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'All serious lovers of poetry will want this book.' A. N. Wilson
All good poetry has the power to transport and transform us, to
inspire and challenge us, to comfort and heal us, and to hold up a
mirror to the world around us. In A Century of Poetry, Rowan
Williams invites you to reflect with him on 100 poems from the past
100 years - poems with an originality and depth that can impel you
to search your heart, and to explore your own experience and
emotions at a deeper level. Featuring the work of both famous and
lesser-known poets, from different faiths, languages and cultures,
A Century of Poetry gives you a fresh perspective on works you may
be familiar with, as well as introducing you to poems you'll be
pleased to discover for the first time - or perhaps discover again.
These meditations, by a writer who is both a poet and a theologian,
will open new doors into the experience of reading and absorbing
great poetry, highlighting the ways in which their language and
imagery can touch unfamiliar places in the heart and enliven the
lifelong adventure of spiritual growth and exploration.
The perennial classic: this intimate journal chronicling the Narnia
author's experience of grief after his wife's death has consoled
readers for half a century; this edition features responses from
authors like Hilary Mantel, Francis Spufford, Rowan Williams, Jenna
Bailey ... 'An intimate, anguished account of a man grappling with
the mysteries of faith and love ... Elegant and raw ... A powerful
record of thought and emotion experienced in real time.' Guardian
'Raw and modern ... This unsentimental, even bracing, account of
one man's dialogue with despair becomes both compelling and
consoling ... A contemporary classic.' Observer 'A source of great
consolation ... Lewis deploys his genius for vivid imagery ... It
is a relief for the reader to find that he or she is not alone in
the intense loneliness or feelings of anguish that bereavement
brings.' Henry Marsh, The Times 'Testimony from a sensitive and
eloquent witness [on] 'The Human Condition'. It offers an
interrogation of experience and a glimmer of hardwon hope. It
allows one bewildered mind to reach out to another. Death is no
barrier to that.' Hilary Mantel 'Here, sorrow and despair, the
tiredness and numbness and petulance and nightmarishness of grief,
all have their full, uncontrolled, experienced force ... [Such]
radical openness ... Brilliant.' Francis Spufford *** No one ever
told me that grief felt so like fear. Narnia author C.S. Lewis had
been married to his wife for four blissful years. When she died of
cancer, he found himself alone, inconsolable in his grief. In this
intimate journal, he chronicles the aftermath of the bereavement
and mourning with blazing honesty. He grapples with a crisis of
religious faith, navigating hope, rage, despair, and love - but
eventually regains his bearings, finding his way back to life. A
luminous modern classic, A Grief Observed has offered solace to
countless readers for decades. This companion edition combines the
original text with personal responses from Hilary Mantel, Rowan
Williams, Francis Spufford, Maureen Freely, Kate Saunders, Jessica
Martin and Jenna Bailey. *** What readers are saying: 'A truly
great book - inspirational and untold help.' 'Every human being,
living or dead, understands what Lewis means ... One of the most
valuable books ever written.' 'Lewis, as always, sits down next to
you and validates your grief like a true friend. He lets you rage,
and cry, and even be furious with God, just as he did.' 'If you are
grieving an enormous loss, you may find comfort here ... A great
mind and wonderful writer who understands your grief well enough to
put words to it.' 'His journal was also my journal as I worked
through my own grief. Reading this book was actually comforting in
that I knew that someone else understood my situation and offered
insight and hope ... I highly recommend this book for anyone who
has gone through the death of a loved one or who wants to comfort."
'This little book has had me in floods of tears [and] shows a real
understanding of grief ... To read the words of this great man who
shared and understood my pain and is a life affirming and faith
affirming experience.'
Full of sensitive pastoral advice and shot through with arresting
and illuminating theological insights, Rowan Williams' new book
explores the meaning and practice of four essential components of
the Christian life: baptism, Bible, Eucharist and prayer.
This fresh and inspiring look at the meaning of discipleship covers
the essentials of the christian life, including: faith, hope and
love; forgiveness; holiness; social action; life in the Spirit.
