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A Place at the Table: Faith, Hope and Hospitality
Everyday LifeAt a time when loneliness and isolation have reached unprecedented levels, it has never been more important for Christians to embrace the practice of hospitality. For many, it is a lost art - a practice we have forgotten, neglected or distorted beyond all recognition. Amid material comforts and rife individualism, practising hospitality can often hold unrealistic expectations and insurmountable pressure. But what if the practice of hospitality was simpler and yet more profound than we imagined? From the simple act of preparing vegetables to the warm welcome of a stranger, co-authors Miranda Harris and her daughter Jo Swinney re-define hospitality for the modern age. Drawing on biblical insights and a deep well of experience - most significantly within the community in the A Rocha family - this is a warm invitation to embrace the loving kindness of others. To be hospitable doesn't require culinary excellence or matching cutlery - it doesn't even require a home of one's own; true hospitality offers a welcome into imperfection and messiness, a place to belong and be embraced. Following the progression of a meal, from its planning to the moment every guest has departed, A PLACE AT THE TABLE is a heart-warming invitation into a life of thoughtful food preparation, shared meals and meaningful conversation.£10.99 -
Celtic Candles: Greetings card
Advent & Christmas, CreativityA square greetings card with envelope in a cellophane bag. The card has a print of original artwork by Francesca Ross, who writes: "Candles have importance as a symbol or focus at all times of year, but at Christmas, they are especially a reminder of the significance of the birth of Jesus as the Light of the world. For this design I wanted to have three candles, for the Trinity, richly decorated with patterns from or inspired by those in the Book of Kells, a reminder of John 1:5, that God's light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome or even comprehend it."£2.00 -
Three Gifts for the King of Kings: Greetings card
Advent & Christmas, CreativityA square greetings card with envelope in a cellophane bag. The card has a print of original artwork by Francesca Ross, who writes: "I wanted to create a design that had a rotational symmetry, that took the eye round the design, with a swirl of rich colours, and highlighted the three gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh - that were brought to Jesus by the Wise Men following the guidance of the Star. They came from the East, so I looked at the designs used in Persian carpets, and included them - flowers for the garden of Eden, leaves for the Tree of Life or eternity, stars for happiness, birds for power and strength, and the boteh or flower buds for regeneration."£2.00 -
Tending to my Thoughts
The Inner JourneyTending to My Thoughts continues the story of Sharon Hastings, a medical doctor and Christian living with severe mental illness. Her personal experience of recovery offers a starting point to help readers think through what recovery could look like for them or their loved ones. Peppered with personal anecdotes, shot through with medical knowledge and chock-full of helpful explanation, this book inspires hope and provides evidence that life with mental illness can improve. Sharon Hastings writes to encourage those who walk alongside people who are suffering, as well as to equip individual Christians and churches to effectively support those in recovery, particularly from severe mental illness. 'Wise and real.' Emma Scrivener'A book that needs to be read by every pastor.' Rachael Newham'I recommend it unreservedly.' Revd Will van der Hart'Threaded with realism, practicality and hope.' Mark Meynell£11.99 -
Wrestling with my Thoughts
The Inner JourneyShe couldn't believe it. There she was with her medical qualifications sitting on the floor of a mental hospital. She'd offered her life to God, wanted to serve him anywhere, but no, surely not this... Sharon Hastings is absolutely passionate about helping anyone who suffers from 'severe and enduring mental illness' (SEMI): schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. She wants the church to know all about these illnesses: how they devastate ordinary people and how they need to be treated. By telling her story, warts and all, showing her own tortuous, painful journey, she equips us to come alongside loved ones, fellow church members, friends and neighbours, understanding the social and spiritual ramifications of their illnesses, including them in our activities (where appropriate) and encouraging their spiritual growth. A natural storyteller, the author draws us in. We journey with her. With wisdom, kindness and the heart of a bruised survivor, she interweaves her exceptional story with vital teaching which simply cannot be ignored by anyone within the church today.£11.99 -
From Weary to Wholehearted
Everyday Life, Seasons of LifeAn empowering antidote to one of the leading challenges facing clergy and lay ministers today: burnout. Clergy and lay ministry professionals are exhausted. The past few years of collegial loneliness, ever-changing ministry practices, illness and death, and declining church attendance have led many to report finding less joy in their ministry. Suffering the effects of burnout and declining mental health, some clergy are contemplating a radical vocational change, or have already left traditional ministry altogether. From Weary to Wholehearted isn’t a quick fix, but a much-needed companion to remind faith leaders they are not alone, support them through sustainable tools for finding joy and rest, and re-ground them in spiritual nourishment. Swanlund calls readers to show up with their whole heart, vulnerably and courageously. Each section will address a source of weariness, including overwhelm, loneliness, comparison, lack of inspiration, and more. The book incorporates research in the fields of sociology and psychology, as well as Swanlund’s experience as a faith leader, spiritual companion, and Certified Daring Way facilitator. The chapters will contain scripture, personal meditation, reflection prompts, an invitation toward flourishing, and an original prayer. Drawing upon the rhythm of the liturgical calendar, From Weary to Wholehearted begins with the spiritual themes of justice and anticipation in Advent and moves through the sustainable practices invited by Ordinary Time. While not expressly a homiletic or liturgical resource, it will infuse new life into the ministry of emotionally impoverished preachers and lay leaders.£14.99 -
