My Sour-Sweet Days
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€17.50
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 knows 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.
Mark Oakley is Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, overseeing the arts and learning programmes at the cathedral. He writes regularly for the Church Times and The Tablet and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 4. His latest, bestselling, book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (Canterbury Press) was published last year to great acclaim. He's also the editor of A Good Year (SPCK, 2016) and author of our forthcoming The Spiritual Adventure of Language: Shakespeare And Christian Faith.