Written for the general reader by one of our greatest living
theologians, this book will help you to see more clearly, love more
dearly and follow more nearly the way of Jesus Christ.
Packed with striking theological insight and spiritual
encouragement
Thomas Merton's life, especially once he had become a writer, was
to a great extent one of dialogue with people who were distant,
both geographically and historically. In these probing and
perceptive studies, Rowan Williams looks closely at the key
intellectual and spiritual relationships that emerge in Merton's
writings, exploring the impact on him of thinkers as diverse as
Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, William Blake, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Olivier Clement, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Paul Evdokimov, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Vladimir Lossky, John Henry Newman, Boris Pasternak and St
John of the Cross.
A senior biblical scholar's concise guide to how Jesus is described
across the New Testament New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn has
written numerous commentaries, books, and essays sharing his
thought with the world. In this small, straightforward book
designed for a lay audience, Dunn focuses his fifty-plus years of
scholarship on the central question posed by the New Testament-who
is Jesus? Dunn surveys the New Testament books from Matthew to
Rev-elation, exploring and unpacking what they actually say about
Jesus. Dunn's Jesus according to the New Testament points to the
wonder of those first witnesses and enriches our understanding of
who Jesus is to us today.
In many ways, we seem to be living in wintry times at present in
the Western world. In this new book, Rowan Williams, former
Archbishop of Canterbury and a noted scholar of Eastern
Christianity, introduces us to some aspects and personalities of
the Orthodox Christian world, from the desert contemplatives of the
fourth century to philosophers, novelists and activists of the
modern era, that suggest where we might look for fresh light and
warmth. He shows how this rich and diverse world opens up new ways
of thinking about spirit and body, prayer and action, worship and
social transformation, which go beyond the polarisations we take
for granted. Taking in the world of the great spiritual anthology,
the Philokalia, and the explorations of Russian thinkers of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, discussing the witness of
figures like Maria Skobtsova, murdered in a German concentration
camp for her defence of Jewish refugees, and the challenging
theologies of modern Greek thinkers like John Zizioulas and
Christos Yannaras, Rowan Williams opens the door to a 'climate and
landscape of our humanity that can indeed be warmed and
transfigured'. This is an original and illuminating vision of a
Christian world still none too familiar to Western believers and
even to students of theology, showing how the deep-rooted themes of
Eastern Christian thought can prompt new perspectives on our
contemporary crises of imagination and hope.
Collected Poems contains the previously published poetry of Rowan
Williams, together with a significant body of new work. Also
included are his celebrated translations from Welsh, German and
Russian poetry. His earlier collections have included pieces
prompted by the landscape and literature of West Wales, and a
sequence of poems on the varieties of love in the plays of
Shakespeare. This Collected adds a sequence commissioned for the
fiftieth anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, tributes to writers
as different as Alan Garner and John Milton, and a reflection on
sculptures by Antony Gormley. The book reflects the poet's wide
range of interest and the variety of poetic mediums he has
explored. His poems continue to respond vividly to the visual arts,
and to the experience and imagination of 'pre-modern' cultures, as
well as to the crises and tragedies of our time. He continues to
read with uncanny clarity the signs that are manifest in nature and
history. Imagination working through language brings us as close as
we can get to our condition. 'I dislike the idea of being a
religious poet,' he says. 'I would prefer to be a poet for whom
religious things mattered intensely.'
Growing up in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was warned by her father not
to read Dostoyevsky. "Of course, and as usual," she recalls, "I
disobeyed paternal orders and plunged into Dosto. Dazzled,
overwhelmed, engulfed." Kristeva would go on to become one of the
most important figures in European intellectual life-and she would
return over and over again to Dostoyevsky, still haunted and
enraptured by the force of his writing. In this book, Kristeva
embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into
Dostoyevsky's work and the profound ways it has influenced her own
thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works,
Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that
draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence,
eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal
and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva's analysis with her
recollections of Dostoyevsky's significance in different
intellectual moments-the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era
Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France,
and today's arguments about whether it can be said that "everything
is permitted." Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for
admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an
illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the
significance of Kristeva's reading of Dostoyevsky for his own
understanding of religious writing.
