Ecclesiologist Rev. Sinead O’Connor at prayer

John J. Thompson, one of the best music critics ever, on the new  Sinead O' Connor album..excerpts:

Singer, priest, boss: the latest from Sinead O’Connor by John J. Thompson

Is it a coincidence that Irish alt-rock pioneer Sinead O’Connor has released a song called 
 “Take Me To Church” just as fellow Irish singer-songwriter Hozier is making waves with 
 a song of the same name?

....When she belts out “Oh, take me to church / I’ve done so many bad things it hurts. / Take me to church, but not the ones that hurt / ’cuz that ain’t the truth / and that’s not what it’s for,” it feels much more like a prayer than an accusation.

On her new album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, O’Connor continues the comeback she began with 2012’s confessional, guttural and blatantly Christ-haunted How About I Be Me (And You Be You?)...

..the songs that follow underscore the truth that there is a lot more to womanhood than being with a man. The album’s journey unfolds through several musical iterations that include snarling rock, sensitive pop and even African rhythm and blues until taking a left turn in the song “The Voice of My Doctor,” which begins a set of edgier, darker tunes exploring the true underpinnings of desire. That act climaxes with the fantastic shuffle “8 Good Reasons,” in which her character defies suicidal thoughts and turns yet another corner. It is at that point that she begs, “Take me to church!”...


...As many contemporary artists reject their connection to a community of faith when its leaders make bad choices or its message becomes unpalatable to the rest of the world, O’Connor continues to call herself a Catholic despite her deep disagreements she has with many in that community. When she speaks about the “smoke screen” role religion often plays in keeping people apart from God, her words come across with the authority of a boss and the compassion of a big sister.

I’m Not Bossy is a fascinating set of tunes from one of the most consistently creative artists of the last 25 years. The fact that so many of its songs fade out before really feeling finished reinforces the idea that this discussion is far from over.

new song (let alone new look) for St. Sinead: "Take me to church..but not the ones that hurt"

play "Take Me to Church"  here

The Divine Comedy by Milla Jovovich

I didn't even know this  1993 album existed...but sometimes you take a chance at the thrift store.   Don't mistake the cover  (not safe for church) for Viva La Vida (:....but the title ("Divine Comedy") its reference, and the cover art (she's naked, reaching to heaven, but held down to earth by a snake) lets you know this is not the throway pop album by someone known primarily as a model/actress/designer.

Milla , a spiritual Russian Orthodox (ish), played a haunting character in Bono's screenplay, "The Million Dollar Hotel," and the album  (written  when she was 15) sounds Godhaunted so far.  Besides, it has an ethereal Sinead O' Connor/Kate Bush vibe..

Rolling Stone review:

To study Milla Jovovich's face at age 12 was to confront a Lolita even Nabokov could not have imagined. The Russian-born model projected an intensity that was smoldering and mysterious. Her inscrutable pose hinted at unknowable depths - and made you hunger for a glimpse of that knowledge.

That said, it remains a stunning surprise to discover the stylistically exotic and all-out soulful The Divine Comedy, Milla's remarkable recording debut. Now 18, all American and would-be poster girl for the X crowd, she is no crossover opportunist or vacant pretender. She is a natural poet and melodist. Produced by Rupert Hine and Richard Feldman, The Divine Comedy is strikingly mature and rich in invention, counterpointing Milla's lovelorn, angst-laced poetry with vivid melodies and arrangements that find a common spirit in synth pop, European folk and psychedelic dream rock. Chiming dulcimers, sawing fiddles, mandolins, harmoniums and hurdy-gurdies coalesce in atmospheric settings that are alternately dramatic, exultant and carnivalesque.

Milla's post-mortems of failed love affairs ("Gentleman Who Fell", "It's Your Life") and spasms of existential grief ("Clock") are free of neurosis and gratuitous detail. That life's a bitch is a given for Milla's generation, and this fluent relationship with crisis informs her blunt verse, airy vocals and overall precociousness. "No, I haven't seen the flowers yet/From the broken seeds I'd planted/But the ground is still too red/From the wickedness you did," she sings with lite vulnerability on "You Did It All Before". "Ruby Lane" and "Bang Your Head" cut their grim messages with arrangements that are - as the titles suggest - trippy fun. And on "Charlie", Milla - whose voice synthesizes two obvious influences, Kate Bush and Sinead O'Connor - dismisses a junkie boyfriend with Dietrichlike whimsy: "Oh Charlie, a boy and his toys/Hands could never comfort you, not the way that steel could do."

