In this unique and profound meditation on loneliness and humanity, Erik Varden, a Trappist monk, uses a range of sources - from Aristophanes and Virgil through Athanasius and Bernard of Clairvaux to Hammarskjöld, Akhmatova and Makine - to illuminate his themes of Loneliness and Remembrance
Dom Erik Varden is Abbot of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire. Norwegian by birth, he was, before entering religious life, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. He has published several translations and scholarly monographs and is much in demand as a preacher, spiritual director and lecturer.
The Shattering of Loneliness is an extraordinary book: not too long
but richly dense; profound in its insights and scholarship yet
eminently readable; and though clearly written by a monk happy to
be a monk, it has as much relevance to the ordinary Christian as to
the Trappist monks in the author's care.
*Catholic Herald*
Intimately personal but never self-indulgent, it is at once
arresting and challenging, uplifting and reassuring, and profoundly
moving … The richness of this remarkable book is impossible to
convey adequately in so few words. No reader will remain
unchanged.
*Tablet*
Absorbing and fascinating ... It is a book to be read more than
once.
*Methodist Recorder*
Generates deep and unexpected insights [...] Like the memory of a
meaningful conversation long after you’ve forgotten what was said.
It is unforgettable.
*Catholic World Report*
The Shattering of Loneliness is a book of extraordinary importance.
It is, with prophetic clarity, aware of the depravity, the weakness
and the glory of the human condition.
*Times Literary Supplement*
A work that intelligently renews the vocabulary and the very genre
of spiritual literature.
*La Croix*
This is one of the finest books that I have read in recent years
and one which should, in time, become a classic. It acknowledges
and articulates the essential contribution of the Christian
tradition as inspirer of remembrance for a generation that is
beginning to forget.
*The Furrow*
Varden’s work is the fruit from a tree for the healing of the
nations, from a monk who has his feet firmly and incarnationally on
the ground.
*Lutheran Theological Journal*
I’ve read thousands of books. This one has stunned me.
*Mary Margaret Funk, spiritual writer and author of 'The Practice
of the Spiritual Life'*
This wide-reading reviewer hasn’t for ages read such a completely
satisfying book […], written in poetic, resonant language.
*Bonnie Thurston, New Testament scholar and author*
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