Spirituality In Season

Spirituality in Season by Ross Thompson, published by Canterbury Press Norwich in 2008, is a thoughtful exploration of the spiritual life through the changing seasons of the year — which is rather sensible when you consider that human beings have been using weather, darkness, harvests, spring growth and the annual disappearance of daylight as metaphors for practically everything since poetry began.

Ross Thompson reflects on spirituality not as something detached from ordinary life, but as something woven through time, place, rhythm and experience.

Spring suggests renewal.

Summer brings abundance.

Autumn encourages reflection.

Winter arrives to remind everybody that central heating was an excellent invention.

The book draws on the natural cycle of the year as a framework for thinking about faith, contemplation and the ways in which people understand change.

This gives it a pleasantly grounded quality.

Rather than treating spirituality as an activity requiring mountaintops, incense and an expensive retreat centre, it begins with something everybody already experiences: the world outside changing whether we have organised ourselves properly or not.

There is something appealing about the idea of spirituality having seasons.

Modern life tends to encourage the belief that people should remain productive, cheerful and approximately identical throughout the year.

Nature has never accepted this arrangement.

Trees drop everything.

Fields lie dormant.

Darkness arrives at four in the afternoon.

Then, eventually, things begin again.

It is difficult not to see why generations of religious writers found this useful.

Thompson’s reflections encourage the reader to notice these rhythms rather than rush past them, connecting the seasons with themes of growth, loss, waiting, renewal and transformation.

These are not especially modern concerns.

People have been worrying about all of them for several thousand years, which is usually a sign that there may not be a downloadable solution.

Published by Canterbury Press Norwich, this is very much in the tradition of reflective Christian writing: serious without being forbidding, contemplative without requiring the reader to disappear into a monastery, and interested in the relationship between faith and ordinary experience.

It is the sort of book suited to slow reading.

A chapter here.

A reflection there.

Perhaps a cup of tea.

Possibly staring out of the window afterwards in a manner that suggests profound thought but may actually involve wondering whether it is going to rain.

The seasonal structure also makes this the kind of book one can return to throughout the year rather than simply reading once and filing away under “Spiritual Matters Dealt With”.

Winter will come back.

So will spring.

Human beings, reassuringly, will continue needing to make sense of both.

For readers interested in Christian spirituality, reflective writing, the natural world, the church year or simply the deeper patterns behind ordinary life, Spirituality in Season offers a gentle and intelligent companion.

It may particularly appeal to anyone who suspects that wisdom is more likely to emerge gradually than arrive in a motivational email before breakfast.

Condition: Good. A sound used copy with normal signs of age and handling. Published in 2008, it is not ancient, but it has already survived enough winters to understand the title.

ISBN: 9781853118920.

A thoughtful and accessible exploration of spirituality through the changing seasons, ideal for reflective readers, clergy, students of Christian spirituality, or anyone who has ever looked at falling leaves and accidentally become philosophical.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where everything has its season, including second-hand paperbacks.

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