Many lives were changed by George MacLeod's spine tingling sermons and many more by his personal example. The extra acts in this book, which can be used to inspire personal or group reflection, give a flavour of the passion and poetry of the Celtic mystic who led the rebuilding of the Iona Abbey, and whose theology was worked out not in the study but out in the street.

A war hereo and successful young minister in Edinburgh during the 1920s, George MacLeod shocked his many admirers by taking a post in Govan, a poor and depressed area of Glasgow, and moving inexorably towards socialism and pacifism during the depression years. It was during this time that he embarked on the rebuilding of the ancient abbey on the Isle of Iona, taking with him unemployed craftsmen from the shipyards of the Clyde and trainee ministers, whom he persuaded to work as labourers. Out of this was the Iona Community.

The history of the Iona Community, including St Colomba's founding of an influential Celtic Christian community on the Hebridean island of Iona in the sixth century, the work of George MacLeod whose inspiration placed Iona firmoly on the Christian map once again in the 20th century and the current broad span of the Community, touching the map of human experience - spirituality, politics, peace and justice - guided by the wild goose, Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit.

21 years after its publication, a new edition is being published with updated text and new chapters as well as a new Introduction, written by one of the book's many fans and the biggest name in British football, Sir Alex Ferguson. But this is a book about much, much more than football It is loved not only by Sir Alex but also by Gordon Brown, Alistair Campbell, Ian Rankin and the Rev Kathy Galloway and it was a huge favourite of poet, George Mackay Brown. So why have the trials and tribulations of Cowdenbeath football club - one of the most unsuccessful football clubs in Britain - excited the imagination even of those who have no interest in football and who have never been to Cowdenbeath? Cowdenbeath's story is set against the rise and decline of the local mining industry and the life after mining. It is very funny, deeply spiritual, moving and also a little bit political. But what makes it so interesting to so many groups is the uplifting story of a real community spirit throughout all of the ups and downs of a town and a football club that is at its social heart and core. It is also the most autobiographical book that Ron Ferguson has written, never taking himself very seriously. The book's quirkiness appeals across the religious, local, national, and footballing worlds. Long out of print, this is the new and updated 21st-anniversary edition.

Enigmatic - mysterious - intriguing: George Mackay Brown was a notoriously private man. He rarely left his native Orkney, and yet became one of the 20th century's finest poets and prose stylists. In his prolific writings, George Mackay Brown's spirituality and his love of the wind-scoured island landscape fused to give us some of the most beautiful poetry and prose in the English language. His work is shot through with glimpses of the divine. Ron Ferguson, who was described by George Mackay Brown as 'a true craftsman in litereature' tracks with curiosity and passion his friend's literary and spiritual journey, including his controversial move from Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism. He explores the darker, more tormented, side of Orkney's Bard and uncovers the intense relationship between alcohol, suffering and creativity. This is a riveting journey. Along the way, the author is forced to question some of his own assumputions. And the reader is swept along on a literary and spiritual voyage of discovery that compels to the very end. Weaving a brilliant, enriching narrative, the author draws extensively on the poet's writings, unpublished letters, conversations with the Bard's friends and many well-known writers. SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE AWARD FOR BEST RESEARCH BOOK OF THE YEAR

Inside this book are reflections on the nature of vision and blindness. Further, there are explorations of interpretive research, and presentations of some seminal and contemporary publications in the field of blindness. The other major fodder for conversation with you the reader is an elaborated example of empirical research entitled Blind Online Learners. Each element of this inquiry is explicitly reflected upon as an example of interpretive research. This book is intended for four intersecting groups of readers. If you are a philosopher, closet or sanctioned, then you cannot ponder the nature of being without due consideration for vision, and cannot contemplate the role of seeing in our lives without listening to the stories of those who are blind. The tales within this text are particularly contemporaneous because they are contextualized by the cyber-phenomena of online learning. This segues to the second group of readers, as the described empirical research was originally intended to bring greater depth and breadth of understanding to the field of educational technology, particularly as it intersects with disability studies. There is a paucity of published literature that has inquired into disabled online learners, and this research study responds to that call. Third, this book may be used as a textbook on approaches to interpretive empirical research. It is as close as one may come to a recipe, walking students through a specific example. Because it is situated in actual empirical research, the intention was that it avoid the trap of being prescriptive or formulaic. Finally, the text is intended for readers interested in the field of blindness. The text reviews some of the seminal and contemporary research on blindness, and then presents an elaborated example of what we can and should expect to emerge in the knowledge production industry, changing what it means to be blind.