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Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy
Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyThis book seeks to restore the lost art of lament in order to help readers discover the power of honest wrestling with the questions that come with grief and suffering.£11.99 -
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Beyond Ethnic Loneliness: The pain of marginalisation and the path to belonging
Everyday LifeMajority white American culture has historically marginalized people of colour, who at times feel invisible and alienated and at other times are traumatized by oppression and public discrimination. This reality leads to a particular kind of aloneness: ethnic and racial loneliness. An Indian American immigrant who grew up in white Southern culture, Prasanta Verma names and sheds light on the realities of ethnic loneliness. She unpacks the exhausting effects of cultural isolation, the dynamics of marginalization, and the weight of being other. In the midst of disconnection and erasure, she points to the longing to belong, the need to share our stories, and the hope of finding safe friendships and community. Our places of exile can become places where we find belonging―to ourselves, to others, and to God.£14.99 -
Spirit of God: A4 signed print
Creativity, Spiritual GrowthWhen Jesus was baptised the Holy Spirit appeared as a dove according to Luke 3:22 and as fire in Acts 2:1-6. and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” NIV Luke 3:22 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. NIV Acts 2:1-6 Printing and Sizing: This item is 210mmX297mm 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.£14.50 -
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
Culture & Mission, Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyWho are you becoming? That was the question nagging pastor and author John Mark Comer. By outward metrics, everything appeared successful. But inwardly, things weren't pretty. So he turned to a trusted mentor for guidance and heard these words: 'Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.' It wasn't the response he expected, but it continues to be the answer he needs. Too often we treat the symptoms of toxicity in our modern world instead of trying to pinpoint the cause. A growing number of voices are pointing at hurry, or busyness as a root of much evil. Within the pages of this book, you'll find a compelling emotional and spiritual case against hurry and in favour of a slower, simpler way of life.£14.99 -
The Hopeful Activist: discovering the vital change you were made to bring
Culture & Mission, Everyday LifeI wish I had been able to read this book twenty years ago! 'Ruth Valerio' All around us there are signs of a broken world, situations that are just not right. Where do we begin? Sometimes we simply don't know what to do. Or maybe you are busy 'doing' and it's tough, even bringing you close to burn out. Whether you are new to activism or already on the road, this book will (re)kindle your hope and illuminate the way ahead. Featuring contributions from Shane Claiborne, Lisa Sharon Harper, Krish Kandiah, Sam Wells and many more, The Hopeful Activist is full of fresh wisdom and practical advice to help you play your part in bringing God's justice and restoration to the world around you.£10.99 -
Restoring the Shamed: towards a theology of shame
Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyShame has many faces. From the pressing need to avoid "losing face" to the urge to scapegoat and blame, from the desire to exclude those who are different to the horrors of ethnic cleansing, from the obsession with body image to the abiding terrors of the abused, shame is a universal phenomenon. It transcends boundaries of time and is evident in diverse cultures across the world. It is, furthermore, found throughout the pages of Scripture, yet in modern theology shame is conspicuous by its absence. This book attempts to redress the balance by exploring the theology of shame, from its inception in the garden of Eden, to the final triumph over shame on the cross. Restoring the Shamed will offer readers the opportunity to think theologically about one of the most urgent, yet strangely secret, issues of contemporary society.£20.00 -
The Roots of Transformation: negotiating the dynamics of growth
Everyday Life, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyThe call towards transformation lies at the heart of the Christian message. It is a call to create something beautiful that bears all the hallmarks of the kingdom of heaven. The journey towards transformation however is a demanding one, requiring us to engage in a process of negotiation with a number of key issues. These issues cluster around the themes of Narrative, Permission, Discomfort, Culture, Language, Other, and Silence. This book explores these themes in the company of brave individuals who have shared their own stories as well as some significant thinkers who have already left their mark on our world.£16.00 -
God Isn’t Finished With You Yet: life lessons on not giving up.
