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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian worship > General
The Order of St Gilbert was the only specifically English religious
order founded in the Middle Ages. The edition gathers together
fragments surviving in Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 115 (A.5.5);
Cambridge, St John's College, MS N. 1; Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Digby 36 (SC 1678), f. 110v; Cambridge, Pembroke' College, MS 226.
The second part is volume 60 of the present series.
Michael Joncas's new Simple Psalter synthesizes elements of
previous styles of psalm-singing into a new pattern of engaging
these sacred texts. Using the new Abbey Psalms and Canticles,
Joncas sets every responsorial psalm in the three-year Lectionary
in settings that work equally well a cappella or with keyboard
accompaniment. The antiphon for each setting may be sung in unison
or enhanced with optional voice or instrument parts, and the verses
are set to a Gelineau-inspired "pulsed" psalm tone, notated in
proposed speech-rhythm. Additionally, the tones of the Simple
Psalter respect form-critical studies of psalms, assigning them to
particular categories (e.g., different tones for hymns of praise,
songs of thanksgiving, communal laments, etc.). The Simple Psalter
is divided into four volumes: one for solemnities, feasts, and
other celebrations, and one each for years A, B and C.
In this book Adam Hearlson argues that Christians can say a holy
"no" to oppression and injustice through the church's worship
practices. "To speak the holy no," Hearlson says, "is to refuse to
be complicit in the oppression and violence of the ruling power. It
is the courageous critique of the present and its claims of
immutability." Hearlson draws widely from Christian history to
uncover ways the church has used its traditional
practices-preaching, music, sacrament, and art-to sabotage
oppressive structures of the world for the sake of the gospel. He
tells the stories of particular subversive strategies both past and
present, including radical hospitality, genre bending, coded
speech, and apocalyptic visions. Blending history, theory, and
practice, The Holy No is both a testament to the courage of
Christians who came before and an encouragement to take up their
mantle of faithful subversion.
New Seeds of Contemplation is one of Thomas Merton's most widely
read and best-loved books. Christians and non-Christians alike have
joined in praising it as a notable successor in the meditative
tradition of St. John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the
medieval mystics, while others have compared Merton's reflections
with those of Thoreau. New Seeds of Contemplation seeks to awaken
the dormant inner depths of the spirit so long neglected by Western
man, to nurture a deeply contemplative and mystical dimension in
our lives. For Merton, "Every moment and every event of every man's
life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind
carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it
germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the
minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and
are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such
seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the soil of
freedom, spontaneity and love."
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