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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 -
Soulful Nature: A spiritual field guide
Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyIn our busy, pressured world, the natural world can be a powerful counter-balance, offers wisdom for the challenges, pain and dislocations of life as well as for beauty, wonder and healing. In Soulful Nature, Brian Draper and Howard Green encourage you to get outside and make deeper connections with creation and its creator. They chart walking journeys through rural landscapes and town streets over the course of a year, showing how the natural cycle of the changing seasons can awaken us to the rhythms of our own lives. Each chapter explores a different landscape, zooming in on the small details of the natural world as well as panning out to the wide-screen beauty of time and place. Simple and practical spiritual exercises are provided throughout.£14.99 -
Glimpses of Eden: field notes from the edge of eternity
Everyday Life, Seasons of Life, The Inner Journey'The land has a long memory...it forgets nothing, waiting only for the opportunity to ease the heart.' Glimpses of Eden is a seasonally-arranged collection of the very best of novelist Jonathan Tulloch's acclaimed nature column, which ran in The Tablet for more than 10 years. In 96 evocative daily records of his exploration of the land, mostly within an hour's bike ride of his North Yorkshire home, Jonathan captures snapshots of the wonders of the natural world. Here are eternal stories of resilience and beauty, hope and death, survival and renewal, a tapestry of miraculous creation to enrich our souls and deepen our understanding of life. Each reading is followed by a new reflection written for this book.£19.95 -
Places of Enchantment: Meeting God in Landscapes
Everyday Life, The Inner JourneyThere is a great and honourable tradition of finding God in landscapes. Many who have given up on church appreciate the spiritual benefits they gain from climbing a mountain or walking in nature. But how and why do we encounter God in land, forest, river, mountain, desert, garden, sea and sky? That is what Graham Usher explores in this captivating volume which takes us from the giant Redwoods of the Californian Sierra Nevada to the jagged New York skyline; from the wilds of the ancient Scottish Highlands to the rolling pastures of English Shropshire. Drawing on material from biblical and church history traditions, as well as scientific research and contemporary art, he seeks to ascertain how such encounters support our Christian pilgrimage and challenge our assumptions. More than anything, the author's desire is to encourage readers to look at the world with fresh eyes - and so be enchanted by the world all around us.£11.99
