Books by Ray Simpson

Celtic Spirituality for the Modern WorldThe world of the long-ago Celts appeals to many of us in the twenty-first century. Whether we are looking to find our cultural heritage or are seeking an alternative to worn and restrictive religious forms, the earth-centered, woman-friendly, inclusive faith of the Christian Celts offers us a deep-rooted alternative approach to traditional Christianity. The Celts experienced "thin places," where they sensed the supernatural world; they honored their poets, singers, and artists; and they passionately followed the Christ of the Gospels. Theirs was a church without walls, which lived naturally and comfortably within the community. Ray Simpson has spent most of his life walking in the footsteps of the Christian Celts, and now he allows us to experience for ourselves their dynamic spirituality.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,for through him God created everything. . . . He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.-Colossians 1:15-17Like a vast, ever-growing Tree of Life, Christ-the expression of Divine love-expands endlessly throughout the universe. This is the perspective of ancient Celtic spirituality, and it is this concept that Ray Simpson reveals in his poem-prayers. Inspired by the traditional Celtic style of prayer, he gives words to our individual relationships with God. He speaks of the wonder, beauty, and love revealed through the Universal Christ, the Tree of Life that includes all that is. Each and everything in creation is sacred, for everything is a word of God-and we too are called to be God''s words to our world.

Ray Simpson has given his life, both professionally and personally, to Celtic Christianity, and now he helps us to celebrate a Celtic outlook on the season of Christmas. With their eloquent yet simple words, his prayers welcome the Holy One who comes to us in small, ordinary ways, who is present in the helpless and the vulnerable. As we join Ray in prayer, we stand on the threshold to paradox and mystery-and we "prepare the way" for God to enter our world anew.

Monk in the Marketplace is the autobiography of Ray Simpson, founding guardian of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, much-loved author of books on Celtic spirituality, and a major influence on the new monastic movement across the world. Ray's memoir charts human pain and God incidents in his childhood and college, baptisms of fire in industrial heartlands and multi-racial London, pioneering a Village of God at Bowthorpe, Norwich, the call to be a contemplative in the market-place and to live without a salary, his co- founding of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, and twenty years as founder of the Celtic Christianity library and Open Gate Retreat House on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne ('the spiritual capital of England'). This could become a classic 'diary of a soul' and his excursions into the Simpsons are hilarious.

Celtic Christianity is the key not only for the future of the Church but of the whole planet, argues Ray Simpson, Founding Guardian of the Community of Aidan and Hilda.

Seventh-century Ireland is becoming a land of saints, scholars, and spiritual foster mothers as well as warriors. The boy Aidan, a descendant of Saint Brigid, is formed by all of these as well as by a pilgrimage, aborted by an Arab uprising, on which he meets a follower of the Prophet Muhammad. He is transferred to Iona, the mother-house of Saint Columba's family of monasteries, where his character is forged. Aidan becomes guest-master to challenging visitors, one of whom conducts a mysterious affair, suffers a midlife crisis, and develops friendships with royal Saxon exiles at the Dunadd court, the seat of the "real" King Arthur. Iona commissions Aidan to evangelize the original WASPs: the White, Anglo-Saxon Pagan invaders of Britain. Aidan offers a radically different approach to that of the Roman missionaries. His gentle grassroots gospel-sharing through friendship, his villages of God that model God's kingdom, his introduction of spiritual foster-mothers such as Hilda to the English, his soul friendships and heartbreaks with successive saintly and power-hungry kings, and his near-death foresight into the future take us inside the heroic spiritual formation of a person and a people in a story that has contemporary significance. Even Aidan's name, Flame, tells a story of its own

In the dark and turbulent centuries after the Roman occupation of Britain, and during the Anglo-Saxon colonisation, the light of heaven still shone through the work and witness of the monastic communities, 'villages of God', which dotted the land. This book explores the Hilda's life and ministry.