Recommendations based on "The Life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian"

C. S. Lewis was a prolific letter writer, and his personal correspondence reveals much of his private life, reflections, friendships, and the progress of his thought. This second of a three-volume collection contains the letters Lewis wrote after his conversion to Christianity, as he began a lifetime of serious writing. Lewis corresponded with many of the twentieth century's major literary figures, including J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. Here we encounter a surge of letters in response to a new audience of laypeople who wrote to him after the great success of his BBC radio broadcasts during World War II -- talks that would ultimately become his masterwork, Mere Christianity.Volume II begins with C. S. Lewis writing his first major work of literary history, The Allegory of Love, which established him as a scholar with imaginative power. These letters trace his creative journey and recount his new circle of friends, "The Inklings," who meet regularly to share their writing. Tolkien reads aloud chapters of his unfinished The Lord of the Rings, while Lewis shares portions of his first novel, Out of the Silent Planet. Lewis's weekly letters to his brother, Warnie, away serving in the army during World War II, lead him to begin writing his first spiritual work, The Problem of Pain.After the serialization of The Screwtape Letters, the director of religious broadcasting at the BBC approached Lewis and the "Mere Christianity" talks were born. With his new broadcasting career, Lewis was inundated with letters from all over the world. His faithful, thoughtful responses to numerous questions reveal the clarity and wisdom of his theological and intellectual beliefs.Volume II includes Lewis's correspondence with great writers such as Owen Barfield, Arthur C. Clarke, Sheldon Vanauken, and Dom Bede Griffiths. The letters address many of Lewis's interests -- theology, literary criticism, poetry, fantasy, and children's stories -- as well as reveal his relation ships with close friends and family. But what is apparent throughout this volume is how this quiet bachelor professor in England touched the lives of many through an amazing discipline of personal correspondence. Walter Hooper's insightful notes and compre hensive biographical appendix of the correspon dents make this an irreplaceable reference for those curious about the life and work of one of the most creative minds of the modern era.

An intimate letter by one of the 20th Century's greatest spiritual thinkers delves into her struggles with faith and the Church.

Walking is one of the simplest things we do as humans. It’s how most of us experience life.In The Way Under Our Feet, Graham Usher conveys how exhilarating it is to walk into the depths of our humanity. We become more ready to recognize the needs as well as the joys of others; we sift our thoughts; we seek to heal our battered world, even as we glory in the beauty of nature; we find ourselves companying with our three mile an hour God.‘This is a lovely book, full of light, grace and meaning. Usher celebrates his passion for walking by exploring religious texts and stories, but this by no means confines his thoughts. We are drawn by secular texts, too: Macfarlane sits alongside Kierkegaard; Thoreau and Walden alongside T. S. Eliot. Through them all, we learn why walking is so unspeakably good for heart, soul and body.’DAME FIONA REYNOLDS, MASTER OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AUTHOR OF THE FIGHT FOR BEAUTY‘Wonderful. Offers highly original and striking observations combined with apposite, moving and often humorous personal anecdotes. A classic, catching a genuine and humble holiness.’BISHOP DAVID WILBOURNE

Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only thirty-nine when he was executed by the Nazis in 1945, yet his influence on Christian life has been enormous. His passionate, theology-based opposition to Nazism made him a leader, along with Karl Barth, in Germany's Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer is embraced by both liberal and conservative Christians, and the integrity of his faith and life have led believers everywhere to recognize him as the one theologian of his time to lead future generations of Christians into the new millennium. His writings are a treasure of spiritual wisdom, social con-science, pastoral care, and theological insights that are an inspiration to us all, no matter what challenges we face.A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer showcases his writings, letters, and sermons in a daily devotional format, encouraging and deepening readers' reflections and meditations. With a foreword by Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics, A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer will take readers on a 365-day journey of understanding with this deeply spiritual man.

Saturday, December 14thFeel led to keep a diary. A sort of spiritual log for the benefit of others in the future. Each new divine insight and experience will shine like a beacon in the darkness!Can’t think of anything to put in today.Still, tomorrow’s Sunday. Must be something on a Sunday, surely?Adrian Plass is hilarious, pure and simple. His readers are legion – and this is the bestselling book that started it all, converting thousands of people who love to laugh into avid Plass readers.The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass (aged 37 ¾) is merriment and facetiousness at its best – a journal of the wacky Christian life of Plass’s fictional alter-ego, who chronicles in his ‘sacred’ diary the daily goings-on in the lives of ordinary-but-somewhat-eccentric people he knows and meets. Reading it will doeth good like a medicine!