Everyday LifeWhen life is tough and we seem to have reached a dead end, it's easy to feel as if God has given up on us. We are not alone in feeling like this. Catherine Campbell vividly retells the stories of real people from the Bible with difficult and sometimes painful lives, who struggled to see God's path for them. Abigail was trapped in marriage to a fool. John Mark ran away from his friends. The Samaritan woman faced shame in the society of her day. Judah sinned against Tamar and Joseph. Simeon and Anna had the challenges of old age. But God hadn't finished with any of them. With Life Lessons reflections to encourage us to respond biblically to our own life circumstances, and questions for personal reflection or group discussion, Catherine Campbell helps us see what the Bible tells us “God isn't finished with you yet!"£9.99 -
God on Mute: engaging the silence of unanswered prayer
Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyThis new edition of Pete Greig s classic book includes a new forty-day study guide, a foreword from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a new introduction from the author who has personally revised and updated the text throughout. Originally written out of the pain of his wife's fight for her life, but also the wonder of watching the prayer movement they founded changing lives around the world, Pete Greig steps into the dark side of prayer and emerges with a hard-won message of hope, comfort, and profound biblical insight for all who suffer in silence. ~ A Christian Classic. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury ~ A masterpiece. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Nicky Gumbel, HTB and Alpha ~ Simply the best resource I've ever found on unanswered prayer, bar none. John Mark Comer, best-selling author.£12.99 -
How then Shall we Live?: Print
Creativity, Spiritual GrowthAn A4 print. Original artwork by Francesca Ross with the artwork "How then Shall we Live?" Francesca writes: 'How then shall we live? ' has circles of ripples, which echo how our lives and actions have an impact on others, and how others impact our lives. I used the aqua blue to make it look like water.£12.50 -
Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest: from sabbath to sabbatical and back again.
Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyIn our frenzied culture, the possibility of living in balanced rhythms of work and rest often feels elusive. This rings especially true for pastors and leaders who carry the weight of nonstop responsibility. Most know they need rest but might be surprised to find within themselves a deep resistance to letting go and resting in God one day a week, let alone for longer seasons of sabbatical. The journey to a meaningful sabbath practice is slow and gradual, and it is a journey we need to take in community. Sharing her own story of practicing sabbath for the past twenty years, Ruth Haley Barton offers hard-won wisdom regarding the rhythms of sabbath, exploring both weekly sabbath keeping as well as extended periods of sabbatical time. Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest grounds us in God's intentions in giving us the gift of sabbath, providing practical steps for embedding sabbath rhythms in churches and organizations. Each chapter concludes with "What Your Soul Wants to Say to God," an opportunity to reflect and engage God around your own journey with the material. Sabbath is more than a practice ”it is a way of life ordered around God, an invitation to regular rhythms of work, rest, and replenishment that will sustain us for the long haul of life in leadership. Includes a conversation guide for small groups and communities.£20.99 -
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Prayer In the Night: For those who work or watch or weep
Everyday Life, Seasons of Life, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyHow can we trust God in the dark? Framed around a night-time prayer of Compline, Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, explores themes of human vulnerability, suffering, and God's seeming absence. When she navigated a time of doubt and loss, the prayer was grounding for her. She writes that practices of prayer "gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to reencounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in darkness, as good news. "Where do we find comfort when we lie awake worrying or weeping in the night?" This book offers a prayerful and frank approach to the difficulties in our ordinary lives at work, at home, and in a world filled with uncertainty.£14.99 -
An Ocean of Light : Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation
Scripture & Prayer, The Inner Journey, UncategorizedFor people drawn to a life of contemplation, the dawning of luminous awareness in a mind full of clutter is deeply liberating. In the third of his best-selling books on Christian contemplative life, Martin Laird turns his attention to those who are well settled in their contemplative practice. An Ocean of Light speaks both to those just entering the contemplative path and to those with a maturing practice of contemplation. Gradually, the practice of contemplation lifts the soul, freeing it from the blockages that introduce confusion into our identity and thus confusion about the mystery we call God. In the course of a lifetime of inner silencing, the flower of awareness emerges: a living realization that we have never been separate from God or from the rest of humanity while we each fully become what each of us is created to be. In contemplation we become so silent before God that the "before" drops away. Those whose lives have led them deeply into the silent land realize this, but not in the way that we realize that the square root of 144 is 12. Laird draws from a wide and diverse range of writers-from St. Augustine, Evagrius Ponticus, and St. Teresa of Avila to David Foster Wallace, Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Wright-to ground his insight in an ancient practice and give it a voice in contemporary language. With his characteristic lyricism and gentleness, Laird guides readers through new challenges of contemplative life, such as making ourselves the focus of our own contemplative project; dealing with old pain; transforming the isolation of loneliness and depression into a liberating solidarity with all who suffer; and the danger of using a spiritual practice as a strategy to acquire and control.£15.99 -
