Author Description

<p><strong>Mark Oakley reveals George Herbert as a fine companion with whom to examine the journey of the soul.</strong></p><p>His poems are 'heart-work and heaven-work', embracing love and closeness, anger and despair, reconciliation and hope.</p><p>There is too an appealing and audacious playfulness about Herbert: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, confident God will not abandon him.</p><p>This sense of relationship with God as primarily friendship is one of many intriguing and healing aspects we are invited to consider.</p><p>George Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he's having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. These are some of the themes Mark Oakley explores in this outstanding book</p><p>'My Sour-Sweet Days contains forty well-chosen poems by George Herbert (widely considered the greatest devotional poet in the English language), each of which is followed by a short but profound reflection by Mark Oakley. The combination is excellent: richly expressive poems and accessible personal meditations. This book powerfully demonstrates how poetry can bring comfort, refreshment and renewed energy to our spiritual lives.'</p><p><strong>Professor Helen Wilcox, editor of the critically acclaimed edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007)</strong></p><p>'It's extremely unusual to meet anyone who isn't a specialist who has such a subtle feeling for language as Mark Oakley does.'</p><p>&#10;&#10;&#10;&#10;&#10;&#10;&#10;&#10;</p><p><strong>Sir Andrew Mot