The experience of loneliness is as universal as hunger or thirst. Because it affects us more intimately, we are less inclined to speak of it. But who has not known its gnawing ache? The fear of loneliness causes anguish. It prompts reckless deeds. To this, every age has borne witness. No voice is more insidious than the one that whispers in our ear: ‘You are irredeemably alone, no light will pierce your darkness.’ The fundamental statement of Christianity is to convict that voice of lying. The Christian condition unfolds within the certainty that ultimate reality, the source of all that is, is a personal reality of communion, no metaphysical abstraction. Men and women, made ‘in the image and likeness’ of God, bear the mark of that original communion stamped on their being. When our souls and bodies cry out for Another, it is not a sign of sickness, but of health. A labour of potential joy is announced. We are reminded of what we have it in us to become. That our labour may be fruitful, Scripture repeatedly exhorts us to ‘remember’. The remembrance enjoined is partly introspective and existential, partly historical, for the God who took flesh to redeem our loneliness leaves traces in history. This book examines six facets of Christian remembrance, complementing biblical exegesis with readings from literature, ancient and modern. It aims to be an essay in theology. At the same time, it proposes a grounded reflection on what it means to be a human being.
Les mer
List of illustrations Introduction 1 Remember you are dust 2 Remember you were a slave in Egypt 3 Remember Lot's wife 4 Do this in memory of me 5 The Counsellor will call everything to mind 6 Beware lest you forget the Lord Afterword: In Memoriam Notes on the Text and on Sources Permissions
Les mer
The Shattering of Loneliness is an extraordinary book: not too long but richly dense; profound in its insights and scholarship yet eminently readable; and though clearly written by a monk happy to be a monk, it has as much relevance to the ordinary Christian as to the Trappist monks in the author's care.
Les mer
In this unique and profound meditation on loneliness and humanity, Erik Varden, a Trappist monk, uses a range of sources - from Aristophanes and Virgil through Athanasius and Bernard of Clairvaux to Hammarskjöld, Akhmatova and Makine - to illuminate his themes of Loneliness and Remembrance
Les mer
A profound and accessible spiritual book in the same vein as those by Timothy Radcliffe, Ruth Burrows, Thomas Keating and David Foster

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781472953285
Publisert
2018-09-20
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Continuum
Vekt
210 gr
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
135 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
192

Forfatter

Biographical note

Dom Erik Varden is Abbot of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire. Norwegian by birth, he was, before entering religious life, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. He has published several translations and scholarly monographs and is much in demand as a preacher, spiritual director and lecturer.