The sculptor Rodney Munday examines the impact of the art works that have influenced his thinking and the evolution of his artistic style on his Christian faith, as well as the way in which his faith has shaped his own sculpture. This is an examination of the ways in which the context and reception of religious art through the centuries poses questions about Christianity and how both individuals and the establishment respond to new works of art. In this book we journey with him along his personal ‘road to Emmaus’, recounted with engaging warmth and honesty.

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’.

Fairacres Publications 213 In increasingly busy and diverse lives what might it mean to live as priests, immersed in God and the world? This book explores a personal experience of ordained priesthood shaped by the Jesus Prayer in the context of the Catholic, charismatic and evangelical traditions. It explores the contemplative disciplines of Presence and Attentiveness to the overflowing life of God in all things. There is an invitation to all, ordained or not, to enter into a life stretched through the abundance of God. While realistic about the challenges we face, this book seeks to nurture hope in the God who is always at work in Christ by the Spirit.

Fairacres Publications 179 The way of life of the fourth-century Desert Fathers, with its emphasis on solitude, silence and unceasing prayer, has inspired many modern spiritual writers. Why do the Desert Fathers have so much to say to us? To answer this question, Sister Benedicta presents some of the best and most illuminating stories and sayings from the desert. Readers will find spiritual wisdom, along with sharp humour and startling insight into human nature.

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.

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.

SLG Press Contemplative Poetry 14 St Frideswide, or Frithuswith, was an important saint during the medieval period and is patron of the City of Oxford. Her shrine was a place of pilgrimage but was destroyed during the Reformation and since then she has largely disappeared from view. Embertide is not a simple retelling of her biography, but engages with all the different versions of her life and seeks to understand her importance in the past and her significance today. It is liminal, elusive and delicately balanced; a kind of spiritual pilgrimage towards understanding elements of faith. Spiritual pilgrimage is a lifetime journey of rethinking and revisiting our perceptions and understanding, just as saints’ written lives have been refashioned to appeal to different audiences at different points in time. This poem is the outcome of one such spiritual pilgrimage, and each reader will encounter it differently, on their own terms. Our saints, in their afterlives, are still travelling, and we follow in their wake.

Wendy Robinson (1934–2013) was a trained psychotherapist who became a member of the Russian Orthodox Church in England in 1980. To be able to combine these two vocations was, for her, to discover herself. She practised psychotherapy both with individual clients and, increasingly, with religious communities, both Catholic and Anglican, giving retreats and one-to-one counselling, and built up a strong and lasting connection with the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford. She reflected on her dual vocation in lectures and articles, a selection of which are published in the companion volume to this book, Cosmos Crisis and Christ: Essays of Wendy Robinson, collected and edited by Andrew Louth, Fairacres Publications 211 (SLG Press, 2024)

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.

Fairacres Publications 106 Sometimes the message of optimism and hope of the fourteenth-century writer Julian of Norwich is understood rather superficially. Two lectures, given at her Shrine in Norwich, which can assist our understanding of her theology are reproduced here. Kenneth Leech shows how Julian can help us to recover a sense of the goodness of creation, and he challenges superficial interpretations of her saying that ‘all shall be well’. Sister Benedicta reconsiders Julian in the light of the solitary tradition and contemporary medieval documents, suggesting that Julian may have been a widow who had borne a child.