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One Day Creative Retreat Activity Book
Creativity, Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyThis book has been designed to guide you through a day long creative retreat or quiet day whether it be at home or away. It offers a combination of prayers and activities, some to challenge and some to help you relax and clear your mind and always to encourage you to hear the 'still, small voice.'£3.99 -
Finding a Personal Rule of Life
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyHow can I discover a pattern of life which expresses the discipline God calls me to live by but also the freedom that I am to enjoy as a follower of Christ? This engaging study, full of practical wisdom, shows how the concept of 'rule of life' can do just that when used aright. It explores the practical need and biblical basis for 'rule,' looks at what makes 'rule' helpful, and guides the reader through the process of building a personal rule of life.£4.95 -
Joining Jesus on his Journey: Experiencing truth through imaginative prayer
Daily Readings, Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual ExercisesWherever you are on your faith journey: just beginning, questioning, midstream, there is always more! As we encounter Jesus, truth bursts into life. We move from the realm of concepts to the reality that is found in a person, someone seeking to draw us ever more closely into his friendship. In this short book, Adrian C Smith invites you to take a ten-week journey, meeting Jesus through imaginative prayer. A journey he hopes will help you to experience first-hand the truth that in Jesus, God loves you more than you can comprehend. Adrian also looks at some of the questions this way of praying raises, and ways of doing this well. It's time to join Jesus on his journey!£13.99 -
The Artist’s Rule: nurturing your creative soul with monastic wisdom
Creativity, Monasticism & New Monasticism, Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner Journey, Traditional Monasticism, nature, solitude, artists, creativity The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom by Christine Valters Paintner, author of Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire, invites readers to discover and develop their creative gifts in a spirit of prayer and reflection. This twelve-week course draws on the insights and practices of Benedictine spirituality to explore the interplay between contemplation and creativity. Sumarised in the phrase 'pray and work,' The Rule of St. Benedict provides the inspiration for Christine Valters Paintner's newest exploration of the mutually nourishing relationship between contemplative practices and creative expression. Artists of all stripes and stations in life - poets or painters, potters or photographers - will discover how traditions of Benedictine, Celtic, and desert spirituality can offer new sources of inspiration for their work. Themes like 'Sacred Tools and Sacred Space', 'Creative Solitude and Community,' and 'Nature as a Source of Revelation and Inspiration' are enriched by Paintner's perceptive discussion and enhanced by insightful quotations from well-known artists and writers. Ideally formatted for faith sharing groups and parish retreats, this guide offers suggestions for grounding both the creative and the spiritual life through three basic practices: walking, lectio divina, and journaling. The Artist's Rule is supplemented with online resources, including guided meditation podcasts, video lessons, and discussions.£14.99 -
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 -
Sacred Rhythms : Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyDo you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Do you wonder how you might truly live your life as God created you to live it? Spiritual disciplines are activities that open us to God's transforming love and the changes that only God can bring about in our lives. Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a "rule of life" that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life. Each chapter includes exercises to help you begin the practices--individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation. The choice to establish your own sacred rhythm is the most important choice you can make with your life.£19.99 -
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 -
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Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyAn introduction to contemplative prayer that draws on insights from the Eastern Orthodox tradition of the Jesus Prayer, from the Western Carmelite tradition, from poets and novelists and from the author's own experience as a retreat director and confessor.£11.99 -
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 -
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A Labyrinth Prayer Handbook: creative resources for worship and reflection
Creativity, Music & Creativity, Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyAn imaginitive and practical resource for using the labyrinth in worship, spiritual practice and pastoral care. It offers many ideas for using labyrinths with individuals and groups in different settings, including schools, hospitals and hospices, residential care, mental health care, adults with learning disabilities, retreats and quiet days, and in seasonal worship throughout the church year. It offers complete outlines for themed worship and workshops, focussing on such subjects as life stages, pilgrimage and vocations, and includes prayers, simple liturgies, suggestions for music and creative ideas for responding to walking the labyrinths. This inviting book also shows how to create your own labyrinth, whether a small hand-held one, or a temporary or permanent installation, indoors or outdoors.£14.99 -
