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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The Universal Christ : How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
Scripture & Prayer, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyAcross the 30,000 or so varieties of Christianity, believers universally love Jesus. They have no trouble accepting his humanity and his divinity. Many express intimations of his close presence in their lives; a fear of his judgment and wrath as well as a love of his compassion; a justification for their worldviews and politics (of all persuasions), and firm convictions about his atonement for their sins and thus his centrality in their personal salvation. But who is Christ? Is Christ simply Jesus's last name, denoting his role as saviour of humanity, as messiah? What is Christ? How is his function or role different from Jesus's? Are we missing something fundamental because of our overwhelming emphasis on Jesus to the exclusion of the Christ, or our misunderstanding of what it means that Jesus was `the Christ'? Could it be that such limited views are contributing to the slow and painful erosion of Christianity in western culture, to its insularity and insistence on purity and exclusion? These are questions Fr Richard Rohr has been pondering for many years. In his ecumenical and scripturally grounded books on contemplation, mysticism and many more topics, he has emphasized the importance of a large framework for understanding the nature of 'what is' and what lasts, of unity and the ultimate reality of God's presence in all of creation-Christian and non-Christian, human and non-human. Could it be that Jesus, who is the Christ, is offering us a model and example on how to live inside `this Big Frame?'£10.99 -
The Shack
The Inner JourneyWith 18 million copies sold worldwide, THE SHACK is an international bestseller that explores life's toughest questions through the gripping story of one man's struggle to find answers to his suffering. Mack's youngest daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, still trapped in his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack. Against his better judgement Mack arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon. What he finds there will change his life forever. THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question, 'Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?' Mack's experiences when he faces up to his darkest nightmares will astound you, and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.£8.99 -
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A Franciscan Way of Life : Brother Ramon’s quest for holiness
The Inner Journey, Traditional MonasticismBe inspired by one man's unflinching faith in God. This is the first biography of Brother Ramon. It tells of his life's pilgrimage, his quest for holiness as a Franciscan friar, his inner journey of discovery and transformation, his love of God and his influence on others. The selection from his writings which concludes the book illustrates his spiritual journey. It will be an inspiration to readers to live lives fully for Jesus Christ.Original price was: £8.99.£6.99Current price is: £6.99. -
Striking Out : Poems and stories from the Camino
Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyOn a September morning, Bishop Stephen Cottrell said mass in his chapel, kissed his wife goodbye, stepped out of his front door and walked two miles to the nearest station. It was the start of a 700 kilometre pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Choosing the least travelled route across northern Spain, he craved the solitude of the road and felt the small vulnerabilities of not knowing what each day would bring - where meals or a bed would be found - would be beneficial. As a busy diocesan bishop, he looked forward not so much to arriving at the great destination, but to what the journey itself would reveal to him. This is a spiritual diary of that journey, comprising reflections, prayer poems and evocative images from the road and poetry which Stephen Cottrell has written for many years. Arranged in four sections, each with seven paired reflections and poems, the shape of the book echoes the rhythm of walking and is an intimate and honest account of the profound effect of the age-old tradition of going on pilgrimage.£9.99 -
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Footprints of the Northern Saints
Everyday Life, Spiritual Growth, The Inner JourneyPresents the late Cardinal's personal reflections on themes such as prayer, solitude, and living the Christian life today. A beautiful book with full colour photographs.Original price was: £10.95.£7.99Current price is: £7.99.
