Fairacres Publications 171 The anonymous fourth-century Syriac author of the Book of Steps wrote to and about his local Christian community. It is a manual of Christian living written before monasticism had taken its traditional shape. However, the distinction between the duties and expectations of ‘the Perfect’ and ‘the Upright’ hint at a development towards monastic life. Robert Kitchen points out that the text has always had trouble getting noticed; to put this teaching into a modern context he summarizes the content of its thirty chapters, and gives a short commentary on a core passage from each one.

Intentionally anonymous and lacking concrete details of historical and cultural setting-and for many years suspected of messalianism-this collection of thirty memre [discourses] has been long recognized as an important, yet understudied, work of the fourth century Syriac Church. The Liber Graduum records the ups and downs of a real christian community and is not a theoretical projection. The author meanders through many themes, but always calls the readers back to the steps of Uprightness and Perfection. "So it is also with a person once he has lowered himself from all things that are on earth, has broken his mind night and day, who counts everyone else better than himself, has emptied himself from all he possessed and kisses the feet of his enemies. Our Lord will look upon this person's lowliness and send him the Spirit, the Paraclete, and he shall know the whole truth."(translation of the script on the cover).

Fairacres Publication 82 In five essays originally given as addresses to the Benedictine monks at the Monastery of Chevetogne in Belgium, the author gives us the essentials of his teaching on prayer. They are the fruit not only of personal experience and long familiarity with the hesychast writings of Orthodox monasticism, but also of the spiritual tradition of his native Romania. We are given the outline of an icon of restored humanity through texts which we can appropriate for ourselves to allow the love of God to live and work in us.

SLG Press Contemplative Poetry 10 This is a collection of personal reflections on faith and the struggle to meet and serve God that is part of our Christian journey. Here there are no fractured poetic experiments except in the faith-struggle itself, that is, the thinking, which is the accomplishment and power of religious poetry, just as it is of religious life. This struggle is manifest here, expressed by different people with different impulses to write. Here, the little, the personal and the tightly-imagined have the most effect. The transfer of faith, doubt, struggle, praise, prayer into poetry is hard – and that struggle too is part of this collection.

Terms such as ‘climate grief’ and ‘ecological anxiety’ describe the sadness and desolation triggered in many people in response to our changing climate. What are we to do with this aching that is sometimes dull, sometimes sharp? Nowhere is immune from extreme weather events, from physical suffering and even death. How should we react to this? These are questions that are central to every religious account of the world and its peoples. This book looks at the insights that can be gained from the world’s faith traditions, particularly Christianity. By considering the extent of the ecological crises that humanity faces, this book discusses the new and searching questions that these crises raise for us and for our faith, and how those questions reflect our approach to our environment and our responsibility in and for the world.

Fairacres Publications 199 Through writing gathered over a lifetime of meditation on doors as ways into the understanding and fulfilment of a Christian life, Sister Raphael SLG guides us gently to an understanding that every aspect of life can be a door into the Love of God, and an opportunity for prayer, reflection and spiritual growth. This is a collection of thoughts and quotations for every situation, for everyone who is looking for a sympathetic and thoughtful support for their daily spiritual life, or for a series of meditations to use on retreat.

Fairacres Publications 120 Scholars have often concentrated on the theological writings of St Athanasius (c. 296-373 AD) and on his influence as a religious leader, so that his contribution to the monastic life has not received due recognition. In these six letters addressed to monks, Athanasius is revealed as a wise spiritual guide and loving pastor, determined that the monks should receive sound teaching, so as to avoid the pitfalls of heresies current at that time. As Leslie Barnard notes in his Introduction, ‘The permanent significance of these letters lies in their wisdom, moderation and balance.’

SLG Press Contemplative Poetry 9 This book contains poems by Henry Vaughan, all of them selected from the 1655 edition of Silex Scintillans. Almost all are followed by a related poem from George Herbert’s 1633 collection, The Temple. For Vaughan, Herbert was that ‘blessed man, whose holy life and verse gained many pious Converts’: poets who wisely exchanged ‘vain and vicious subjects’ for ‘divine Themes and Celestial praise’. Vaughan thought of himself as ‘the least’ of those converts, but the poetry in Silex Scintillans shows him matching and even sometimes surpassing his master’s work.

Fairacres Publications 198 I wrote these stories when I was living in Hackney, East London. Life was quite hard. My health was poor, I was re-evaluating my career and I was beginning to recognize that I needed to leave London which had been my home for twenty years. It was a place I had grown to love: its estates, its religions, its shabby backstreets, its people from all over the world. Then I discovered the ‘old men’, the Egyptian Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries. They entranced me. So every day before starting work I would translate one of their sayings into the context I knew: the urban wilderness that is Babylondon (a Rastafarian term for London). Reading these reworkings again after ten years I found they made me cry and realized they were a love letter to the London I knew, and a hymn of gratitude to the ‘old men’ who saved my life.

SLG Press Contemplative Poetry 11 This anthology of thoughts seeks to be a various and portable nudger into the corners, plains and hilltops of all kinds of what might be called Wisdom. The poems and extracts selected here may be enough in themselves; kickers-on to bigger, longer, things, or no; touchpapers to bright thoughts either related or, in the end, unrelated to them; or a spur to read more of the same, be it poems or poets, or more writing of the thinking kind, philosophers and parsons. This collection of snippets is intended to stimulate, lead on to more. It is less an anthology, and more a trigger, leading the reader, as they dip and choose, read and leave, to whatever depth of thought in whatever area they might choose.