Ruth Harvey

The historic story of Christ, the outside story of Christ, suddenly emerges as the inside story of yourself …’ – George MacLeod In a world often marked by turbulence and uncertainty, where do we find the courage to keep walking toward the light? The Iona Community affirms that our faith is ‘rooted in hope: lived in community’. This is not a fingers-crossed optimism, but a gritty, determined commitment to the transformative power of love and justice when joined with that of our neighbour. In this collection, a new generation of theologians and writers, members of the Iona Community’s Young Adults Group, volunteers, and those who have lived and worked at the Abbey, invite us to walk the road from the gates of Jerusalem to the empty tomb. Through fresh reflections on familiar scriptures, they explore the ‘feet-on-the-ground’ gap between our hopes and their fulfilment, weaving the outside story of Christ with their own lived experiences of intentional community. From the humble defiance of Palm Sunday to the ‘tender messiness’ of foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, and from the stark solidarity of Good Friday to the radical hope of Resurrection, these voices offer a call to action. They connect the ancient story of Christ’s passion with contemporary struggles for justice, drawing parallels between Jesus’ outcasts and today’s refugees, between the despised of first-century Palestine and the marginalised in our own communities. Ruth Harvey is Leader of the Iona Community. Contributors include Dr. Victoria Turner, Evie Nieboer, Indigo Maynard Watts, Annie Sharples, Jack Woodruff, Molly Boot, William Gibson and Lakshmi Piette Walker – young adults who have lived in community at Iona Abbey and are members of the Community’s Young Adults Network.

How does being with children offer us a glimpse of God? On our adult faith journey, do we remember the wisdom of our own childhood thoughts? And in what ways are we, as adults, open to the wisdom that children in our midst share about God, faith, life, death and spirituality? Being in the company of children - as a new mother hungry for soul food - led Ruth Harvey to ask these questions, and to share them with a range of about 30 others - some parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, foster siblings - which resulted in this original collection of stories, reflections, meditations, poems, songs and dialogues. The contributions, including pieces by Peter Millar, Donald Eadie, Yvonne Morland, Em Strang, Ellen Moxley and Neil Paynter, explore how the wisdom shared by children in what they say and do can lead us closer to God. They explore themes of adoption, parenting, illness, disability, birth, death, passion and more. Ready or Not can be used for personal reflection, group studies and in worship - it offers resources and inspiration for finding God and spirituality in the midst of the busyness, messiness, pressure, nurturing, despair and joy of life.

A major contribution to knowledge of medieval Occitan literature. Best known for their love-songs and invention of Courtly Love, the troubadours were also fascinated by debate. Like their contemporaries throughout the medieval world who sharpened their wit and intellect on scholastic disputations, the troubadours devised their entire, multifaceted lyric production on the basis of many forms of dialogue: intertextual debates, satirical challenges, self-questioning, mini-dramas. This debating process is nowhere more in evidence than in the troubadour tensos and partimens. This 3 volume critical edition makes available for the first time the massive corpus of 160 tensos and partimens involving real speakers.They supply a mine of new information on the medieval Occitan language, contemporary politics, courtly and judicial mores, and attitudes to gender, class, and ethnic stereotypes, often presenting a picture of courtly life, love and sexual relations very different from that of the better-known love-lyric. The edition meets the highest standards of scholarly rigour: the notes and critical apparatus are as minimal as scholarly probity allows but alwayshelpful and well-argued, taking due account of previous scholarship, and the translations clear, accurate and elegant. A cumulative index, bibliography and glossary aid access to these volumes which fill one of the last major gapsin our knowledge of medieval Occitan literature. RUTH HARVEY is Professor of medieval Occitan literature at Royal Holloway, University of London; LINDA PATERSON is Professor Emerita of French at the University of Warwick. They were assisted by Anna Radaelli.