Dante's Divine Comedy chronicled a turbulent journey through the afterlife. Milla, like the rest of us, is stuck negotiating the far-too-harrowing here and now. Still, she has had the imagination to turn her dark visions into music of idiosyncratic beauty. Therein lies the solution to the mystery: What was lurking behind young Milla's smoldering eyes? The burning intelligence of an artist.  link

Sufjan Stevens Writes Open Letter to Miley Cyrus—About Her Grammar

Link:

Sufjan Stevens Writes Open Letter to Miley Cyrus—About Her Grammar

three cheerful Judgement Day ditties...add yours

77s:
--
Rev. Sinead:

Cash:


Yes, i know i left out this one (because it is cheerful

Out Of The Depths

by Sinéad O'Connor

Based on Psalm 130 

Out of the depths I cry to You oh Lord
Don't let my cries for mercy be ignored
If  keep account of sins oh who would stand?
But You  have forgiveness in your hands

And I've heard religion say you're to be feared
But I don't buy into everything I hear
And it seems to me you're hostage to those rules
That were made by religion and not by You 

And I'm wondering will u ever get yourself free
Is it bad to think You  might like help from me?
Is there anything my little heart can do
To help religion share us with You ?

For oh you're like a ghost in your own home
Nobody hears You  crying all alone
Oh You are the one true really voiceless one
They have their backs turned to you for worship of
Gold and stone

And to see You  prisoner oh makes me weep
Nobody hears You  screaming in the streets
And it's sad but true how the old saying goes
If God lived on earth people would break his windows

I long for You  as watchmen long for the end of night
I long for You  as watchmen long for the end of night
I long for You  as watchmen long for the end of night

acoustic:
electric:

Sinead interview: Theology

Sinéad's "contract with the Holy Spirit"

From The Saturday Times"

A hug begins my interview with Sinéad O’Connor and a hug ends it. For the two hours in between we talk about everything from her infamous ripping up of a photograph of Pope John Paul II on the American TV show Saturday Night Live in 1992 to her frequent accusations of child abuse within the Roman Catholic priesthood — which fell on deaf ears for years until being vindicated in spectacular fashion. Christians across America drove steamrollers over her records after the Saturday Night Live incident, but O’Connor claims that it is faith, rather than a lack of it, that drives everything she does. 

“Making music in the first place is a result of my entering into a contract with the Holy Spirit when I was a kid,” she says. “I knew that God was much more loving than he was being portrayed in the church, and I felt the best way to address that was music. I see music as a priesthood.” 

...“Oh, people only know a tiny bit about me,” she says with a laugh. “They only know a millimetre. But I have no shame, no. I don’t have an embarrassed gene, unless I declare my undying love to someone that doesn’t want to go out with me. I don’t do regret. Years ago, when I thought I was a terrible person, I went to confession and told the priest about what a ** I was. Eventually he banged his fist on the table and said: ‘This is blasphemy! You are what God made you, what God wanted you to be, so you can’t stand there criticising it.’ 

“He was right. We are what we are and being a truthful person comes with being a singer. That’s our job: to be emotionally honest. Bob Dylan is honest and so was John Lennon. Singers show everything, warts and all. That translates into your life off stage, so everyone knows your wildness.” 

...For the first time in years the focus is on me as a musician, probably because for a long time I wasn’t recording albums designed for the pop arena. But it was important for me to make Theology. I grew up in a country with terrible religious music and I wanted to give God something decent to listen to. It’s the only album I’ll be taking into the coffin with me when I go.”

So begins a treatise on O’Connor’s deep religious beliefs. “People say to me: ‘Why did you risk all this fame and money by ripping up a picture of the Pope?’ A guy wrote recently that the reason I was a mockery to people in showbusiness was because I was an artist with no sense of self-preservation and that is a dangerous thing. I was a very religious person and Catholicism taught me to reject the vanities of the world. I knew all the fame and money was bollocks. I knew I was a wild character and I couldn’t change that. People say to me: ‘Why didn’t you want everyone to think you were great? Why wouldn’t you be a control freak over your good name?’ The answer is because my only duty is to the Holy Spirit.” 

