Böcker av Marianne Dorman

Over the years, people have commented, "Why don't you write about your life?" To write a chronological autobiography never appealed to me. Thus, I abandoned the idea until about five years ago when having morning tea with my Byzantium scholar-friend in Sydney. We were discussing some aspect of Classical Roman history when the subject of genius loci (spirit of the place) entered our conversation.On the bus back to my flat in Lane Cove, this idea kept niggling at me. Perhaps, I could write about the places (loci) in which I have lived and the effect of these on my Christian journey, firstly as a child, then as a student, wife, mother, educator, writer, and an admirer of all that is beautiful, as expressed in most music, worship in the Eastern and some Western traditions, literature, painting, people, and the natural world.The result is this book, beginning in a small country town, Cowra, some three hundred kilometres south-west of Sydney, Australia, then to a smaller island, Great Britain, where I lived mainly in Oxford and ending on yet a smaller island in Puget Sound, Whidbey, close to the Canadian border.As well as being influenced by various places, so by people. These include Fr. John Hope of Christ Church St. Laurence, Sydney as a teenager and the Lady Margaret Professor in Oxford, Dr. Rowan Williams when I first arrived in this University City. Perhaps the person who influenced me mostly was not one I actually met in person but came to know through my research. He is the divine Lancelot Andrewes who has been part of my life for more years than I can remember and whose sermons and devotions are embedded in my being. In later years, I have been grateful to the renowned biblical scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown who gave me a fresh and scholarly understanding of the New Testament. Last but not least, has been the Franciscan, Fr. Richard Rohr who has taught me the necessity of non-dualistic consciousness for spiritual growth.As much as places and people have helped to shape me, none has more than the Potter and Pantocrator who has moulded and reshaped this lump of clay constantly in my Christian journey.

This is the last volume in the set for Ordinary Time in the Christian Year and it completes a series of meditations for the whole year. For the weekday readings at Mass there is a two-year cycle. Over the two years there is a different first reading from the Scriptures whilst both years share the same Gospel readings. On Sundays there is a three-year cycle with the Gospel readings taken from Matthew, Mark, and Luke respectively. One of the ways we grow in our faith is by knowing the Scriptures well. Even if we do not attend Mass daily we can always meditate on the set readings. When we do this it will lead us into parts of our Bible that hitherto we may not have ventured. If digested properly they will undoubtedly prompt questions and raise topics for prayer and further research. This book is designed to help you to understand your Bible better and how it unveils the work of salvation by our loving God, beginning with the call of Abraham and His relationship with His chosen people. When the time was right God sent His Son into the world to continue God''s redeeming love for all creation. So the Old Testament prepared the way for the coming of the Christ that is recorded in the New Testament. It is this part of the Bible that is particularly interesting for Christians today as it gives insight as to how those first Christians came to believe in Jesus as their Saviour and were baptised into His death. It also reveals many of the problems that beset the first Christians over morality, worship, and obligations. These are still relevant today. Thus we need to heed the advice of Paul and other Christian writers of the first century in how we live out the teachings of Christ.

Mark Frank has been one of the most overlooked of all the Caroline divines. It is author Marianne Dorman's hope that this book will partly rectify this. Frank's sermons, with their polished style, are the high-water mark of preaching amongst the Caroline Divines in the seventeenth century. At a time when the faith of old is sometimes hard to experience, Mark Frank, who was one of many faithful priests ejected from their livings during the English Civil War, is an example of loving perseverance in the faith he cherished. This extract, preached at Easter during the Interregnum, gives a glimpse of the grief he and many others felt when the Church was dismantled. The body is the Church; and to have that taken from us, the Church, that glorious candlestick removed, and borne away we know not whither, what good soul is there that must not necessarily be perplexed at it? What way shall we take when they have taken away the pillar of truth, and should lead us in it? Whither shall we go when we know not whither that is gone, where they have laid it, or where to find it? Poor ignorant women, nay, and men, too, may well now wander in uncertainties. Mark Frank thus presents that Catholic faith lived out and preached by Frank, especially during the Cromwellian regime. We do not know where he preached, but preach he did during this time. Hopefully it will enable the reader to discover the beauty of his prose and the depth of his theological insights of the Catholic faith with all its wholeness, wonder, and worship.

Lancelot Andrewes'' life as a bishop spanned almost the length of the reign of James I. He became a regular preacher at Court for this monarch, as he had been for Elizabeth I. Indeed, James had some of Andrewes'' sermons published shortly after hearing them in order to study them closer. This book contains a cross section of doctrinal and religious themes from Andrewes'' sermons for reading and reflection.