Description
Life is a mystery quite beyond the comprehension of our normal ways of understanding. Having lived as a Benedictine monk for over fifty years, Mark Patrick Hederman has learned how to engage with mystery. In this book he sets out to explain how to bring a new sense of the sacred into your life.
Despite clamorous reports to the contrary, he argues that religion is alive and well in our world. Those who say that it is dying or dead, that secularisation has taken over, are imposing their own ‘dogmas’ on an unsuspecting and gullible public. In this fascinating book he contends that most of us are religious and can’t help being religious. Being human means being ‘religious’, otherwise we would die of despair.
The idea that science and religion are opposing forces is false, but he maintains that the arts are the only way we can convey the sacred to today’s disbelieving world. A mytho-poetic language could provide a ‘middle voice,’ a ‘third language’ that bridges that gap between science and religion in our society.
Mark Patrick Hederman is a Benedictine monk of Glenstal Abbey in Limerick. Formerly headmaster of their school, he has lectured in philosophy, theology and literature in Ireland, Nigeria and the USA. A founding editor of the cultural journal The Crane Bag, he is the author of several books, including The Haunted Inkwell, Walkabout, Underground Cathedrals and The Opal and the Pearl.
