Winner of the 2022 Nautilus Book Award in Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought (#24B) Mark Clavier examines a series of paradoxes that lie at the heart of Christian faith: eternity and time, silence and words, and wonder and the commonplace. In an intellectual reflection on an overnight trek on Cadair Idris in Wales and other wilderness walks, he explores the oft-hidden connections between faith, society, and nature. Each reflection ranges widely through history, folklore, poetry, philosophy, and theology to consider what these paradoxes can teach us about God, ourselves, and our world. Drawing on the recent upsurge in interest in the personal experience of landscapes and memory, this book invites readers to walk with Clavier in the Appalachians, Norway, Iceland, the Alps, and around Britain as he discovers the ways in which Christianity is profoundly earthed. By weaving together nature-writing, memoir, social commentary, and theological reflection A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes uses a memorable mountain journey in the ancient landscape of Wales to draw readers into reflecting about what it means to belong. Please find the study guide for this book here: https://convivium-brecon.com/a-pilgrimage-of-paradoxes/

The roots of African American spirituality arise from the African origins of the enslaved who were brought to the West in chains. Flora Wilson Bridges explores these "African retentions" from their manifestations in Africa, through their presence in the slave communities of the American South and in Black churches today. The unique spirituality that arose from these retentions influenced many prominent black leaders including Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. In a fascinating chapter, Bridges also shows how these African roots inform Black film, literature, and art.

In The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola: Contexts, Sources, Reception, Terence O'Reilly examines the historical, theological and literary contexts in which the Exercises took shape. The collected essays have as their common theme the early history of the Spiritual Exercises, and the interior life of Ignatius Loyola to which they give expression. The traditional interpretation of the Exercises was shaped by writings composed in the late sixteenth century, reflecting the preoccupations of the Counter-Reformation world in which they were composed. The Exercises, however, belong, in their origins, to an earlier period, before the Council of Trent, and the full recognition of this fact, and of its implications, has confronted modern scholars with fresh questions about the sources, evolution, and reception of the work.