Bringing the gospel accounts of the trial and resurrection of
Christ vividly to life, Christ on Trial shows how the words of the
disciples still relate directly to us today. The trial, conviction
and death of an innocent man 2000 years ago has particular
resonance in an era when atrocities from around the world shake us
every week. Here is a powerful and moving message for today.
How do we see and act justly in the world? In what ways can we
ethically respond to social and economic crisis? How do we address
the desperation that exists in the new forms of violence and
atrocity? These are all questions at the heart of Justice and Love,
a philosophical dialogue on how to imagine and act in a more just
world by theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher Mary Zournazi.
Looking at different religious and philosophical traditions,
Williams and Zournazi argue for the re-invigoration and enriching
of the language of justice and, by situating justice alongside
other virtues, they extend our everyday vocabularies on what is
just. Drawing on examples ranging from the Paris Attacks, the
Syrian War, and the European Migrant Crisis to Brexit and the US
Presidential elections, Williams and Zournazi reflect on justice as
a process: a condition of being, a responsiveness to others, rather
than a cold distribution of fact. By doing so, they explore the
love and patience needed for social healing and the imagination
required for new ways of relating and experiencing the world.
Archbishop Rowan Williams is the most gifted Anglican priest of his
generation. His views are consistent and orthodox and yet he has
been consistently misunderstood - especially in relation to his
views on contemporary society, public morality and the common good.
In this, the final published work of his Archepiscopate, Dr
Williams has assembled a series of chapters on matters of immediate
public concern and the relationship of Christianity to these
issues. Among his topics are 'Has Secularism Failed?: Europe, Faith
and Culture', 'Human Rights and Religious Faith', 'Changing the
Myths We Live By', 'Housekeeping: The Economic Challenge', 'The
Gifts Reserved for Age: Perceptions of the Elderly', and 'Analysing
Atheism'.
With typical eloquence and wisdom, in The Way of St Benedict Rowan
Williams explores the appeal of St Benedict's sixth-century Rule,
showing it to be a document of great relevance to present day
Christians and non-believers at our particular moment in history.
For over a millennium the Rule - a set of guidelines for monastic
conduct - has been influential on the life of Benedictine monks,
but has also served in some sense as a 'background note' to almost
all areas of civic experience: artistic, intellectual and
institutional. The effects of this on society have been
far-reaching and Benedictine communities and houses still attract
countless visitors, testifying to the appeal and continuing
relevance of Benedict's principles. As the author writes, the
chapters of his book, which range from a discussion of Abbot
Cuthbert Butler's mysticism to 'Benedict and the Future of Europe',
are 'simply an invitation to look at various current questions
through the lens of the Rule and to reflect on aspects of
Benedictine history that might have something to say to us'. With
Williams as our guide, The Way of St Benedict speaks to the Rule's
ability to help anyone live more fully in harmony with others
whilst orientating themselves fully to the will of God.
'As we contemplate the coming months, not knowing when we can
breathe again, it's worth thinking about how already the
foundations have been laid for whatever new opportunities God has
for us on the far side of this crisis.' Rowan Williams offers these
words of wisdom and many more in Candles in the Dark. This powerful
and timely book brings together the 26 weekly Christian meditations
originally posted online from March to September 2020, during
lockdown in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, for the
congregation of his local parish church. Candles in the Dark is a
lovely Christian book of comfort for anyone looking for the light
in these dark times. Written with warmth and compassion, these
meditations offer us hope and encouragement as we continue to
endure the most devastating and disturbing world crisis for over a
generation. They will leave you spiritually uplifted and with a
strengthened faith to guide you through whatever may come.
