These rich prayers and chants are a companion to the book Sounds of the Eternal; the CD serves as an aid to awaken awareness of the goodness of creation and of the body. The prayers, inspired by Jewish and Celtic spirituality, are interspersed with an accompanying chant. The music and vocals of a Celtic and middle-eastern nature have been said to be “inspiring,” “strengthening,” “peaceful” and create a sense of “nearness.” Excellent for prayer and meditation groups, retreats and workshops. This CD, originally published in 2006, has a new cover which is inspired by the artwork of Tobi Kahn.
John Philip Newell is a Scottish poet and scholar with a passion for peace among the great wisdom traditions of humanity. He is internationally acclaimed for his work in the field of Celtic spirituality, having authored over 15 books, including Listening for the Heartbeat of God, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation, and his most recent visionary work, A New Harmony: the Spirit, the Earth, & the Human Soul.
Suzanne Butler is from Edinburgh, Scotland. Listening and performing music were important to her from an early age. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in Music. She has worked with the children’s charity Fischy Music, exploring self-esteem and emotions among children. Suzanne was also featured in another of John Philip Newell’s CDs, Chanting for Peace: Meditative Chants and Prayers.
Linda Larkin, composer, has performed in the Santa Fe area since 1996 and provides a wide variety of classical, popular, Celtic, Latin and sacred music. She performs at weddings, parties, conferences and memorial services. Linda holds a Masters Degree in music and maintains an active harp studio in Santa Fe. She has presented workshops at national conferences and co-led international pilgrimages. She is the founding director of High Desert Harps, a performing group of 10-12 harpists.
For many years now the Celtic poet, peacemaker and scholar John Philip Newell has been writing about the sacredness of being, the of-Godness that is at the heart of our lives and all life. In this new work he asks what the world in general—and Christianity in particular—would look like if the true depths of our sacredness were to come forth in radically new ways.
Drawing on modern prophets from East and West, and using the holy island of Iona as an icon of new beginnings, this book speaks directly to the heart of Christians—those within the well-defined bounds of Christian practice and those on the disenchanted edges—as well as to the faithful and seekers of other traditions. It offers the hope of a fresh stirring of the Spirit among us and the invitation to be part of laboring in a new holy birth of sacred living, a true rebirthing of God.
At the core of this collection are 30 poems inspired by the stories of kinship between saints and animals. They come mostly from the early Christian desert and Celtic traditions, but also feature later medieval saints like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Julian of Norwich. These stories point to a reverence for a different way of knowing and being in the world, one our world is hungry for. Each poem in this collection is meant to be a doorway to intimacy with our inner wilderness, a call to sit and be present to what we discover beyond the borders of our neatly controlled worlds.
Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE is the online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and global, ecumenical community integrating contemplative practice and creative expression. She is a Benedictine oblate living on the west coast of Ireland with her husband John. Together they lead pilgrimages and retreats in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Austria. Christine is the author of twelve books on spirituality, monastic wisdom, creativity, and the arts including The Artist’s Rule and The Soul’s Slow Ripening. Her poems have been published in journals in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the UK.
These essays and short fiction by Gordon Atkinson were written between 2004 and 2008. Most were posted at his blog, RealLivePreacher.com. Some were originally published at “The Christian Century.”
Poetry and prayer are closely related. We often look to poets to give language to our deepest hopes, fears, losses—and prayers. Poets slow us down. They teach us to stop and go in before we go on. They play at the edges of mystery, holding a tension between line and sentence, between sense and reason, between the transcendent and the deeply, comfortingly familiar.
When Poets Pray contains thoughtful meditations by Marilyn McEntyre on choice poems/prayers and poems about prayer. Her beautifully written reflections are contemplative exercises, not scholarly analyses, meant more as invitation than instruc¬tion. Here McEntyre shares gifts that she herself has received from poets who pray, or who reflect on prayer, believing that they have other gifts to offer readers seeking spiritual companionship along our pilgrim way.
POETS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK
Hildegard of Bingen
Lucille Clifton
Walter Chalmers Smith
Robert Frost
Wendell Berry
Joy Harjo
John Donne
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Said
Marilyn McEntyre
George Herbert
Thomas Merton
Denise Levertov
Scott Cairns
Mary Oliver
Marin Sorescu
T. S. Eliot
Richard Wilbur
Francisco X. Alarcon
Anna Kamienska
Michael Chitwood
Psalm 139:1-12
Marilyn McEntyre is professor of English at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California. She has written dozens of articles and reviews in such journals as The Washington Post, Theology Today, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Christianity Today. She is also the author of Dwelling in the Text and A Healing Art: Regeneration through Autobiography.
