GILES GODDARD’s new book, Exploring Spirit, is attractive, profound, and well worth reading and then reading again. He writes beautifully, in an almost lyrical style, which is clear and easily accessible — whether he is writing about deep mystical prayer, or the ordinary ups and downs of parish life, or calling for compassion and justice for the poor, excluded, and vulnerable, or even, remarkably, explaining, in simple language, Einstein’s quantum physics and how this affirms the Christian spiritual view and the biblical understanding of Creation. Goddard subtitles this book Finding what matters in a broken world. This is the purpose of the mosaic of themes which he deals with.
The book arose from an interfaith course on the Exploring Spirit held at St John’s, Waterloo, where he has been Vicar for 15 years. He combines deep pastoral care with an openness to seekers and the wounded. Goddard has been a thoughtful activist for ecology, justice, diversity, peace, and gay rights — indeed, all human rights — but also teaching how we can learn to love ourselves. Goddard combines a profound quest for a deeper mystical experience of God with a passionate commitment to an inclusive Church. The book is divided by three great questions: Where on earth are we going? How do we get there? Is there a “there” there?
Goddard has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of classic Christian theology, the life of prayer, holiness in the ordinary, science, interfaith learning, literature, music, and painting. But he expresses all this so humbly that he is a gentle teacher. I know that many readers would both enjoy reading it and be challenged by it. Also, they might want to get it for someone who is searching for faith or wanting to find meaning in this broken world.
There are sections that will appeal to different people. Goddard compares a Van Gogh painting in which light is streaming through a twisted olive tree as a sign of God’s light in nature, while a Monet painting in which light obscured in a smoky London Thames scene is seen as a sign of nature’s ambiguities of light. On lament, Goddard writes a discursive list of personal and institutional failures that Christians regard as sin. This list itself becomes one of the best definitions of sin that I have encountered: failures of love to God, to others, and to oneself. Then Goddard shows how lament can heal or, at least, redeem these failures.
The Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen is Archdeacon Emeritus of Hackney, in east London.
Exploring Spirit: Finding what matters in a broken world
Giles Goddard
Canterbury Press £14.99
(978-1-78622-649-5)
Church Times Bookshop £11.99