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The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth
The Inner JourneyGerald G. May, MD, one of the great spiritual teachers and writers of our time, argues that the dark 'shadow' side of the true spiritual life has been trivialised and neglected to our serious detriment. Superficial and naively upbeat spirituality does not heal and enrich the soul. Nor does the other tendency to relegate deep spiritual growth to only mystics and saints. Only the honest, sometimes difficult encounters with what Christian spirituality has called and described in helpful detail as 'the dark night of the soul' can lead to true spiritual wholeness. May emphasises that the dark night is not necessarily a time of suffering and near despair, but a time of deep transition, a search for new orientation when things are clouded and full of mystery. The dark gives depth, dimension and fullness to the spiritual life.£16.99 -
The Woman With Nine Lives
Spiritual GrowthIby Knill is a simply remarkable woman. An Auschwitz holocaust survivor originally from Bratislava, she married a British army officer and set out to make a new life in England, arriving in Cornwall in 1947 to set up home. Dealing with the problems of integration as an immigrant in post-war Britain, raising a family and making careers in civil defence, education, international textile design and manufacture and as linguist, amongst others, she also gained an MA at the age of 80.Passionate about music and art, the loss of her beloved Bert prompted her to return to writing but always hitting a stumbling block, 60 years of suppressed memories. Eventually, despite several breakdowns, she unlocked that part of her life and became determined to tell of her experiences to future generations.Even now, she is in constant demand to talk to various groups, schools and within the media. This eagerly-awaited 'The woman with nine lives' picks up where her best-selling first book 'The woman without a number' ends, evoking changing times through a life that has constantly embraced challenge and opportunity.Included in it is the growing realisation that the past cannot be avoided, the difficulty of facing up to it and of how, eventually, Iby returns to some of the places that brought tragedy and despair to her young and formative years. Interspersed within her story, she tells those of her brother, father and mother - the woman whose determination she has inherited.Poignant, moving and searingly honest, this account reconfirms the very best of human nature and is a truly uplifting sequel.£13.99 -
New Testament Wives
Creativity, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyA new collection of poetry which gives an imagined female voice to events and stories in the New Testament.£6.00 -
God Untamed : Out of the Spiritual Comfort Zone
Culture & Mission, Everyday Life, Scripture & Prayer, The Inner JourneyPowerful. Almighty. Sovereign. Magnificent. Fearsome. This is the God we encounter in the Bible and in prayer--a God who astounds. Yet, Johannes Hartl argues that this is an astonishment that many have lost in the West today. A challenging rejection of 'feel-good' Christianity, God Untamed explores the deep crisis of faith that effects the Western world. At a time where the need for spirituality is great, yet churches are losing more and more members; in the face of a generation with so many opportunities and so little direct threat, yet who are so anxious, depressed and disenchanted--Hartl speaks of the voice that can still oceans. God, as He encounters us, is not simply 'nice' and certainly not trivial or comfortable. He is fascinating and intimidating at the same time. Hartl calls us to rediscover this sense of wonder and re-imagine what it is to have a fear of God--not founded in a whimper at the unknown, but a respect borne out of watching His visible power in the nature of our world. Without this fear, Hartl warns that the church is in danger of weakening under the immense pressures of our times. God Untamed is a compelling charge to get out of our spiritual comfort zones to find a real, truly fulfilled and fulfilling faith.£12.99 -
Searching for a Silent God
Culture & Mission, The Inner JourneyThis is a thoughtful and engaging companion for all who experience times of spiritual crisis. Having come to faith as a young adult, Sarah Parkinson had always had a strong sense of the presence and loving care of God in her life. Following a family bereavement, she found herself searching for a God who no longer seemed to be there. Movingly expressed in reflective prose, and poems written at the time, she describes how this experience led her to a more profound and mature relationship with God. The author tells her own story and in doing so enables others to search for and find transformation in their life of faith.£8.99