This Course focuses on how we might deepen our lives of contemplation and action at the heart of our lives. Charles de Foucault once famously remarked that if we need to go to the desert to find God, then everyone trying hard to survive in a bustling city would need to have a little strip of desert with them. We need, he said, ‘to create the desert in the heart… contemplation in the streets that is our task.’ How can we become more attentive to the continuous presence of God and create the space to bring our lives before God? Over seven weeks we will be exploring our own spiritual paths: the places of encounter, forgiveness, nurture, compassion, generosity and growing depth, and the challenging discovery of the Word made flesh in one another. We will be using Richard Carter’s book The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life as our guide and each week will focus on a different chapter of this book. In this book we are invited to share what it means to be with God in our own acts, words, encounters and relationships so that we might live with a deeper sense of God’s presence in all things and all people. As Rowan Williams says “It is a workbook for living in and with meaning - Jesus shaped meaning”.

 

Each of the weeks relates to a chapter in the book: The City is My Monastery: A Contemporary Rule of Life by Richard Carter

 

All the quotations for this course are taken from that book. You are invited to read a chapter a week.