All of this contributes towards an impression of O’Connor as definitely wild, definitely narcissistic, and perhaps a little unhinged, but never less than honest or brave. “You have to be,” she says. “You’ll have a breakdown if you falsify things. The big influence on me is Bob Dylan. I wanted to be a singer after listening to Idiot Wind because he’s not a nice person in that song. He has the balls to show that side of himself. I think that’s what people want, because artists are here to do your madness for you. We’re here to say the things you cannot say because you have to go to work and you don’t have time to go to the nuthouse. Artists are a bit ***ed up and we are trying to work out our +++, but so are a lot of other people.” 

... But doing music doesn’t make you the saviour of the universe. You’re only dealing with things that everyone has to deal with.” 
For another hour or so we touch on O’Connor’s love of the American singer John Grant, whose song Queen of Denmark she covers beautifully on her latest album, and she says she’s been enjoying performing live more than ever before. Sooner or later, however, the conversation always returns to religion. O’Connor explains that she identifies deeply with the Rastafarian ideal of music as spiritual expression, that she is a priest (she was ordained in the late Nineties by Michael Cox, a bishop in the independent Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, but you feel she is referring to her approach to music as religious communication more than official ordination), and that Christian belief in Ireland is deep-rooted and genuine, however tainted it is by the abuse scandal. 
“I realised that recently,” she says. “Katie Taylor, who won the Olympics gold medal for boxing, gave a talk outside my house in Bray, and said in front of 10,000 people that she felt God was in the ring with her. There was a ripple of joyous applause and I thought: ‘The Irish people still do believe in God. We haven’t lost our spirituality. We’re people who know that energy and nothing can take it away, whatever happens to us.’” 

What, for O’Connor, is at the heart of her belief? She stares contemplatively down at the sofa for a while, composing her answer. “There was an old lady I went to when I was younger, when I was upset because everyone hated me,” she says. “And she said to me: ‘You’re not here to win a popularity contest.’ I see that now. It wasn’t given to me to explain my actions when it comes to the church. It was given to me to do those things. I was hurt for being treated like a piece of shit, but at the end of the day it’s not my business to make anyone understand what I have done, or even question myself about it. You take your orders from the sergeant major. You don’t moan about the consequences.”    LINK

top albums of 2012: : lotsa lynx

 FIRST, Ryan's list, as unveiled on Twitter:

Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

1. Hammock - Departure Songs: post-rock masterwork. Sprawling, densely layered double album, sounds like planets spiraling over fiscal cliff

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

2. The Walkmen - Heaven: indie music for grownups...family vacations, storytime, and bittersweet love (the only kind). And it sounds amazing

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

3. The Killers - Battle Born: Brandon Flowers is gifted. Ambitious, soaring, passion-pop songs that tell Our Story, circa '12. Not trendy.

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

4. Japandroids - Celebration Rock. If crafting fuzzy, stadium-sized, 3XL anthems is so easy, ask yourself this: Why am I not in the Spin 50?

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

5. Of Monsters and Men - My Head Is An Animal: many instruments, voices make a pleasant racket...should sound plastic but instead is sublime

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

6. From Indian Lakes - Able Bodies: Making Central Cal proud with mathpop time-shifts, sharp-edged guitars, AND singable, intelligent songs.

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

7. Kathleen Edwards - Voyaeur: Sounds like spring in the dead of winter. Folksy, modern, tragicomic songs delivered by veteran songstress.

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

8. Jealous Sound - A Gentle Reminder: gently reminding us how needed Blair's heartbroken lyricism is. Heard it before? Yes. Still vital? Yes

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

9. Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes: All my downtime makes me nervous, Finn says. Somehow I get that. Pure gutpunch stories via Nashville.

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1h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

For those of you who aren't music junkies, let me apologize in advance...this will be annoying. 2012 Top Ten Albums in 140 characters each

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4h Ryan Townsend ‏@oneryantownsend

10. Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror: surprised by how much I enjoyed outrageously abrasive production/infectious melodies. Over. The. Top.