Walking the Labyrinth: A Spiritual and Practical Guide
Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyA labyrinth is one of the most ancient tools for spiritual growth and development, dating back to medieval Christianity. Walking a labyrinth is like going on a pilgrimage where beautiful and unpredictable things can happen. Sometimes a burden is laid down; sometimes a challenge is picked up; sometimes just stopping at the centre is enough; sometimes we need to be turned around immediately. This inviting guide introduces the labyrinth and traces its history in the Christian spiritual tradition. It explores the different ways individuals and groups, including children, can use a labyrinth for prayer and reflection, and contains many idea for using the labyrinth in worship and mission. Some seasonal liturgies are also included. You can discover how to create your own labyrinth – in church, in an open space, or in miniature for your own personal use at home or on the move. Walking the labyrinth will take you beyond merely following a path to a deeper experience and understanding of this ancient devotional walking practice, which many have found to be nothing other than walking on holy ground.£10.99 -
The Gift of Wonder: Creative Practices for Delighting in God
Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyI choose to breathe in the wonder of God's eternal love, And dance to the rhythm of eternal breath, Listening to the whispers calling me to slow down and take notice. I choose to absorb the beauty of the divine presence, to delight in the Creator of all things and relish the delight God takes in me. Can you imagine a God who dances with shouts of joy, laughs when you laugh, loves to play, enjoys life, and invites us to join the fun? Like many of us, Christine Sine had spent many years with an image of God who was "a very serious, workaholic type of God." And even when her theology told her this was not true, she struggled to live into this new way of thinking. What she needed was a childlike spirituality. In this book, Christine Sine, online host of the Godspace community, invites us to pay attention to childlike characteristics that have the power to reshape us. Each chapter addresses a childlike characteristic to embrace, including delight, playfulness, imagination, awe and wonder, love of nature, the ability to live in the present, and much more. Fresh spiritual practices that engage all our senses help us live a new spiritual life that embraces the wonder and joy that God intends for us.£16.99 -
With Pity Not With Blame: contemplative praying with Julian of Norwich and the cloud of unknowing
Saints & Mystics, Spiritual ExercisesBased on a series of retreat addresses to clergy, parishes and religious communities given over a period of five years, this is one of the most acclaimed guides to Christian contemplative prayer. First published 30 years ago, it is truly a modern spiritual classic. Robert Llewelyn provides a practical yet profound guide for anyone venturing on the path of prayer and contemplation. He explores Julian of Norwich's way of prayer and discovers its enduring wisdom for today. He also finds essential insights into the contemplative life from Julian's contemporary, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. The treasures of this medieval English mystical tradition are brought to fresh life with simple and homely examples that illustrate their lasting appeal and power for today.£12.99 -
The Cloud of Unknowing for Everyone
Saints & Mystics, Spiritual ExercisesIn this adaptation of a classic 'how to' book of contemplative prayer, beautifully and simply expressed and illustrated, the riches of contemplative prayer are made available to all. Those who find this way of praying natural for them and those who wish to discover hitherto unknown facets of the beauty of prayer can alike find in it real spiritual nourishment.£5.95 -
Cultivating God’s Presence: Renewing Ancient Practices for Today’s Church
Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner Journey' "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." This is a book that will help pilgrims who are hungry for the Presence of God do just that. There are few books that when I read, I don’t want to put down, fewer still that when I have read, I want to read all over again. This is one such book.' - Anne de Leyser, Director of Local Houses of Prayer (Ffald y Brenin).£12.99 -
The Creative Spirit: harmonious living with Hildegard of Bingen
Celtic Sites & Saints, Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyThe figure of Hildegard of Bingen towers both over her own and our present age. Her ideas about healing, the arts, the relationship between science and theology, the interdependence of male and female and the interconnectedness of all living beings with each other and their Creator have extraordinary relevance to our contemporary understanding of these issues. Yet for all Hildegard's astonishing creativity and originality, her spirituality is firmly rooted in the Rule of St Benedict and its emphasis on daily prayer and meditative reading of the Scriptures. This introduction to her life and thought includes many practical spiritual exercises that will enable us to bring Hildegard's wisdom and vision of wholeness to our busy, fragmented lives today.£10.99 -
