leadership, Culture & Mission, Re-imagining ChurchFormer stand-up comic and unlikely pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber weaves personal narrative, hilarious rants and powerful spiritual insight as she relates her unusual journey of faith, offering a fresh and uncompromising look at the transformative power of grace. As one of today's most provocative Christian leaders, she blends sardonic irreverence and brilliant theology to offer a new portrait of faith - one that is edgy, outrageous and, above all, real. Smart-mouthed and heavily tattooed, Nadia Bolz-Weber didn't consider herself ‘religious leader material’ and didn't expect to find her vocation leading a funeral in a smoky, downtown comedy club. But surrounded by recovering alcoholics, depressives, and comedians, she realized these were her people and maybe she was meant to be their pastor. This compassionate book portrays both church and seekers as deeply flawed yet deeply faithful.£12.99 -
Given for Life
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyA guide to motivational gifts by Andy Raine, one of the founders of the Northumbria Community. 'It is not what you do but the underlying WHY that you do it that betrays who you are.' Are you a 'prophet', 'ruler', mercy', server', teacher', 'exhorter', or 'giver'?£17.99 -
Paradox in the Gospel
Culture & Mission, Scripture & PrayerLife and the gospel contain a good deal of paradox, but a survey has showed that evangelists often ignore it. Here Jim Currin wants to stir a discussion to make evangelism more effective, in the belief that acknowledging paradox makes the gospel more exciting, relevant, and attractive to today's spiritual seeker.£4.95 -
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Listening for the Heartbeat of God
Celtic Studies, Celtic Studies & Spirituality, Influences & Suggested Reading, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyListening for the Heartbeat of God presents a spirituality for today, modelled on the vital characteristics of Celtic spirituality through the centuries. there is an emphasis on the essential goodness of creation and of humanity, made in the image of God. The book traces the lines of Celtic spirituality from the British Church in the fourth century through to the twentieth century, in the founder of the Iona community, George MacLeod. Philip Newell finds Celtic spiritual roots in the New Testament, in the mysticism of St John the Evangelist. John was especially remembered as the one who lay against Jesus at the Last Supper and heard the heartbeat of God. So he becomes a Celtic image of listening to God in all of life. This fresh angle on Celtic spirituality - linking figures in the Bible and in the British Christian history - will be warmly welcomed by all who are concerned to refresh the roots of their faith. The Revd Dr J Philip Newell is a poet, scholar and teacher. Formerly Warden of Iona Abbey, he is now Companion Theologian for the American Spirituality Centre of Casa del Sol in the high desert of New Mexico. Newell has won international acclaim for his work in the field of Celtic spirituality.£9.99 -
Eyes of the Heart; photography as Christian contemplative practice
Creativity, Spiritual ExercisesEyes of the Heart by Christine Valters Paintner explores photography as a spiritual practice from a Christian perspective. Christine builds on the process of contemplative creativity in her book The Artist’s Rule (also available from the community bookshop) by adapting the monastic practice of lectio divina (sacred reading) into a form of visio divina (sacred seeing). A spiritual director and Benedictine oblate, she guides readers through a new way of spiritual observation – through the lens of a camera – and in receiving images, not simply taking them. She writes that, ‘My hope is that, in exploring the language of photography, you [develop] new portals into the your own experience and awareness of God. Shadow and light, framing, colour, reflections, and mirrors all offer us metaphors for ways of understanding how we might move towards seeing ourselves and God with the eyes of the heart.’ She invites us to use our cameras to help us to release our expectations of what we think we ought to see and learn to discover what is actually there. And then helps us to bring this kind of interaction into our everyday lives.£12.99 -
Timeless Simplicity: Creative living in a consumer society
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyThis is a book about simplicity - not destitution, not parsimoniousness, not self-denial - but the restoration of wealth in the midst of an affluence in which we are starving the spirit. It is a book about the advantages of living a less cluttered, stressful life than that which many of us are now living in the overcrowded and manic-paced consuming nations. It is a book that has nothing to do with subsistence living on the Lake Isle of Innisfree, but everything to do with having less and enjoying more - enjoying time to do the work you love, enjoying time to spend with your family, enjoying time to pursue creative projects, enjoying time for good eating, enjoying time just to be. Another theme of the book concerns the future of our home, the Earth. Up to the end of the 19th century, the Earth consisted of a world of oceans and land masses teeming with all kinds of life, but our grandchildren will inherit one with less than 20 percent of its original forests still intact, with most of the readily available fresh water already spoken for, with most of the wetlands and reef systems either destroyed or degraded. Sooner or later a more frugal lifestyle will not only be desirable - it will become an imperative.£11.99 -
Home by another way: Biblical meditations through the Christian year
Daily Readings, Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyWritten by one of the world's greatest preachers, these insightful meditations began their life as beautifully crafted sermons that explore the meanings of the major seasons and holy days of the Christian year. Reviewer Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James's Picadilly, writes: "This is a deeply compassionate book that takes seriously what it's like to live in the world now, while holding out the scriptural hope of a life not yet imagined. Barbara Brown Taylor tells new parables that reveal meaning in everyday holiness, and the thoroughly human states of confusion, suffering and joy of which she is keenly aware.This book is for all who want to believe but can't quite get there, or for those whose jaded spirit needs a long cool drink at a freshwater spring. Reading these reflections is like being drenched in grace." Recently voted one of the world's top ten contemporary spiritual sages, Barbara Brown Taylor is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. Her previous books include An Altar in the World and Leaving Church.£13.99 -
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Life of the Beloved and Our Greatest Gift
Influences & Suggested Reading, The Inner JourneyThe real 'work' of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. The late Henri Nouwen was one of the twentieth century's greatest spiritual writers, and this book brings together two of his most inspirational pastoral works, reissued to mark the twentieth anniversary of his death. Life of the Beloved asks how one can live a spiritual life in a completely secular culture. The greatest challenge, concludes Nouwen, is to bridge the gap between secular and sacred within the human self as a human being beloved of God. Our Greatest Gift is a mediation on dying. Dying and death can often bring fear, but the experience of dying and caring for the dying can become the deepest experience of love. Now encourages us to ask, 'How can my death become fruitful in the loves of others?'. Ultimately, it is the greatest gift we have to offer.£9.99 -
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Tell it Together: 50 tell-together Bible stories to share
CreativityStories are so important. Everything we are and everything we do revolves around the big story of God's love for us and how we respond to it. Storytelling is a vital skill for everyone in ministry of any kind. In Tell it Together well-known author and storyteller Renita Boyle combines stories that have been written to read well aloud with tools for groups to share them effectively. The stories can be used on their own, to enhance a theme or Bible passage, or alongside other activities as the basis for clubs or creative worship gatherings and festivals. They don't just retell the story, they draw us in. There are no listeners here: all are participants!Original price was: £8.99.£6.50Current price is: £6.50. -
