In this text, Rowan Williams goes back to the 4th century Desert Fathers and Mothers for inspiration and insight. He rediscovers that the spirituality of the deseert resonates strongly with aspects of the modern spiritual search.
The place "where God happens," according to Rowan Williams's striking new reading of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, is between each other. It's a truth that we of the twenty-first century most urgently need to learn in order to heal the experience of alienation that has become endemic to our age, and these odd and appealing ancient figures, surprisingly, hold keys to this healing. The fourth-century Christian hermits of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine understood the truth of Christian community profoundly, and their lives demonstrate it vividly—even though they often lived in solitude and isolation. The author breaks through our preconceived ideas of the Desert Fathers to reveal them in a new light: as true and worthy role models—even for us in our modern lives—who have much to teach us about dealing with the anxieties, uncertainties, and sense of isolation that have become hallmarks of modern life. They especially embody valuable insights about community, about how to live together in an intimate and meaningful way. Williams makes these radical figures, who clearly have a special place in his heart, come to life in a new way for everyone. The book includes an appendix of selections from the teachings of the Desert Fathers.
Sharing Friendship represents a post-liberal approach to ecclesiology and theology generated out of the history, practices and traditions of the Anglican Church. Drawing on the theological ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, this book explores the way friendship for the stranger emerges from contextually grounded reflection and conversations with contemporary Anglican theologians within the English tradition, including John Milbank, Oliver O’Donovan, Rowan Williams, Daniel Hardy and Anthony Thiselton. Avoiding abstract definitions of character, mission or friendship, John Thomson explores how the history of the English Church reflects a theology of friendship and how discipleship in the New Testament, the performance of worship, and the shape of Anglican ecclesiology are congruent with such a theology. The book concludes by rooting the theme of sharing friendship within the self-emptying kenotic performance of Jesus’ mission, and looks at challenges to the character of contemporary Anglican ecclesiology represented by secularization and globalization as well as by arguments over appropriate new initiatives such as Fresh Expressions.
From the best-selling author of God Is a Verb, the classic spiritual retreat guide that enables anyone to create their own self-guided spiritual retreat at home. The ancient mystics looked to spiritual retreat as a way of cleansing the body and healing the soul. In Silence, Simplicity & Solitude, David A. Cooper traces the path of the mystics and the practice of spiritual retreat in all the major faith traditions, sharing the common techniques and practices of the retreat experience for beginner and advanced meditators alike. Cooper shows the way to the self-discovery and discipline of the spiritual retreat experience and clearly instructs how to create an effective, self-guided spiritual retreat in your own home. Silence, Simplicity & Solitude teaches that not only is silence a great healer, but that inner spiritual retreat can provide life-changing insight into deeper spiritual truths
We Are Better Than This is a collection of essays and poetry addressing the Australian government's asylum seeker policy. The aims of the book are several: to provide some of the information about the situation in detention camps that is being withheld by the government; to correct some of the government's misrepresentations of the current situation; to clarify some of the complex legal issues surrounding the right to seek asylum, and to give some insight into the plight of those who are seeking asylum. It is hoped that this book will better inform people about the government's policies: to support those who are unsatisfied and seeking to change the situation, as well as those who are uncertain and need more easily accessible and reliable information. Contributors are drawn from several areas of expertise and engagement with asylum seekers.
Reflections for the Unfolding Year is a collection of addresses given by Alan Wilkinson. Roving over subjects from apartheid to Lent to the ever-evolving image of Mary, he offers a compassionate response to some of the most painful subjects of the last hundred years, as well as a thoughtful reflection on the sacraments of the Church of England, what they have meant to our ancestors and what they mean to us today. Delving into troubling questions about doubt, repentance and what it means when God appears to be silent in times of crisis, he draws on sources from all walks of life in order to express how Anglicans feel about fundamental issues such as grief, hope and grace, as well as, most potently, their longing for God. Alan Wilkinson relates stories about the Church - its bishops and its believers - with rueful good humour and thoughtfulness, leading the reader through more than half a century of his ministry in Portsmouth and elsewhere. His portrait of the Church of England showcases both the ordinary and the extraordinary; the prosaic and the poetic. Through his fluent pen, we come to understand more of the lives of the people in the Church, such as Desmond Tutu, William Temple and Bill Sargent, who have made it what it is today: catholic, reformed and liberal.
Perhaps one of the least appreciated aspects of Rowan Williams is his theology of imagination. Seeking to fill this gap, this book explores the imaginative impulse operative in Rowan Williams’ theology and poetry, which centres around the notion of ‘divine desire’, and the way in which imagination can reveal possibility even in the bleakest of circumstances. Drawing on his poetic work as well as his theological writing, the book explores how Williams’ theology leads us to a fresh understanding of the ways in which the renewing and enabling energy of the Holy Spirit is ever active, within and beyond the Church, in enabling human imaginations to cooperate with the divine energy of love in bringing creation to fulfilment.
Can Words Express Our Wonder? is written to help preachers recognizse and put to use the rich array of gifts and resources they have been given for the exercise of this ministry, whether week by week with a local congregation, as an occasional or supply preacher, or at critical times in people's lives at pastoral services.
A fascinating, fair-minded depiction of Archbishop Rowan Williams. /Rowan Williams is a complex and controversial figure. Widely revered for his personal qualities, he is also an intellectual giant who towers over almost all his predecessors as Archbishop of Canterbury. Among other achievements, he has trounced the atheist Richard Dawkins, and published over twenty well-regarded books, including several volumes of poetry and a major study of Dostoevsky. / Yet he is also one of the most reviled church leaders in modern history. Long before facing calls to step down after his lecture on sharia law in early 2008, he had been accused of heresy on account of his pro-gay views. He has disappointed many of his own supporters as well. So how has high office changed Rowan Williams? Has he been bullied and manipulated? Or is he perhaps playing a long game, obliged to rate church unity above the pursuit of his own vision at a time when the Anglican Communion has never looked more unstable? / Rupert Shortt, already the author of an acclaimed introduction to the Archbishop's thought, offers answers to these and other questions in this authoritative biography. He explores how the events of the Archbishop's remarkable life have shaped his beliefs and practices today. Of particular interest is the riveting account of Williams's experience near the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 201. Written with Williams's cooperation, Rowan's Rule not only elucidates his ideas but gives a compelling portrait of a private and in some ways surprisingly vulnerable man.
How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully. God says: 'I put before you life and death: choose life'. Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life – novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on – can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today's secularism but its banality. We accompany the disciples as they struggle to understand this strange man who heals, casts out demons and offers endless forgiveness. In the face of death, he teaches them what it means to be alive in God. Then he embraces all that afflicts and crushes humanity. Finally, Radcliffe explores what it means for us to be alive spiritually, physically, sacramentally, justly and prayerfully. The result is a compelling new understanding of the words of Jesus: 'I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.'