Sara Maitland

By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead richer, fuller lives.Our fast-paced society does not approve of solitude; being alone is so often considered anti-social and some even find it sinister. Why is this so when autonomy, personal freedom and individualism are more highly prized than ever before? Sara Maitland answers this question in How to Be Alone by exploring changing attitudes throughout history. Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us to practise it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves.The School of Life looks at new ways of thinking about life’s biggest questions. Discover more fascinating books from the series with How to Stay Sane and How to Think More About Sex.

Whether you are a total beginner or looking to hone your skills, The Writer's Way offers clear and no-nonsense guidance on the art of creative writing. Award-winning author and creative writing teacher Sara Maitland is the perfect companion on this journey - providing practical advice and sharing with you the unrivalled joy that writing can bring. Including 40 literary exercises for you to work through, this book will help you: • Decide on your project• Establish useful writing habits• Experiment with different forms• Develop complex characters• Overcome writers block• And much moreWhether you read it in one sitting, or take your time working through the exercises as you go, this is a terrific book to get you going and keep you going, on the writer's way.

Whatever happened to British protest? For a nation that brought the world Chartism, the Suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so many other grassroots social movements, Britain rarely celebrates its long, great tradition of people power. In this timely and evocative collection, twenty authors have assembled to re-imagine key moments of British protest, from the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 to the anti-Iraq War demo of 2003. Written in close consultation with historians, sociologists and eyewitnesses - who also contribute afterwords - these stories follow fictional characters caught up in real-life struggles, offering a streetlevel perspective on the noble art of resistance. In the age of fake news and post-truth politics this book fights fiction with (well researched, historically accurate) fiction.

Most feminists have turned away from the Christian churches, regarding both Catholicism and the protestant denominations as bastions of sexism and patriarchal oppression. However, Christian feminists committed to improving the position of Christian women and to the spiritual renewal of their respective churches are drawing inspiration for their struggles from the contemporary Women’s Movement. In this study Sara Maitland looks at what has been happening to Christian women in general, and Christian feminists in particular, over the last fifteen to twenty years. She sets their experiences in the framework of the history of the churches and reviews it in the light of events such as the Second Vatican Council, the ordination of Baptist and Episcopal women ministers in America and Britain, and the debate about the ordination of women in the Anglican communion. She argues that the insights gained by Christian feminists put them in a unique position to prophesy to their respective churches, leading them back to the Gospel imperatives of love, justice and freedom, and that an understanding and acceptance of this role of women is crucial to the well-being of the whole Church. As well as studying the history, theology and institutional structures of the denominational churches, the book uses a wealth of interview material from both sides of the Atlantic to describe the experiences of women from many different backgrounds, including nuns, women priests and lay workers. Sara Maitland concludes that Christianity can and must pass beyond the long centuries of oppression and division into ‘a new country’, a country in which women and men are equally ‘made in the image of God’.First published in 1983.

Most feminists have turned away from the Christian churches, regarding both Catholicism and the protestant denominations as bastions of sexism and patriarchal oppression. However, Christian feminists committed to improving the position of Christian women and to the spiritual renewal of their respective churches are drawing inspiration for their struggles from the contemporary Women’s Movement. In this study Sara Maitland looks at what has been happening to Christian women in general, and Christian feminists in particular, over the last fifteen to twenty years. She sets their experiences in the framework of the history of the churches and reviews it in the light of events such as the Second Vatican Council, the ordination of Baptist and Episcopal women ministers in America and Britain, and the debate about the ordination of women in the Anglican communion. She argues that the insights gained by Christian feminists put them in a unique position to prophesy to their respective churches, leading them back to the Gospel imperatives of love, justice and freedom, and that an understanding and acceptance of this role of women is crucial to the well-being of the whole Church. As well as studying the history, theology and institutional structures of the denominational churches, the book uses a wealth of interview material from both sides of the Atlantic to describe the experiences of women from many different backgrounds, including nuns, women priests and lay workers. Sara Maitland concludes that Christianity can and must pass beyond the long centuries of oppression and division into ‘a new country’, a country in which women and men are equally ‘made in the image of God’.First published in 1983.

Each story in Sara Maitland’s collection enacts a daring kind of alchemy, fusing together raw elements of scientific theory with ancient myth, folkloric archetype and contemporary storytelling. All the more remarkable is that each of these stories sprang from a conversation with a scientist and grew directly out of cutting-edge research.

Fairytales are one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, and forests one of our most ancient landscapes. Both evoke a similar sensation in us - we find them beautiful and magical, but also spooky, sometimes horrifying. In this fascinating book, Maitland argues that the two forms are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forests were both the background and the source of the fairytales made famous by the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen. Yet both forests and fairy stories are at risk and their loss deprives us of our cultural lifeblood. Maitland visits forests through the seasons, from the exquisite green of a beechwood in spring, to the muffled stillness of a snowy pine wood in winter. She camps with her son Adam, whose beautiful photographs are included in the book; she takes a barefoot walk through Epping Forest with Robert Macfarlane; she walks with a mushroom expert through an oak wood, and with a miner through the Forest of Dean. Maitland ends each chapter with a unique, imaginitive re-telling of a fairytale. Written with Maitland's wonderful clarity and conversational grace, Gossip from the Forest is a magical and unique blend of nature writing, history and imaginative fiction.

After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the Sinai Desert and the Australian bush and on the Isle of Skye. She interweaves these experiences with the history of silence told through fairy tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated Scottish moor, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.

For Sara Maitland, the Scriptures, tradition, and the creation are sources of God's greatest gift to us-the desire and the ability to know something about God. In A Joyful Theology, Maitland makes a lively exploration of creation in order to learn more about the Creator. What she finds is a God who inspires awe, who calls us to be committed to one another, and who invites us to live in joy.