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Hope and Pray: A6 greetings card
Creativity, Spiritual GrowthWords: In the hope rejoicing; in the tribulation enduring; in the prayer persevering; Romans 12:12 Literal Standard Version Bible: Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans 12:12 NIV Background: Artist Mary Fleeson says: "Being joyful isn’t about having a permanent grin on your face or always feeling happy... when I first started to look into what it meant to be a Christian, as a teenager with the accompanying hormone roller-coaster, I found it really difficult to understand what ‘joy’ meant. I was told it was a deep-down assurance, more lasting than ‘happy’ and something I could only truly experience with God’s help. It took me a long time to realise that joy wasn’t something that was affected by mood or even circumstance. I've learnt not to underestimate the power of mind and body on spirit and I still find the balance between them difficult to achieve, but joy is sustained by hope and faith and the love beyond measure of our Creator. Patience in affliction is great advice isn’t it? There are probably few of us that could say that we’re good at being patient even when we know that it will help us to cope, giving ourselves permission to rest and step back from our usual busyness can feel like giving up or giving in but fighting against the needs of your body or mind will only delay their healing. Faithfulness in prayer is breathing for the soul, it is our constant communication with God. It isn’t something we just do on Sundays or at set times but it is in every conversation, every action and every thought. When we pray constantly, we are inviting God to be in our lives, to nurture us and guide us - what could be better? Printing and Sizing: This item is 105mm x 148mm and is printed on 300gsm gloss card stock. Each card is blank inside, has its title and copyright details on the back and is individually wrapped in cellophane with an envelope.£2.25 -
Holy Habits
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyThe call to Christian discipleship is a call to adventure. Holy Habits explores the nature of that adventure through a rich mix of biblical material and inspiring stories. The nurturing role of the ten holy habits of discipleship as seen in Acts 2 is then explored. The ten habits are: biblical teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayer, giving, service, eating together, gladness and generosity, worship and making more disciples. Each chapter has suggestions for further reflection and action that can be used individually or by smaller or larger Christian communities.£10.99 -
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 -
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 -
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Influences & Suggested Reading, Seasons of Life, The Inner JourneyIn the first half of life, we are naturally and rightly preoccupied with establishing our identities – climbing, achieving, and performing. But those concerns will not serve us as we grow older and begin to embark on a further journey, one that involves challenges, mistakes, loss of control, broader horizons, and necessary suffering that shocks us out of our comfort zones. Eventually, we need to see ourselves in a different and more life-living way. This message of 'falling down' – that is in fact moving upward – is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. In Falling Upward, Father Richard Rohr offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the most profound of life's mysteries: how our failing can be the foundation for our ongoing spiritual growth. Drawing on the wisdom from time-honoured myths, heroic poems, great thinkers, and sacred religious texts, the author explores the two halves of life to show that those who have fallen, failed, or 'gone down' are the only ones who understand 'up'. We grow spiritually more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. With rare insight, Rohr takes us on a journey to give us an understanding of how the heartbreaks, disappointments and first loves of life are actually stepping stones to the spiritual joys that the second half of life has in store for us.£11.99 -
Sanctuary of the Soul: A Journey into meditative prayer
Influences & Suggested Reading, Scripture & Prayer, The Inner JourneyRichard Foster, bestselling author of Celebration of Discipline and founder of Renovare, has written this book for all who hunger to go deeper into prayer but don’t know where to start. Sanctuary of the Soul gently guides you along the path of meditative prayer, so that you too can know a deeper fellowship with God. Weaving together quotes and stories from the lives of the mothers and fathers of the faith as well as powerful encounters with God from his own life, Foster describes the riches to be gained through quietening your mind and heart in order to listen to and obey God more closely. Along the way, at his clearest, most practical best, he also provides the biblical teaching and step-by-step help you need to begin to find this sanctuary of prayer yourself.£9.99 -
Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit
Influences & Suggested Reading, Spiritual Growth£12.99Spiritual formation, I have come to believe, is not about steps or stages on the way to perfection. It’s about the movements from the mind to the heart through prayer in its many forms that reunite us with God, each other, and our truest selves.
Henri Nouwen, from the Introduction
Henri Nouwen, beloved author, priest and spiritual guide, counseled many people during his lifetime, but his principles of spiritual formation were never written down. Now, Michael Christensen, one of Nouwen’s longtime students, and Rebecca Laird have taken the famous course in spiritual formation and supplemented it with his unpublished writings to reveal Nouwen’s sage advice on how to live out the five classic stages of spiritual development.
I always knew I was in the presence of a spiritual master when I was with Henri Nouwen. Here are some simple, wise words that will allow the master to continue to teach.
Richard Rohr, O.F.M., author of The Naked Now
One of the book’s many strengths is its integration of an area especially important to Nouwen, the contemplation of icons and other works of art – visio divina – in order ‘to behold the beauty of the Lord’.
Jim Forest, author of Praying with Icons and The Road to Emmaus
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Lent With the Beloved Disciple: The 2024 Lent book
Daily Readings, Lent & Easter, Scripture & PrayerThe 2024 Bloomsbury Lent Book invites you on a six-week journey in the company of the "beloved disciple" as found in the narrative of the Gospel of St John. As the only disciple to have stayed close to Jesus at every stage from the Last Supper to the Crucifixion at Calvary, this eagle-eyed eyewitness intentionally records certain subtle details and signs which, when perceived with the eyes of faith, indicate a deeper and far lasting significance. Michael Marshall explores what these signs are and how, with prayerful reflection, they draw us ever more deeply into the personal, eternal and cosmic significance and awareness of all that Christ accomplished by his death and resurrection: the Paschal Mystery. Ideal for both individual use and for small group study, Lent with the Beloved Disciple takes us into the heart of that Paschal Mystery, by which all things in heaven and earth are ultimately fulfilled in the risen and ascended Christ, who is "all in all".£10.99 -
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Spirit Finger Labyrinth: 19cm diameter
The Inner Journey£28.003-D printed from ecologically-friendly plant-based (sugar cane) material, this 19cm diameter finger-labyrinth is a smaller version of the 19 metre labyrinth at Nether Springs.
It comes in a cellophane bag with instructions included. A colour will be selected at random. If you would like a specific colour, please state this in the "comments" box when ordering.
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Let Our Voices: A6 greetings card
Creativity, Spiritual Growth£2.25Words: Let Our Voices Rise Like Incense.
Biblical Passages:
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8)
I will call upon thee, O Lord; make haste to me! Give ear to my voice, when I call to thee! Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice! (Psalm 141:1,2)
Printing and Sizing:
This item is 105mm x 148mm and is printed on 300gsm gloss card stock. Each card is blank inside, has its title and copyright details on the back and is individually wrapped in cellophane with an envelope.
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Francis of Assisi: living prayer today
Saints & Mystics, Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual GrowthFrancis of Assisi was very much a man of his time; and yet his influence continues today in a surprising range of ways. This study briefly outlines his life journey, before considering Francis' attitude to prayer, and then exploring the ways in which the Franciscan approach to life relates to a wide range of contemporary concerns.£3.95