Inside this book are reflections on the nature of vision and blindness. Further, there are explorations of interpretive research, and presentations of some seminal and contemporary publications in the field of blindness. The other major fodder for conversation with you the reader is an elaborated example of empirical research entitled Blind Online Learners. Each element of this inquiry is explicitly reflected upon as an example of interpretive research. This book is intended for four intersecting groups of readers. If you are a philosopher, closet or sanctioned, then you cannot ponder the nature of being without due consideration for vision, and cannot contemplate the role of seeing in our lives without listening to the stories of those who are blind. The tales within this text are particularly contemporaneous because they are contextualized by the cyber-phenomena of online learning. This segues to the second group of readers, as the described empirical research was originally intended to bring greater depth and breadth of understanding to the field of educational technology, particularly as it intersects with disability studies. There is a paucity of published literature that has inquired into disabled online learners, and this research study responds to that call. Third, this book may be used as a textbook on approaches to interpretive empirical research. It is as close as one may come to a recipe, walking students through a specific example. Because it is situated in actual empirical research, the intention was that it avoid the trap of being prescriptive or formulaic. Finally, the text is intended for readers interested in the field of blindness. The text reviews some of the seminal and contemporary research on blindness, and then presents an elaborated example of what we can and should expect to emerge in the knowledge production industry, changing what it means to be blind.

Roland Walls is a name known only by word-of-mouth and few of his teachings ever appeared in print - until now. For the first time, the view of this prophetic, wise, mischievous and deelpy loved former priest-in-charge of the famed Rosslyn Chapel are available and accessible to all, in his favourite conversational form. 'The book offers an impression of a man who thinks while he talks. While Walls is not performing an academic act, nevertheless his thoughts, convictions, questions, doubts, hope, humour, compassion, irony, almost tumble out of the pages, yet in an orderly, pure manner ... And there is much more. Hence the short conclusion must be: go and buy!' Coracle Busloads of tourists arrive at Rosslyn Chapel because it features in the blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code. Nearby, in a 'slightly dilapidated building', is the home of the Community of the Transfiguration. Many people have visited this place, too. It is what Ron Ferguson calls 'an arena of healing, hope and inspiration'. He visited it to record conversations with Roland Walls, a remarkable, popular and inspiring theologian who has many illuminating things to say about our times. EXTRACT Roland, how do you understand the kingdom of God? One of the things that is really distressing about the switch of attention from the phenomenal church to the kingdom of God - which is good, and I'm wholeheartedly behind it - is that in making this tremendous shift from identifying the kingdom of God with the church, most of us go to town about building the kingdom. Now so far as I know there is no mention in the Bible whatsoever of building the kingdom, or indeed of building Jerusalem. The Lord builds up Jerusalem, and he comes down from heaven to us. And that deflected arrow from God to us is the constant temptation of the zealous and the active. It's a common thing, isn't it, this talk of building the kingdom, having a blueprint? That's right, as if we've got a blueprint, and all we've got to do is build it. But that overthrows the essential good news of the gospel, which is that it is all going to be gift. It's going to arrive. You're going to enter it. You're going to be invited to see it, to enter it, to be given it. And it's going to arrive from God to us. Now what do we mean then, by the kingdom of God? Is it here? Is it coming? What are we actually offering people? Well, I think the kingdom of God, in its meaning in the Aramaic and Greek, and in the Latin, regnum, means the rule of God: where God has his way, the kingdom comes. In the Lord's Prayer we pray eschatologically about the end: but we also pray fervently, "Thy will be done", today, by us - but also, in spite of us. Now the kingdom comes when the will is done. So all we should do is either (a) make a space where God can himself do something, and we sit back and watch it, which is marvellous - most of the time God can't do any will of his because we're having our religious or spiritual wills fulfilled by ourselves - or (b) say, "Well, look Lord, put me in the way of your will, so that I can do it by the insights and the strengths you've given me." So in a way God's doing it, yes, through us. I believe that the kingdom can be prepared for by making a space, by following the little insignificant - seemingly insignificant - will of God, in how we spend money and how we treat one another and all the rest of it. But in the end the kingdom itself, the bliss of the kingdom, is sheer grace, nothing we can manage. So the stuff about building the kingdom is a real heresy? Yes, it's the usual Western semi-Pelagianism. When we ask anybody about the sacraments, when we talk about the Word, when we talk about prayer, theologically we know we have to avoid semi-Pelagianism - but in actual practice, especially in preaching, we get on to semi-Pelagianism, because it's so easy to invite people into some incredible challenges and all that nonsense. The word "challenge" - another word that never appears in scripture - seems to occur until you're knee-deep in challenges after most sermons. That's right, it's all about challenge, building and great exhortations ... Yes! What are we going to do about it, and all that. The minister in the pulpit loves that bit of the sermon when he's done with all the exposition of the text and gets on to - well what are we going to do about it? That's one of the things that seems to run through the whole church spectrum - the challenge to build, produce some kind of results. Those who preach that show the kind of "oughtness" they're living with There's a real anxiety there ... ... and a terrible guilt that they haven't done this or they haven't done that. That's what gives them the nerve to tell other people. And the terrible thing is that just at the moment when the Church of Rome is reviewing what it thinks of Luther - some of them going so far as to say that one of these days he'll be declared, in some of his writings, a Doctor of the Church - the Protestant world seems to have gone on to a works thing! Recommended by Rowan Williams, John Miller, Keith O'Brien, Brian Smith, Iain Torrance and Alison Newell