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by Craig Detweiler: (note he included Sinead in the first link!):

• TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2012: Year of the Musical Comeback
• The Best Music of 2012: If you can find it…

by Jeff Keuss: 

• Top Ten albums of 2012

Christianity Today:

    The 2012 CT Music Awards | Christianity Today

Rolling Stone:

• Rolling Stone's Best Music of 2012: Albums, Songs, Videos and More

  
  
• 
  

  Readers' Poll: The Best Albums of 2012

  
  

  
  

Sinead's "Queen of Denmark": wow

Wow..from the unforgettable opening couplet..

...to the confessional/satirical  Randy Newmanesque/Dylanesque/Steve Tayloresque lines that follow.

...to the Alanis Morisetteish/Sigur Roe-sish punkish riff of the chorus..

.... to the obligatory prayer and Jesus references..

.to the final line's revelation of the title--
                             but  who is it addressed to?

  (Language alert..after all,  LOL, she's an Irish prophet so it's an R-rated psalmthing.  Ask Eugene Peterson about that)..



I thought this was an unuusal and brave song for Sinead. Then just now I learned it is a cover of a song by someone named John Grant:

Queen Of Denmark lyrics and music video provided by SongLyrics.com

I will have to research that guy..I am sure Ryan PunkMonk knows all about him..

Sinead O'Connor album:How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?

And the album closes with the "Glori Patri"..

A

album on amazon.com
Interview: Sinead The Theologist pleads the blood of Jesus and shakes her..


Making of album:


Sampler:

Entire album:





(Note on song below: This is the only video here that is NOT the album version.
Too bad, see this amazon review "Back Where You Belong -- Sorry, fabulous Daniel Lanois. You and your 800-piece orchestra really made Sinead's song shine for the 'Waterhorse' movie, but Sinead reinvents her own song here and sends it to an emotional place that will make men cry for 100 years, at least. The stunning, heartbreaking, nougaty center of this splendid record."):

Sinead The Theologist pleads the blood of Jesus and shakes her..

Sinead  O'Connor, the theologist 
(I just  had to use that word, as it seems to fit here.  One of my students used it in a  paper, and I didn't even know the word existed.  I just assumed he meant "theologian," but guessed at the wrong word)
 is at it again.

 Here's an excerpt of a USA Today story on her new album.  Three things stand out to me so far:

 1)Of course, the gutsy song where she (or actually the Holy Spirit, as narrator of the song) pleads the blood of Jesus over the church .  Dare you to check it out here.  You WILL have an opinion on it!

  2)Sinead is one of a  long (OK, short( line of artists (Elvis, Marvin Gaye, U2...
see this interview with Bono) who take the risk of speaking/singing honestly and without self-censoring on the sexuality/spirituality connection.  Sinead's last tine of the interview  (You WILL have an opinion on it!) is classic (and reminded me of this),  It also is actually a  shockingly-phrased, but self-effacing reference to celebrity..She is good at being honest. (see this), even about sexuality (see this)..

3)The line "She lets people in quickly, perhaps more readily than she should" is well-observed, and helps me as I post on the topic of self-disclosure (see posts on that topic by clicking that keyword l at bottom of this post.

To hear the celebrity media tell it, Sinead O'Connor is practically unhinged — a capricious, troubled woman who calls off her marriage after 16 days, one who puts out a plea for psychiatric help on Twitter saying, "I'm really unwell."




In conversation, though, the 45-year-old Irish singer comes across as forthright and engaging, by turns spiritually minded, bawdy and even a bit vulnerable. She lets people in quickly, perhaps more readily than she should.


Those qualities also are present on How About I Be Me (And You Be You), out Tuesday. It's also part of what's behind the title of the new album, one she initially intended to call Home.

"I've spent all my life as an artist being told what I should be and what I shouldn't be — basically, why don't you just be somebody else," says O'Connor, who had a No. 1 hit in 1990 with Nothing Compares 2 U but hasn't released a new album since 2007's Theology.

"I just got sick of it, because I was having so much fun doing what I was doing, and I was being me. … I was going to call it just How About I Be Me, but I thought that was selfish, and that I should express that I don't mind you being you, either."..

..."The reason I'm alive is that people gave me hope," she says. "Bob Dylan, in particular, you know what I mean?"

"Artists keep people alive. We're meant to give people hope. … Where you have war, you have a spiritual problem. So the spiritual leaders of the world are failing. I believe the job of artists is to be the emergency fire force. As well as shaking our (breasts)."

