My Sour-Sweet Days: George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul - Softcover

Oakley, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0281080321 ISBN 13: 9780281080328

Publisher: SPCK Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

George Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he's having an argument with a faithful friend he is confident is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken.

These are some of the themes Mark Oakley explores in this outstanding book. He offers a poem for every day in Lent, with a 2-page commentary on each of the 40 included.

About this title

Review:

It's extremely unusual to meet anyone who isn't a specialist who has such a subtle feeling for language as he does. Author: Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate. Mark Oakley is one of the most distinctive, intelligent and refreshing voices in the Church of England, always illuminating, never stale or secondhand. Author: Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalen College, CambridgeThe Splash of Words: Believing in poetry (Canterbury Press, 2016): This beautiful and wise meditation centred around Mark Oakley's anthology of the 'soul language' of poetry opens new windows in the shared house of both poetry and belief. Author: Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate

A wonderful exposition of the relationship between faith, poetry and struggle. Author: Shami Chakrabarti Source: The Guardian; A very moving book, opening all kinds of doors into a more compassionate, more truthful understanding. --Author: Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge

I have tested Mark Oakley's Readings for Weddings (SPCK 2003, 2014) with a number of couples I have been preparing for marriage over the last few years. They have been universally grateful for such a rich and varied quarry from which they have been able, in every case, to extract something that was highly appropriate but that would otherwise never have been discovered. --Author: Richard Chartres, Former Bishop of London

A Good Year (SPCK, 2016): A good read. --Source: Anvil

Book Description:

Mark Oakley's brilliant new volume reveals George Herbert as a fine companion with whom to examine the journey of the soul - his poems are indeed 'heart-work and heaven-work'

About this edition

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0281080321
• ISBN 13: 9780281080328
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 163