the friend online
16 November 2007

Reviews

Simply experiencing God in the moment - preview
From the Bottom of the Pond by Simon Small
  • O Books, £7
  • 99
  • ISBN 978-1-84694-066-8


  • The manager of a well-known spiritual bookshop calls this book 'a little gem', and so it is
  • Slim, spare and focused, it deals with what it calls 'the forgotten art' of experiencing God in the depths of the present moment
  • Quakers might not feel it is a forgotten art – it is, after all, what we try to do at every Meeting for Worship – but we all know how hard it is, how elusive
  • Simon Small, a priest, writes from the Christian tradition but he wears the specificity of his faith lightly
  • He manages to combine a poetic sense of the grandeur of the experience with an analysis of its particularities, and what gets in the way
  • In a chapter on contemplation and time, he writes of the ever-present tug to the next moment'
  • How familiar that tug is, how hard it is to resist, how hard not to continue being the author of our own continuing fantasies which pull us away from the present – a present that is the only reality

  • Jennifer Kavanagh, London West Area Meeting

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    This week's .pdf
    In this week's online edition... rss edition
    Is Liberal British Quakerism under threat?
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    cover

    QPSW conference
    Dana Adler, West Kent Area Meeting
    News round-up
    news@thefriend.org
    Comment
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    Letters
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    Peasants’ long march
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    The fourth plinth
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    Simply experiencing God in the moment
    Jennifer Kavanagh, London West Area Meeting
    ‘You have to work very hard and lose all your friends’
    Jamie Wrench
    What makes God laugh?
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    q-eye
    eye@thefriend.org

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