Some of you who read the blog regularly may have noticed that my posts have been less meaty recently.  This is because I have been devoting much of my writing time to two books. The first pulls together themes that I have written about in the last 5 years on this blog on the basis of Catholic culture in the liturgy and how we can form people to create a culture of beauty using traditional principles. That is due to be published by Angelico Press any day now. When it comes out I will let you know. It will be entitled...the Way of Beauty.

The second is about to be submitted to publishers consideration (any publishers reading, I'm open to offers!). It is a manual for discerning personal vocation and is detailed explanation of a program of personal prayer and spiritual exercises that I was shown when I first came into the Church and which led me to doing what I do now. These were developed by an insightful layman who helped many, many people in London and are not obviously linked to any other method such as those based upon Ignatian spirituality or those used by the Catherine of Sienna Institute. I thought that the originality and effectiveness of the method I was shown might make it of interest to some people. It is intended as a companion to the Little Oratory, which describes the liturgical piety which must be at the heart of our prayer lives if we are to be open to inspiration and transformation in Christ.

This is still taking up a great deal of my time.

When I started this blog it was a chance to start airing some of my ideas and see what the response was. Now after 5 years of posting twice a week I think I have reached a point where I am ready to pause and reflect. I have noticed that the ideas for articles which just seemed to flow effortlessly when I started, are now beginning to dry up - I feel as though I am forcing it a bit now. I am ready now to devote my writing energies much mor e to pulling the material together and developing it further and then capturing it in books and courses to make it available on a more permanent basis (assuming there are some people who will be interested of course!).

So I will take a sabbatical for the summer and start original material in the Fall.

The postings that do appear will either be news about those products that I am producing - books, talks, online courses, chant etc.: or will be an approximately weekly posting of past material from about 5 years ago. It occurred to me that there is much material that I have created will be of interest to people who were not reading the blog back then, so I will be bringing back articles from that time that are still relevant today with usually just a few modifications. Some long time readers might have noticed that I have already begun to do thi. The series about landscapes are such examples.

I will still be walking the Way of Beauty but for the summer at least it will be a more reflective, less public journey.

Lead kindly light....