Following on from our celebration of All Saints, this month’s spiritual practice might seem an unlikely one, because rather than a prayer technique, my practice for this month is that of reading biographies and writings of the saints. And when I say saints, I do not just mean the traditional ones. It might mean reading a biography of Martin Luther King or Howard Thurman. On my shelf at home I have Dorothy Day’s memoir, The Long Loneliness, waiting to be read, and at the moment I am reading a biography of one of my heroes, St. Philip Neri. In this way we can really feel what we know to be true: that the Christian Church is a family reaching across time and space, and that we are intimately connected with all who have gone before and all who will come after. Hana Randle, our new parish librarian, has a real passion for the spiritual classics, and so please do use our library to dig deeper, in your reading and in yourself. I will try to refresh the rector’s shelf in the library with some of my own favorites, and please do share your own recommendations with me and Hana, too.