      -USA Today, full article here

Rev. Sinead O'Connor: "i plead the blood of Jesus over you.."

It's chilling  and perhaps inevitable that Sinead O'Connor finally  begin a new song ("Take Off Your Shoes" )with "I plead the blood of Jesus over you."
No surprise, as Godhaunted as she is (see: Sinead Holds Back the Night, and Sinead on "dictating when God can come out and St. Sinead the Smokin') 

But don't call Christian radio quite yet.

It's s not really a  surprise, but still a jolt to hear the next line:
"..and over every f___ing thing you do"

It's not a throwaway profanity,  but another protest against sexual abuse within the system:
In concert, she suggests this is how she imagines "The Holy Spirit would address the Vatican"  (a response to child abuse, etc).

If you've never heard an earlier prophetic prayer-song by Rev. Sinead, one that did actually get recorded (by David Crowder) on a Christian album, watch the first  two videos (safe for church) you're ready for the newer, edgier one under discussion, play the other videos (and see if your priest will allow it at mass...):







I plead the blood of Jesus over you
I plead the blood of Jesus over you
And over every f---ing thing you do
Seven times I plead the blood of Jesus over you

Take off your shoes - you're on hallowed ground
Even you can't lie when I'm around
Take off your shoes - you're on hallowed ground

Behold on the last lamp light at the very end of your street
I'm whispering something
Come closer to me
Come closer to me

I say you're running out of battery, you're running out of battery
And I don't see no bunnies around here

If you believed at all in your breviary, if you believed even in just the ghost of me, you wouldn't now be so surprised to see me

In vanity you took the name of me
You brought me into infamy
And now you're so surprised to see me, and now you're so surprised to see me

Sinead on "dictating when God can come out and love someone"

On rescuing God from religion; "dictating when God can come out and love someone", etc..
video here

Three Catholic(ish) Girls

I would love it of three of my favorite Catholic (uh, more or less Catholic...one even 'ordained' Catholic..) girls would record together...it might not be out of the question, the first two are friends, whose daughters went to school together. And it would likely have a bit more edge than these three, and these three (even though one of them is named below)

• Moya (see this interview, though maddeningly a section is missing between page 1 and 2, and page 3 is missing altogether right when she's about to talk more about Sinead!...see also my previous post on her, where she gave me a personal audio message via Keltic Ken)

• Sinead (several previous posts on this blog, click her name below )
  

• Alanis (previous post here)

"Celtic Treasure" by Liz Babbs...a coffee table book to actually be read

I received a review copy of Liz Babbs' gift-size edition "Celtic Treasure," and want to brag on it.

I won't go into much of Celtic spirituality actually is, as that is what this new book (accurately subtitled,

"Unearthing the Riches of Celtic Spirituality")

and Babb's previous integrative book and music( "Celtic Heart") are all about.

But if this is all new to you, you may want to start with

this video interview with the author:

and our own Keltic Ken's audio interview with her at this link or here below:

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Or for more 101 info on Celtic Christianity, testdrive this article, browse Len's posts tagged "Celtic," or my posts on "thin places."

Suffice to say Celtic Christianity is a historic movement much more multiplex than just the powerful point person you may associate with it (St. Patrick), with profound help for us walking in the Kingdom today. Bottom line takeaway, perhaps, is: heaven comes to earth now, it's not just us going to heaven later. There are ways to form and reform community/communitas in ways that leave room for sacred space (without the idolatry of place). And there are means to discipleship that are (as we say at our church) mystical and missional; as well as monastic and marketplaced. Celtic worldview eschews "either-or" thinking in favor of a biblical "both-and" approach.

Since that just confused you, anyway (:....

I much prefer to introduce you to things Celtic, and Babbs' delightful book, in a less propositional way...which is itself indeed a very intrinsically and epistemologically Celtic way of learning.

Risking being propositional, then, here are several (random) bragging points around the book(:

First of all: it, its layout and photographs, are gorgeous.

This is a coffee table book (as we say on our side of the pond) that is not to only ornamentally decorate the table, and decidedly not one to set a coffee cup on. Like all good books I own, I took notes. But unlike any other book I own, I felt I had to make the notes on a separate sheet of paper, and not in the book itself..........my scribbles would look like sacrilegious graffiti on the beauty of the book.