Finding our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner Journey'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.' Jeremiah 6:16 Most of us suffer from spiritual disorientation. Our souls are untended. And in this fragmented world, a soul left untended quickly loses direction. It forgets itself and becomes an insubstantial thing, disoriented and unavailable to the truth. And neither scientific secularism nor religious fundamentalism nor vague spiritualities have been able to offer any real answers. That's why a growing number of Christians are turning to early spiritual practices as a means of tending their souls. For centuries, believers have eagerly submitted to disciplines such as fixed-hour prayer, fasting, sacred meals, observing the Sabbath, or pilgrimage to create everyday sacredness, a spiritual rhythm for living within the well-worn grooves of a workaday life. In Finding Our Way Again, Brian McLaren serves as guide to a wide variety of these disciplines, showing how they form character, awaken us to life, and help us to experience God, and each other, in new and fresh ways.£12.50 -
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Wayfaring: a gospel journey into life
Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyWayfaring – A Gospel Journey into Life – Margaret Silf Wayfaring invites you to make your own journey of prayer and lived experience alongside Jesus, from his birth, through his earthly ministry, suffering and death, and into resurrected life. Journeys are made very simply: by placing one foot in front of the other. As you journey, Wayfaring enables you to reflect, step by step, on what the Gospel story means for you. Inspired by the spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola, the book welcomes all ‘wayfarers’ – those just setting out on the adventure of faith, those who are already seasoned travellers, those of all Christian traditions or of none, those ‘inside’ and those ‘outside’ the church.£12.99 -
Putting Joy Into Practice : Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church
Spiritual Exercises, The Inner JourneyPutting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church is an invitation to a life of joy. Phoebe Farag Mikhail explains what joy is and how to experience it through seven spiritual practices that cultivate our inner lives and connect us to our communities. These seven practices, which include giving thanks, hospitality, praise, and more, take us on a journey that leads to joy through the giving and receiving of sacrificial love. She describes her own experiences and struggles with joy and offers practical ways to implement these practices to increase joy in our own lives and in the lives of all those around us.£13.00 -
The Enneagram: a Christian perspective
Influences & Suggested Reading, Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyThis is an introduction to the Enneagram, a personality model describing 9 basic world views and human actions. It demonstrates how this concept was developed in Egypt by the Desert Fathers and how it can be used today. Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert's book shows both the basic logic of the Enneagram and its harmony with the core truths of Christian thought from the time of the early Church forward.£19.99 -
Lectio Divina: The Sacred Art
Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyDrawing on her own experience as a monk in the world, Christine Valters Paintner breaks open the movements of the ancient contemplative practice of lectio divina for the contemporary reader. Wise and accessible, this volume will be valued by those who long for a more pervasive experience of the holy in the everyday, but live far away from the sanctuary of a monastery.£12.99 -
Poverty – Simplicity – Joy: Stories of St Francis and his Companions for Everyone
Saints & Mystics, Spiritual ExercisesOccasionally in the Church some spirit is raised up who proves to have a universal significance that endures through the ages. Such a one was Francis of Assisi, whose life continues to inspire countless thousands of Christians, and even people of other faiths and none. When the present pope chose the name Francis, the Church thrilled with a sense of something new, radical, focused on Jesus and the poor. The name Francis alone symbolizes a way of life that challenges and offers hope. It returns us to the basic message of Christianity, the love that is ever ancient, ever new, and demands a response on our part. Francis was born in 1182. It was the era of the crusades, which heralded enormous changes in the Christian West. During his lifetime Francis himself was to go to the East, not as a fighting Crusader, but as one who wanted to bring peace through dialogue and understanding. It was also a new era of lay holiness. There was a reaction to the wealth of the Church and its distance from the ordinary person. People flocked to the growing cities, but for most it was a life of misery and squalor. They were uprooted from the land they had lived on for years, and there was little provision in urban areas for their spiritual welfare or material well-being.£5.95 -
Money Sex and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life
Everyday Life, Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyMoney, Sex and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life asks how we can apply the classic Christian vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in a modern world that seeingly rejects these values. ‘Foster follows a road few in recent years have travelled, and does so with depth, wit and down-to-earth wisdom. Don’t assume for one moment that this book is anti-money, anti-sex or anti-power: the author has a healthy respect and admiration for all three as sacred gifts of a loving creator. What he does urge us to do, though, is to “live rightly” in respect of these key areas, and so to be freed into a life of creative celebration’. (Gerard Kelly)£9.99
