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.

'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.'

Packed with striking theological insight and spiritual encouragement

* Based on his popular Holy Week talks, given in Canterbury Cathedral

In the last years of his life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began work on an idea that he called unbewusstes Christentum, "unconscious Christianity." While Bonhoeffer's other ideas from this period have been extensively studied and are important in the field of theology and beyond, this idea has been almost completely ignored. For the first time in Bonhoeffer scholarship, Eleanor McLaughlin provides a definition of unconscious Christianity, based on a close reading and analysis of the texts in which Bonhoeffer mentioned the term. From a variety of surviving texts, from a scribbled marginal note in his Ethics manuscript to the fiction he wrote in prison, she constructs a detailed definition of unconscious Christianity that sheds light not only on Bonhoeffer's late work but his theological development as a whole.

Includes a foreword by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury.The Cappadocian fathers of the fourth century--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen--produced thoughts on the Trinity, the creation, the incarnation, the holistic reading of scripture and the discipline of the soul which are playing a more seminal role in Christian theology today that at any time in the last four hundred years. Too often, however, their teachings are appropriated in a piecemeal manner, with no acknowledgement of their mutual interdependence.In this comprehensive introduction to their writings, Patrick Whitworth enables the modern reader to share their understanding of the purpose and scope of theology. At the same time, he brings before us three strong personalities, who, like the rest of us, were children of time and place, taking up the pen to address a particular audience on particular occasions. Stripping out the ruling ideas from the polemical or rhetorical dress in which they have come down to us, he shows that the insights of genius lose nothing by being translated from the exquisite opacity of the original Greek into plain but accurate English prose. -- Professor Mark Edwards, Christ Church Oxford."Wonderfully comprehensive and clear. We are able to see the Cappadocians not as counters in the board game of controversy but as complex human figures wrestling with the challenges of internal and external crises for the Church. This will be a really welcome tool for all students of early Christianity, and excellent and accessible reading for anyone who wants to understand better the formative period of Christian teaching. It is a message that the Church of our own time should take very seriously." -- Rowan Williams (from the foreword), Master of Magdalene College, CambridgePatrick Whitworth read Modern History at Christ Church Oxford, and a Theology MA in Reformation Studies under T. H. L. Parker at Durham. He has spent over 30 years in Anglican Ministry, currently Rector of All Saints Weston Bath, Langridge and North Stoke. He is married to Olivia with four grown up children.

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'.

In this classic treatise on Christian spirituality, Rowan Williams takes us with a new eye along a road marked out by Paul, John, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and finally to Luther and St. John of the Cross. The Wound of Knowledge is a penetrating psychological and intellectual analysis of Christian spirituality.

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.

'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.

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.

Based on the author's popular Holy Week talks, given while he was Archbishop, addressed to a public audience in Canterbury Cathedral

* Well-known and well-loved bishop of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion This official biography tells the compelling story of the Rt. Rev. Mark Dyer: Irish Catholic boy from New Hampshire, U.S. Navy vet, Roman Catholic then Episcopal priest, bishop, and seminary professor-and one of the most influential, beloved leaders of the American Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Following a dispute with ecclesiastical authorities, Dyer left the Roman Church for the Anglican Church of Canada. Later received as priest in the Episcopal Church, his gifts as teacher, preacher, and pastor were recognized with election as Bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. There, he established a new model of leadership, delegating administrative duties to concentrate on spiritual direction, pastoral care, and creating mission projects at every church in his diocese. Also renowned as a story-teller, many of his favorite stories appear here, told in his own voice. Called by leadership of the Anglican Communion to a variety of roles, for more than 20 years Bishop Dyer was on the front lines of the most contentious issues facing the church throughout the world, including ordination of women and gay people. He also was co-chair of the ecumenical dialogue between the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches, which produced a landmark agreement after 17 years of meetings.

In this wide-ranging book, Rowan Williams argues that what we say about Jesus Christ is key to understanding what Christian belief says about creator and creation overall. Through detailed discussion of texts from the earliest centuries to the present day, we are shown some of the various and subtle ways in which Christians have discovered in their reflections on Christ the possibility of a deeply affirmative approach to creation, and a set of radical insights in ethics and politics as well. Throughout his life, Rowan Williams has been deeply influenced by thinkers of the Eastern Christian tradition as well as Catholic and Anglican writers. This book draws on insights from Eastern Christianity, from the Western Middle Ages and from Reformed thinkers, from Calvin to Bonhoeffer - as well as considering theological insights sparked by philosophers like Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Christ the Heart of Creation concerns fundamental issues for Christian belief and Williams tackles them head-on: he writes with pellucid clarity and shows his gift for putting across what are inevitably complex ideas to a wide audience.

Richard Carter swapped a life of simplicity with an Anglican religious order in the Solomon Islands for parish ministry in one of London's busiest churches, St Martin-in-the-Fields. Seeing a need for monastic values in the centre of the city, he founded the Nazareth Community. Its members gather from everyday life to seek God in contemplation, to acknowledge their dependence on God's grace and to learn to live openly and generously with all. Part story, part spiritual meditation, The City is My Monastery offers spiritual wisdom for daily life rooted in the Nazareth Community's seven guiding principles: Silence, Service, Scripture, Sacrament, Sharing, Sabbath Time and Staying.

"Humanity: Texts and Contexts" is a record of the 2007 Singapore "Building Bridges" seminar, an annual dialogue between Muslim and Christian scholars cosponsored by Georgetown University and the Archbishop of Canterbury. This volume explores three central questions: What does it mean to be human? What is the significance of the diversity that is evident among human beings? And what are the challenges that humans face living within the natural world?

A distinguished group of scholars focuses on the theological responses to each of these questions, drawing on the wealth of material found in both Christian and Islamic scriptures. Part one lays out the three issues of human identity, difference, and guardianship. Part two explores scriptural texts side by side, pairing Christian and Islamic scholars who examine such themes as human dignity, human alienation, human destiny, humanity and gender, humanity and diversity, and humanity and the environment. In addition to contributions from an international cast of outstanding scholars, the book includes an afterword by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

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.

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.