What would a positive, life-affirming, cosmos-embracing and transcendent Queer mythology look like? In the years 2013-15, artist and poet Bruce Rimell got a chance to find out when he was invited to participate in a collaborative project to create an international art publication, ‘The Encyclopaedia of Fernal Affairs’. Although this was principally an art-oriented initiative, Bruce quickly went off on his own tangent, inventing a complete constructed language and two song-cycles of fernal mythology which resonated with his own burgeoning sense of his Queer identity. ‘The Fernal Songs’ are the shimmering results of that literary side project. Centred around Lucaion, a Queer Hero whose exploits around an animistic cosmos showcase a more compassionate, interactive masculine images than the traditional subduer of enemies, and Afer, an all-gendered Cosmic Creatrix, whose song reverberates across the Fernal World, these are sacred songs which move beyond satirical ‘queering’ of traditional religious forms into a transcendent queer space which simultaneously resonates with ancient memories and indigenous lifeways as well as with possible queer futures of intense beauty and humanism. The ‘Song of Lucaion’, the ‘Thirteen Songs’ and the supplemental ‘Daiarzan’ come with several essays, personal recollections and honest expressions of Bruce’s envisioning of what he calls the ‘sacred and pristine jewel of queeritude within.’

What exactly is worship? How can we account for its power? In Worship Seeking Understanding, noted worship expert John Witvliet mines the riches of the Bible, theology, history, music, and pastoral research to provide windows into the practice of Christian worship. With this work, Witvliet attempts to build bridges between theory and practice, among various worship-related disciplines, and across denominational lines. If worship renewal is to occur, each bridge must be formed. His hope is that this work will not only articulate questions about worship but also enrich the practice of worship in congregations today. Witvliet's broad scope and insightful advice will be welcomed by pastors, worship leaders, church leaders, and students.

Music is often our companion when dealing with the incomprehensibility of loss. This edited collection speaks to the multifarious and complex ways in which music accompanies, supplements, and complements aspects of death and dying, whether this is the death of a loved one, or a celebrity from popular culture.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). This songbook includes all 15 songs from the 2006 release, Jackson's first ever gospel album. Songs: Blessed Assurance * How Great Thou Art * I'll Fly Away * In the Garden * The Old Rugged Cross * Softly and Tenderly * What a Friend We Have in Jesus * and more.

"Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go?: A Preschooler's Guide to Losing a Loved One"gently leadslittle ones and their parents into meaningful conversations about death, grief, and eternal love."

Most of us are regular people who have good days and bad days. Our lives are radically ordinary and unexciting. That means they're the kind of lives God gets excited about. While the world worships beauty and power and wealth, God hides his glory in the simple, the mundane, the foolish, working in unawesome people, things, and places.In our day of celebrity worship and online posturing, this is a refreshing, even transformative way of understanding God and our place in his creation. It urges us to treasure a life of simplicity, to love those whom the world passes by, to work for God's glory rather than our own. And it demonstrates that God has always been the Lord of the cross--a Savior who hides his grace in unattractive, inglorious places.Your God Is Too Glorious reminds readers that while a quiet life may look unimpressive to the world, it's the regular, everyday people that God tends to use to do his most important work.

Iceland is often labelled ‘a land of ice and fire’ – these days it has become something of a cliché – but when artist and poet Bruce Rimell visited with his husband in 2023, he felt plunged into a world of blood and honey, a place of poetry and song, recalling the Old Norse mythic images, as well as the magma which underlies and sculpts the vistas of this volcanic country… “to which I will say: I am a poet, I pray to waterfalls, let it outpour like rain…” Simultaneously a journey through Iceland’s natural, cultural and human landscapes, as well as a dreaming fall into the frenetic soul of a hyperactive poet, ‘Bloodhoney Songs’ takes in scenes from Reykjavik, ekphrastic verses springing from Icelandic music – from Björk to múm, Sigur Rόs to Ólafur Arnalds – and geological wonders, to evoke a sublime process of emergence from lifelong traumas as a Queer/ADHD person into a more hopeful place… “breathe out: you are coming to an end of your grief, a closing of time…” Moving from the waking world, through fractured dreams of love in Loki’s arms, into an eternal moment of stillness – the beginning of a fragile new world – this unique outsider’s view of Iceland is possibly the most unusual perspective on the country and its fascinating people you’ve ever read!

From cosmogonies and half-remembered memories, to mythical mandalas from the ancient past, this collection of surreal and unsettling poetry charts the soul's journey from daylight into the dark recesses of Xibalba, the Realm of the Dead and the Archetypal. But in doing so, it also mirrors the death of mythical and non-rational modes of experience in our modern society: the grey emptiness of Xibalba is experienced here as a bleak realm whose mythological heart is steadily disppearing to be replaced by muted whispers on the archetypal breeze. The house of torment in Orpheus Junior is the rationalising but dehumanised urban space, yet there are signs of hope: flashes of life remind us that we are alive on this cold road downwards, and the collection culminates in a face-off with a nameless Underworld deity who simultaneous takes us apart as it reassembles us. Xibalba Songs asks a simple question: can we honestly say that if we let our ancestral mythological heritage pass into permanent nightfall, that we will be able to retain the true depth of our humanity? Should we simply stand by, record its demise and allow it to pass quietly into the night as we greet a cold, purposeless future without the colourful mythforms of our ancestors to guide us onwards?

What do you do when life seems overwhelming, the world seems alienating and physical injury has become debilitating? For artist and poet Bruce Rimell, the answer was to turn away from the world, and to seek solace in landscape, astronomy and poetry. Written over a period of four years, ‘Wanderer: Songs of Solitude, Fragility, and Change’ emerged from this challenging time: the poetry addresses grief and memory, as well as slow-burn changes in the course of a human life. It mourns the passing of a once-cherished friendship, stands in sorrow before waterfalls, celebrates the passing of the seasons visible in the natural world. Framed as a journey across the heavens, the collection is interspersed with deeply personal, and idiosyncratic, hymns to various planets and stars, before returning home to Earth. ‘Wanderer…’ takes in diverse shifts in identity and lifelong movements through walks in moorlands and the wilds, as well as dreams, otherworldly encounters at secluded falls, and the night sky, all sprung from a somewhat hyperactive perspective. A free verse diary of some dark and difficult days punctuated with shards of light, ‘Wanderer’ takes the reader through a time of lost illusions, but a magical journey nonetheless. Sometimes, sorrow is as beautiful as joy: this collection seeks out exactly that kind of beauty.