Kirjahaku

Written during a long sea voyage from England through the Mediterranean, Civilization and the Limpet unveils many fascinating phenomena of undersea life. Wells captures with exquisite detail how limpets, like bees, navigate by the stars how the brainless sea urchin makes a myriad of critical survival decisions every day how deserted islands" teem with an incredible abundance of animal life and why deep-diving whales never get the bends. Elegant and finely crafted, Civilization and the Limpet will enlighten, amuse, and awe anyone interested in the natural world.

In the early hours of almost every morning during the Covid lockdown in the months of March and April 2021, these poems began mysteriously arriving - like persistent early morning visitors. Curiously, the author's wife was absent for the whole of this time, and much to her amusement, in her place lay an open notebook, a blank page and a pen. Soon nearly 40 poems filled the notebook - Martin never having written poetry in his life before. Although the pandemic provides the foreground for this collection of poems, they have also been prompted by timeless universal themes, symbolised in a snowdrop, a park bench or an olive tree; found in conversations about love and life and death, in news items and random images. But most of all arising out of that deep longing for union and freedom at the source of each of us. The poems are about what it means to be alive and deeply connected to the natural world. In so doing they go to the heart of mindful living and non-dual wisdom

Sitting in the Stillness is a collection of stories from the therapy room. Each one invites the reader to go beyond these personal accounts to the universal, beyond the agitations of the mind to an infinite stillness of being. The stories include examples from group therapy, mindfulness groups, family and couples’ therapy and demonstrate our fundamental interconnectedness. 'Insightful, practically useful, even enlightening. We are led along a less `self-centred’ path with a delightfully light touch.' Nigel Wellings, author of Why Can’t I Meditate?

This is a story about a strange encounter on the golf course with someone who, on the face of it, knows nothing about golf but who ends up teaching the author about the inner game and questioning his approach to golf and to life itself. It's not just about golf or sport, nor about improvement or progress or how to do something. If anything, it points to a way of living effortlessly that is free and harmonious, that is, to the essence of mindfulness and non-duality. Each of the nineteen chapters contains a lesson which the author palpably resists for the first few holes. But, gradually he comes to realise the profound truth in the teachings of the stranger and begins to understand the radical perspective of no one playing.

The Star of Bethlehem, the great portent of Christ's birth in the Gospel of Matthew, has been central to Christian imagery for two thousand years. It isstill a popular feature of the modern Christmas card. The star was originally seen as a miracle, sent by God to announce the birth of His son. Since theseventeenth century astronomers have speculated that the star was some astronomical events, such as a planetary conjunction or a comet, or that itpossessed astrological significance. In this ground-breaking book Martin Wells shows that these claims are all unjustified. By going back to the originaltexts Wells argues that we should understand the Star as an imaginative story intended to legitimise Christ's role as the new Messiah, a story which resonates powerfully down to the present day.