This Year for Joy: A Day By Day Guide to Care for the Soul - New Edition
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Description
This Year for Joy is a collection of readings, poetry, humour, meditations and thoughts for every day of the year, set within a contemporary Christian context. Fantastic stories of old, forgotten saints are given a new twist and with a symbolic interpretation they become again inspiring messages for today. Our old traditions, truly from the realm of myth, come back to us in a new form for the enrichment of our spirit and for our sense of belonging.
Paperback (0-9579701-0-2)
Also available in a hardback edition.
About This Year for Joy: A Day By Day Guide to Care for the Soul
This Year for Joy is a collection of readings, poetry, humour, meditations and thoughts for every day of the year, set within a contemporary Christian context. Fantastic stories of old, forgotten saints are given a new twist and with a symbolic interpretation they become again inspiring messages for today. Our old traditions, truly from the realm of myth, come back to us in a new form for the enrichment of our spirit and for our sense of belonging.
Paperback (0-9579701-0-2)
Also available in a hardback edition.
Paperback (0-9579701-0-2)
Also available in a hardback edition.
Review
Review of This Year for Joy from The Christian Parapsychologist (New series Vol 1 No 16 March 2017)
This delightful anthology is best described in the author’s own words, it is, she writes, ‘designed as a bedside book, or daybook for people who have done a bit of growing, living and thinking about the meaning of life. It is for people who know that all of life is encompassed by the sacred.’ And the daily readings are. ‘a pot pourri of myths, meditations, poems and the occasional anecdote.’ But this does not do the book justice; it is a rich source of texts and information – often unfamiliar - for all those who wish to increase and deepen their knowledge and understanding of Christian spiritual traditions.
Each month has its own theme (e.g. ‘Myth ‘for April, ‘Body’ in June, ‘Excess’ for August, and in October, ‘Holiness), and each day is centred on a particular saint, secular figure or concept. Her range of source material is exceptionally wide and well-chosen, but this should not surprise us, for Josephine Griffiths, a deeply committed Christian in the Anglican tradition has had a long career as a counsellor, spiritual director and guide – and as an author in the fields of spirituality and personal development, with an emphasis on feminine spirituality.
There is, however, no bias in the book, for the author ranges over religious and secular figures across the Christian spectrum and beyond – into classical myth, Muslim mystics and Indian poets. The familiar saints – Paul, Columba, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila – and the unfamiliar – Triduana, Laserian Zeno, for example – are mixed with sacred and secular poets (George Herbert, Blake, Hopkins, Cavafy, Kathleen Raine among many others),and those from the everyday world (e.g. Elizabeth Fry and Mary Somerville). Her chosen concepts include NDE’s and mystical experience.
Of course no book can be perfect and there is one glaring omission that is, to me, a serious fault. Her source are quotes but there is no name index. Is it necessary? Taken as a bedside book, no it is not; but when I seek a particular author (perhaps to pounce on the omission) I am now driven to explore further in the text and so to find new, unfamiliar and unexpected saints, writers and texts, thus expanding my horizons! And I did find Thomas Merton, failed, so far with Robert Frost, and uncovered the author’s distaste for C.S.Lewis…..because it was ‘his painful duty to assert the God-given superiority of men.’ Enough said.
This delightful anthology is best described in the author’s own words, it is, she writes, ‘designed as a bedside book, or daybook for people who have done a bit of growing, living and thinking about the meaning of life. It is for people who know that all of life is encompassed by the sacred.’ And the daily readings are. ‘a pot pourri of myths, meditations, poems and the occasional anecdote.’ But this does not do the book justice; it is a rich source of texts and information – often unfamiliar - for all those who wish to increase and deepen their knowledge and understanding of Christian spiritual traditions.
Each month has its own theme (e.g. ‘Myth ‘for April, ‘Body’ in June, ‘Excess’ for August, and in October, ‘Holiness), and each day is centred on a particular saint, secular figure or concept. Her range of source material is exceptionally wide and well-chosen, but this should not surprise us, for Josephine Griffiths, a deeply committed Christian in the Anglican tradition has had a long career as a counsellor, spiritual director and guide – and as an author in the fields of spirituality and personal development, with an emphasis on feminine spirituality.
There is, however, no bias in the book, for the author ranges over religious and secular figures across the Christian spectrum and beyond – into classical myth, Muslim mystics and Indian poets. The familiar saints – Paul, Columba, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila – and the unfamiliar – Triduana, Laserian Zeno, for example – are mixed with sacred and secular poets (George Herbert, Blake, Hopkins, Cavafy, Kathleen Raine among many others),and those from the everyday world (e.g. Elizabeth Fry and Mary Somerville). Her chosen concepts include NDE’s and mystical experience.
Of course no book can be perfect and there is one glaring omission that is, to me, a serious fault. Her source are quotes but there is no name index. Is it necessary? Taken as a bedside book, no it is not; but when I seek a particular author (perhaps to pounce on the omission) I am now driven to explore further in the text and so to find new, unfamiliar and unexpected saints, writers and texts, thus expanding my horizons! And I did find Thomas Merton, failed, so far with Robert Frost, and uncovered the author’s distaste for C.S.Lewis…..because it was ‘his painful duty to assert the God-given superiority of men.’ Enough said.