River of the Spirit: The Spirituality of Simon Barrington-Ward


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 189 In this study of the spirituality of one of the Anglican Church’s great spiritual leaders the author considers the ways in which spirituality can represent our patterns of life with God that merge experience, prayer, community, theology and mission. Each chapter focuses on aspects of the great Easter and liturgical themes of life, death, resurrection and outpoured Holy Spirit. The image of the river of the Spirit provides a practical way into living with Christ, shaped by His passion, for the transformation of the world. It is a way that draws together different traditions in a world embracing spirituality embodied in, and beyond, the Jesus Prayer.




Lent With George Herbert


Book Description

Fairacres Publication 194 The poems of George Herbert (1593–1633) have nurtured the faith of countless Anglican Christians, and others, since their posthumous publication in 1633. Described by the poet as ‘a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master’, Herbert’s poetry weaves together recognition of the glory and diversity of God’s creation and of the ingenuity of human beings in their attempts to map and control that creation, awareness of human frailty and sinfulness, and awed realisation of the infinite love of God. The themes of frailty and forgiveness underlying Herbert’s poetry also mark the season of Lent. In recognition of this, Tony Dickinson takes eight of the poems that tackle these great themes (relevant as much to the twenty-first century as to the seventeenth) and week by week through Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day, unpacks the language in which George Herbert explores them; language that often appears direct and simple, but whose simplicity frequently conceals a depth and density of meaning that few other writers can match.




Strength in Weakness: The Scandal of the Cross


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 160 These theological reflections on the Cross and Passion of Jesus Christ touch upon some central paradoxes of the Christian faith. Jesus was put to death publicly by crucifixion which, according to traditional Jewish teaching, was a scandal and an affront to God. Yet a Roman centurion present was able to exclaim in awe, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’ The book invites us to ponder instances where strength was manifested in weakness, not only for Jesus – in Gethsemane, at his Trial and on the Cross – but also for those two pillars of the early Church, Peter and Paul, as they too wrestled with ‘the Scandal of the Cross’.




Made All of Light


Book Description

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) was a composer of lute song and the author a significant body of Latin and English poetry and masques written for the Stuart court. This volume collects all of Campion’s sacred poetry in one place for the first time. Campion’s lyric style was influenced by Sir Philip Sidney, but also by the music to which it was most often set: the lines flow gracefully, with an elegant and direct communication of depth and sincerity. Campion’s faith is evident and his texts speak as vividly to us today as they did to those who copied and shared them during his lifetime and beyond.




Cosmos, Crisis and Christ: Essays of Wendy Robinson


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 211 Wendy Robinson’s work was primarily interpersonal and in retreat talks or lectures where she could engage with her audience directly; many of the essays here are transcriptions of those talks. Even ten years after her death, her theology and her compassion are remembered with great fondness and gratitude, and continue to resonate both with those who knew her and those who encounter her writing for the first time.




Mixed Life


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 136 The English mystic Walter Hilton was born c. 1340–5 and died at the Priory of St Peter at Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire in 1396. Little is known of his life, but after beginning a legal and administrative career he attempted the solitary life, but finally discovered his true vocation as an Augustinian Canon. His spiritual writings in English and Latin are ranked alongside those of the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and Julian of Norwich, and include Angels’ Song (also translated by Rosemary Dorward and published by SLG Press in 1983), commentaries on Psalm texts, and a number of letters of spiritual guidance. Mixed Life was originally intended to be read as the third part of Hilton’s best-known work, The Scale of Perfection, and is a set of instructions for a ‘worldly lord’ on balancing the spiritual and practical aspects of leading a godly life. This new edition includes the first full print publication of a diplomatic transcription of the ‘Vernon MS’ text from which this translation was made.




Eight Chapters on Perfection & Angels’ Song


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 85 Eight Chapters on Perfection is Hilton’s translation of a Latin text by the Aragonese Friar Dom Lluis de Font, and is the only surviving record of that manuscript. It is a text of great humanity and wisdom about the possibilities of friendship and love between those drawn to prayer. In Angels’ Song Hilton’s own spirituality is revealed as he considers how, in the spiritual life, the action of grace can be distinguished from pious illusion.




Anselm of Canterbury – A Monastic Scholar


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 62 Saint Anselm (1033–1109) was abbot of the Norman monastery of Bec, and later Archbishop of Canterbury under William Rufus and Henry I. In this short study of one of the most original thinkers of the earlier Middle Ages, Sister Benedicta discusses the relationship between Anselm’s scholarship and his life as a monk, showing how the one grew naturally out of the other. Anselm’s understanding of the inter-connections of reason and faith, thought and prayer, which can be traced throughout his writings, both theological and devotional, remains significant for Christian scholarship in any age. At the same time he was one of the most attractive, loving and compassionate of men. Simplicity, humanity and gentleness are joined in Anselm to the clear and sane mind of a great scholar.




Encountering the Depths


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 218 This is a book about the nature and practice of prayer for the serious Christian, lay and clerical, in which the problems of the spiritual life in the modern world are presented as a challenge. Mother Mary Clare, who was one of the Anglican Church’s leading spiritual directors, takes the major contemplative themes and brings to them her unique blend of spiritual realism, vision and authority. Prayer begins and ends in the inescapable necessity of a relationship with God; the dimension of silence reveals that praying is not only an action but a still contemplation; the path of spiritual progress is to discern in the union of action and contemplation a deeper listening which leads to an apostolate of prayer renewing the action of contemplation. It is all God’s Work. In his foreword, Bishop Michael Ramsey writes: ‘I hope this little book will have many readers, as I am sure it will help them as it has helped me … Christian lives which know contemplation will be lives nearer the love of God…’




The Prayers of Saint Isaac of Nineveh


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 216 The scholarly investigations and translations of Prof. Sebastian Brock have been largely responsible for bringing Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also known as Isaac the Syrian, to public attention. Isaac was a seventh-century Syriac Christian bishop and monastic author from Beth Qatraye in the region of Qatar. He is best known for his writings on Christian asceticism. This selection of Isaac’s prayers, taken from the three collections of his Discourses, is elegantly translated by Dr Brock into accessible English, bringing the thought and prayer of one of the great Fathers of the Church to modern readers. Their simplicity and sincerity have a surprising beauty and relevance to our Christian journey.




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