Böcker av Jan Sutch Pickard

During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, many people turned to writing: diaries, letters, cards, poems. Human words, sent out across the void of our isolation, shouted into the storm over which we had no control. What we could do was communicate with each other, raise our voices against the silence of separation, argue with our own doubts, call out to God, express our fragile hope. Here are the voices of just a few - members and associates of the Iona Community - with poems, psalms, songs, affirmations of faith and prayers written during a full and fraught ten weeks. We offer these human words believing that when the darkness seems overwhelming, light dawns; that into the silence of our worst fears God speaks a living Word.

Advent is a time of wonder and waiting - but that's not a passive thing. We need to walk into Advent with our eyes open. We walk through a world where wars are being waged and babies are being born. We are humbled by our inability to do much about what is wrong. But we do our best: to be kind, caring, to understand the meaning of mercy. We do our best to be even-handed, to act justly. Words from the prophet Micah inspired this book. But it also reflects the words of a later prophet, George Fox: 'Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.' Join us on a cheerful, thoughtful, justice-seeking journey towards Bethlehem, a journey day by day through Advent.

Sing But Keep On Walking moves between the islands of Mull and Iona and the hills of the West Bank and Jerusalem: places 'on the edge'. And, like in Palestine two thousand years ago, that's where God comes to us, in human form, as living Word, as light out of darkness. Some images recur - like flocks of migrating birds or flowing water, like stories of people who work with their hands: sculptors, a carpenter, a baker. Real people, whose lives are celebrated. 'I'm writing amid political chaos and climate crisis,' says Jan, 'with no easy answers ... But we can speak truth to power, walk side by side, sing justice. We can live an alternative.' Jan Sutch Pickard is a storyteller and poet living on the Isle of Mull. She is a former Warden of Iona Abbey, and volunteered with the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme, serving on different occasions in two West Bank villages.