A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes: A Backpacker’s Encounters with God and Nature
Ebook
Winner of the 2022 Nautilus Book Award in Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought (#24B)
Mark Clavier examines a series of paradoxes that lie at the heart of Christian faith: eternity and time, silence and words, and wonder and the commonplace. In an intellectual reflection on an overnight trek on Cadair Idris in Wales and other wilderness walks, he explores the oft-hidden connections between faith, society, and nature.
Each reflection ranges widely through history, folklore, poetry, philosophy, and theology to consider what these paradoxes can teach us about God, ourselves, and our world. Drawing on the recent upsurge in interest in the personal experience of landscapes and memory, this book invites readers to walk with Clavier in the Appalachians, Norway, Iceland, the Alps, and around Britain as he discovers the ways in which Christianity is profoundly earthed.
By weaving together nature-writing, memoir, social commentary, and theological reflection A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes uses a memorable mountain journey in the ancient landscape of Wales to draw readers into reflecting about what it means to belong.
Please find the study guide for this book here: https://convivium-brecon.com/a-pilgrimage-of-paradoxes/
Employing a firsthand account of an overnight trek on a Welsh mountain, this book ranges widely through history, folklore, poetry, philosophy, and theology to explore how paradoxes at the heart of the Christian faith offer a sacramental and ecological perspective on belonging.
Evocative and captivating accounts of walks and treks in the Appalachians, Norway, Iceland, the Alps, around Britain, and elsewhere that explore the interplay of heritage, culture, and ecology and how they impact on our sense of belonging.
An eco-theology, rooted in local heritage and cultures, that provides a unique approach to understanding the Christian faith as intent on holding together heaven and earth in nuptial union. This way of understanding Christianity connects ecology, sacramental theology, and philosophical explorations of time and place.
An attractively personal exploration of place and belonging (along the lines of Wendell Berry and James Rebanks) that avoids abstracting theology from the actual experience of those ideas. In this way, the book is like Augustine's Confessions, manifesting through its own personal story the argument it makes.
Glossary and Guide to Welsh Names
Preface
Chapter 1:
Cadair Idris: Encountering God on a Welsh Mountain
Part 1 The Paradox of Eternity and Time
Chapter 2:
Cwm Cau: Timelessness
Chapter 3:
Dysynni Valley: Thick-Time
Chapter 4:
Incarnation
Part 2 The Paradox of Silence and Words
Chapter 5:
Craig Lwyd: Silence
Chapter 6:
Gwyn ap Nudd: Words
Chapter 7:
Baptism
Part 3 The Paradox of Wonder and the Commonplace
Chapter 8:
Penygadair: The Wonderful
Chapter 9:
Rhiw Gwredydd: The Commonplace
Chapter 10:
Eucharist
Chapter 11:
Inhabiting Hiraeth and Tangnefedd
Bibliography
Index
This book sharpens our ears and tunes our imaginations to hear and see the “magic” of landscape, people, and God, and to rejoice in it all.
Mark Clavier knows what it is to be lost, to yearn for a transcendent God who remains out of reach. Yet as this wise book relates, he also knows what it is to be found, to encounter God in the common marvels of creation. Read this book and then go for a walk with eyes newly opened to the mysteries that are at hand.
'An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace': Cranmer's definition of a sacrament expresses perfectly Mark Clavier's achievement in this deeply personal yet universally applicable reflection which celebrates the wonderful Welsh mountainscape as a sacrament of God's timeless presence in creation and in the human heart.
In this personal and wise book, Mark Clavier invites readers on a mountain pilgrimage with poets, philosophers, and spiritual writers as guides. The result is a profound meditation on time, place, and the communities of life that join us to each other and to our world. Come along!
Read this book and walk with the author on a journey that unites heaven and earth. On his hikes in the Welsh mountains, Clavier encounters not some generic "higher power" but an earthy God, incarnate in both the wonderful and the commonplace. In the process he traces a life that is simultaneously poetic, divine, and deeply humane.
Mark Clavier is our delightful companion as we walk into a landscape that speaks of God found in timelessness and time, silence and words, wonder and the commonplace. He weaves memoir with theological reflection, folklore, geology and history, taking discursive routes to explore his paradoxical themes with flair and imagination.
Mark Clavier loses himself in the rocky beauty of mid-Wales, and finds himself opened up to multiple layers of wisdom and joy. Strands of place, theology and the natural world are all plaited together through the pages of this profound and deeply satisfying book.
Perhaps one of the worst things Christianity has done in some of its varieties is to encourage people to think they don't really belong in and with creation. Mark Clavier has written a brilliant and moving meditation on how he has learned from journeys in the Welsh landscape to see more clearly that redemption is a gift that allows us to inhabit more deeply where we truly are, at home in the grace and mercy of the creator.
A love letter to God, written in the mountains of Wales, Mark Clavier offers a rare feast of reflections that stir the paradoxes of the imagination towards the God whose creation heals and transforms. An immersion in nature to delight the longing soul.
What gives A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes an aura of depth and complexity lies in how Clavier weaves together personal experiences in the wilderness, learned contemplation of Christian theology and biblical passages, and a rich penetration into the interiority of the soul's relationship to the world and the Divine. ... Mark Clavier's book A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes lives up to its title.
- Title: A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes: A Backpacker’s Encounters with God and Nature
- Author: Mark Clavier
- Publisher: T&T Clark
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780567703590, 9780567703569, 0567703568, 0567703592
- Resource ID: LLS:9780567703590
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-12T04:24:40Z