Enduring and influential early Christian texts. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition of these essential texts reflects current idiom and the latest scholarship. Here are the Letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, among the most famous documents of early Christianity; these letters, addressing core theological questions, were written to a half dozen different congregations while Ignatius was en route to Rome as a prisoner, condemned to die in the wild-beast arena. Also in this collection is a letter to the Philippian church by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and friend of Ignatius, as well as an account of Polycarp's martyrdom. There are several kinds of texts in the Apostolic Fathers collection, representing different religious outlooks. The manual called the Didache sets forth precepts for religious instruction, worship, and ministry. The Epistle of Barnabas searches the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, for testimony in support of Christianity and against Judaism. Probably the most widely read in the early Christian centuries was The Shepherd of Hermas, a book of revelations that develops a doctrine of repentance.

Mississippi, 1963. Essie Lee Lane is a small-town girl from a humble background who doesn't take "stuff" from nobody. Yet even she isn't ready for the Reverend Theophilus Simmons, one of the South's most fiery, respected young preachers during an era of vast social change. Down-to-earth, caring, and oh-so-fine, he's everything Essie never thought she'd find in a man, and he realizes she is everything a pastor needs in a wife-a First Lady to share the joys and challenges of his ministry. But Essie and Theophilus soon discover that dealing with the contentious members of Theophilus's church will be no honeymoon. With their parishioners in turmoil and their denomination facing a major scandal, Essie and Theophilus must put their faith and love to the ultimate test as they struggle to lead their congregation to God's sweetest rewards.

"If death must come—then far better for it to come when I'm shoulder to shoulder with these men who are fighting to preserve our country. . . . They are going to know that, in spite of being 'scared as hell' like the rest of them, a Catholic Priest is still going ahead and doing his work." Father James P. Flynn could have been speaking for the rest of the chaplain corps, for he and his comrades shared fully in the lot of the common soldier: in Pacific island jungles, Europe's battered cities, North African deserts, and the oceans in between. And like the common soldier, chaplains endured the same combat perils, exposure to the elements, internal conflicts, boredom, and intense longings for peace and home. Father Donald Crosby chronicles the little-known but crucial wartime role of Catholic chaplains and celebrates their compassion, courage, good humor, and humility. Their wartime efforts saved lives, provided comfort and hope, and renewed lost faith in a dark time. In the process, he shows, they also forged the beginnings of what would become the widespread ecumenical spirit of cooperation among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews that followed the war's end. Although Crosby praises their heroic efforts, very much like those of Protestant and Jewish chaplains, he reveals that they were subject to the same human frailties as the men they comforted. They were also intensely patriotic and raised few objections to the racist and propagandistic depictions of the enemy, to the massed bombings of German and Japanese cities, or even to the use of the atomic bomb at war's end. (On the other hand, they zealously opposed many of their charges' sexual activities, including the use of prophylactics.) Drawing upon many previously untapped church and government archival sources, as well as extensive interviews, Crosby's study vividly portrays faith under fire and grace at groundlevel, reminding us again that "there are no atheists in foxholes."

Maximos the Confessor (580-662) occupies a unique position in the history of Byzantine philosophy, theology, and spirituality. His profound spiritual experiences and penetrating theological vision found complex and often astonishing expression in his unparalleled command of Greek philosophy, making him one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. So thoroughly did his thought come to influence the Byzantine theological tradition that it is impossible to trace the subsequent history of Orthodox Christianity without knowledge of his work. The Ambigua (or "Book of Difficulties") is Maximos's greatest philosophical and doctrinal work, in which his daring originality, prodigious talent for speculative thinking, and analytical acumen are on lavish display. In the Ambigua, a broad range of theological topics--cosmology, anthropology, the philosophy of mind and language, allegory, asceticism, and metaphysics--are transformed in a synthesis of Aristotelian logic, Platonic metaphysics, Stoic psychology, and the arithmetical philosophy of a revived Pythagoreanism. The result is a labyrinthine map of the mind's journey to God that figured prominently in the Neoplatonic revival of the Komnenian Renaissance and the Hesychast Controversies of the Late Byzantine period. This remarkable work has never before been available in a critically-based edition or English translation.