------------

Around 1989, I took an amazing class from George Hunter III, who had at that time done some research that later became the wonderful book, "The Celtic Way of Evangelism." Several years later, Hunter presented that material for our West Coast Men's Retreat: great theory made practical. I could get quite excited about the implications of Celtic spirituality/theology/music for evangelism...in fact, too excited, if not careful. (Far too utilitarian, modern-evangelical, and compartmentalized an approach).

What Hunter's material, and what Celtic Christian music (Moya Brennan, Iona, et al... and other artists who may not be officially "Christian" or consistently "Celtic": Sinnead O'Connor, U2 as in "Drowning Man") does for me...

....and what Babb's book dramatically and powerfully does for me..

is my second bragging point:

..it challenges me into the implications of Celtic spirituality for all of life.

Celtic spirituality is holistic, sytemic, nonlinear, centered-set, inductive/abductive and intuitive.

How timely that those terms are all buzzwords for postmodern sensitivity; but they are first and foremost signposts of Celtic spirituality, which was (and is) ahead of it's time and therefore on time.

--------------------------

Thirdly:

Babbs' prose and poems, especially due to the way they are typset, are the perfect thread to weave together the themes of the book. They are not mere markers or punctuation; they are to the point, and are the point. They themselves express and embed a Celtic sense in a way that historical narrative inherently cannot.

One example:

For love is of God.

It's the life force shaping all creation.

The very essence we breathe.

For love removes boundaries
eradicates prejudice
crosses divides

builds community

and moulds

history.

Liz Babbs

Here is video of the author with a reading of another poem from the book:

---------------

Chapter Five on "Celebrating Creativity" was a standout for me, and my fourth brag.

I have so often lamented that Christians, who are made and remade in the creative image of a creative Creator are so often the least creative people on earth! Part of Liz Babbs' calling is as a "creative prayer consultant." May that tribe increase!

This chapter is a model and microcosm of the others: it is packed with history, but in a concise and engaging way; and it is illustrated with art and photos that bring it to life.

Witness, page 52:

"Fathers were said to pass the gift of storytelling to their sons and poetry to their daughters, and storytellers and poets were held in high esteem." Babbs then brilliantly dovetails this insight with an example of a Celtic poem attributed to St. David, which includes the line: "No man loves poetry without loving the light." Great example of simple and profound, and simply profound Celtic wisdom whih must be resurrected to speak into today's church.

Three not-necessarily Celtic commentators come to mind:

• "Poetry is just the evidence of life, " Leonard Cohen offers," If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

• In a vintage dictum, Chesterton nailed it: "Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom."

• Celtic fan Martin Smith of Delirious once replied to Keltic Ken and I (hear it here), when we asked his wisdom about church, "I'm a poet, not a church leader."

When we grab hold of Celtic spirituality, and realize that now more than ever, poets ARE..by definition...church leaders. All I can say, we Western pastor types, and heresy hunters who lump anything Celtiis as "New Age," pagan or satanic have often been adventures in missing the point.

Even though Babbs' book is not marketed as a "church leadership" book, it may well rank among the top five books that should be included in seminary curriculums, but likely aren't...until seminary education becomes more...well, Celtic.

But at heart, this is a valuable book for any follower of/leader towards Christ..

notably those noticing a flatness and emptiness to much of the B.S. (click that last phrase, it doesn't stand for what you think) that passes today for meaningful Christianity.

I recommend it to all..as long as you remember, it is not just for the coffee table.

------------------------

Fan interactions, book excerpts, and

other endorsements (below) may help:

A beautifully illustrated taster that resonates with the heart of Celtic Christian spirituality.

Roy Searle, The Northumbria Community.

A veritable spa for my weary soul after a season of struggle… an oasis of refreshment for a thirsty traveller.

Joanne Hogg, lead singer of the band Iona

This beautiful book touches the heart-strings and gives us treasures of wisdom for our journey.

Ray Simpson, International Guardian,
The Community of Aidan and Hilda.

As you take in the beautiful illustrations and chosen text you will be transported into another world and enriched by our Celtic Christian heritage.

Dave Fitzgerald, musician and founder of the band Iona