A Treasury of Virtues is a collection of sayings, sermons, and
teachings attributed to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40/661), the cousin
and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the first Shia Imam and the
fourth Sunni Caliph An acknowledged master of Arabic eloquence and
a sage of Islamic wisdom, 'Ali was renowned for his eloquence: his
words were collected, quoted, and studied over the centuries, and
extensively anthologized, excerpted, and interpreted. Of the many
compilations of 'Ali's words, A Treasury of Virtues, compiled by
the Fatimid Shafi'i judge al-Quda'i (d. 454/1062), arguably
possesses the broadest compass of genres and the largest variety of
themes. Included are aphorisms, proverbs, sermons, speeches,
homilies, prayers, letters, dialogues, and verse, all of which
provide instruction on how to be a morally upstanding human being.
The shorter compilation included here, One Hundred Proverbs, is
attributed to the eminent writer al-Jahiz (d. 255/869). This volume
presents the first English translation of both of these important
collections. An English-only edition.
- Esteemed former leader of the Anglican Communion distills the
essence of the Christian faith - Overview from a scholar and pastor
With clarity and insight, the former Archbishop of Canterbury takes
the reader to the heart of what Christianity means for those who
practice it and the hope it offers to the world at large. A book
for all who wonder what the Christian faith is all about, and what
difference it really makes.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams often says that, no
matter what, the proper stance of the Christian in the world is one
of gratitude. In this book, Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, and
Archbishop Rowan Williams offer us a sweeping set of things and
circumstances to be grateful for 'things for which we can sing
alleluia," "praise and thanks be to God."
Some are things we naturally feel grateful for: God, peace,
wealth, life, faith, and unity. But when these are set alongside
other things we would never think to sing alleluia about 'death,
divisions, sufferings, and even sinners 'we begin to see, as Joan
Chittister says in her introduction, that "Life itself is an
exercise in learning to sing 'alleluia ' here in order to recognize
the face of God hidden in the recesses of time. To deal with the
meaning of 'alleluia ' in life means to deal with moments that do
not feel like 'alleluia moments' at al."
In this series of reflections it becomes clear that singing
"alleluia" is not a way to escape reality but receptivity to
another kind of reality beyond the immediate and the delusional, of
helping us understand what is now and what is to come.
"Science and Religion" is a record of the 2009 Building Bridges
seminar, a dialogue between leading Christian and Muslim scholars
convened annually by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The essays in
this volume explore how both faith traditions have approached the
interface between science and religion and throw light on the
ongoing challenges posed by this issue today. The volume includes a
selection of relevant texts together with commentary that
illuminates the scriptures, the ideas of key religious thinkers,
and also the legacy of Charles Darwin.
A stunning photo essay paired with 100 stories of members gives a
rare glimpse into the Bruderhof, a Christian community that has
stood the test of time. Yes, it is possible to create a society
where there are no rich or poor, where children and elderly are
welcome, where no one lives in isolation. Meet 100 individuals from
diverse backgrounds who ventured everything to build a life
together where everyone belongs and each can contribute, pooling
their income, possessions, talents, and energy. As the community
marks its first 100 years, the people in this book tell why they
have chosen this radical way of life and share insights gleaned
along the way. Their stories represent a cross section of the
Bruderhof as an international and intergenerational community. With
photography by British photojournalist Danny Burrows, this book
celebrates what is possible when people take a leap of faith. It
will inspire anyone working to build a more just, peaceful, and
sustainable future.
The financial crisis is about more than money. It is also about
morality, casting an uncomfortable light on the links between the
activities of bankers and the wellbeing of society as a whole. The
idea that economics is morally neutral or that finance should be
above ethical scrutiny deserves to be challenged. The Most Reverend
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Larry Elliott,
Economics Editor of the Guardian, bring together a group of
distinguished commentators to open up the ethical debate in the
search for a fairer vision of economic justice.
What is consciousness? Is the mind a machine? What makes us
persons? What does it mean to aspire to human maturity? These are
among the fundamental questions that Rowan Williams helps us to
think about in this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to
be human. The book ends with a brief but profound meditation on the
person of Christ, inviting us to consider how, through him, 'our
humanity in all its variety, in all its vulnerability, has been
taken into the heart of the divine life'.
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