Beginning with the Psalms and adding the distilled wisdom of years of study and writing, Martin Marty offers a meditation marked by insight, strength, and a sure, sober faith. Throughout A Cry of Absence, he pursues the metaphor of the "winter of the heart." Marty bases his concept of the wintry way to God on a passage from the theologian Karl Rahner, describing a "wintry sort of spirituality." It refers to movement toward faith that grapples with pain, uncertainty, evil, loss, and the mystery of death to discover "hope on the winter-fallow landscape."

For years Grant Kessler has smuggled goods from one end of the world to the next. When business turns in a direction Grant isn't willing to follow he decides to retire and by all appearances he settles down in a nowhere town called Durstrand. But his real plan is to wait a few years and let the FBI lose interest, then move on to the distant coastal life he's always dreamed of. Severely autistic, Morgan cannot look people in the eye, tell left from right, and has uncontrolled tics. Yet he's beaten every obstacle life has thrown his way. And when Grant Kessler moves into town Morgan isn't a bit shy in letting the man know how much he wants him. While the attraction is mutual, Grant pushes Morgan away. Like the rest of the world he can't see past Morgan's odd behaviors Then Morgan shows Grant how light lets you see but it also leaves you blind. And once Grant opens his eyes, he loses his heart to the beautiful enigma of a man who changes the course of his life.

The Collected Critical Writings gathers more than forty years of Hill's published criticism, in a revised final form, and also adds much new work. It will serve as the canonical volume of criticism by Hill, the pre-eminent poet-critic whom A. N. Wilson has called "probably the best writer alive, in verse or in prose." In his criticism Hill ranges widely, investigating both poets (including Jonson, Dryden, Hopkins, Whitman, Eliot, and Yeats ) and prose writers (such as Tyndale, Clarendon, Hobbes, Burton, Emerson, and F. H. Bradley). He is also steeped in the historical context - political, poetic, and religious - of the writers he studies. Most importantly, he brings texts and contexts into new and telling relations, neither reducing texts to the circumstances of their utterance nor imagining that they can float free of them. A number of the essays have already established themselves as essential reading on particular subjects, such as his analysis of Vaughan's "The Night", his discussion of Gurney's poetry, and his critical account of The Oxford English Dictionary. Others confront the problems of language and the nature of value directly, as in "Our Word is Our Bond", "Language, Suffering, and Value", and "Poetry and Value". In all his criticism, Hill reveals literature to be an essential arena of civic intelligence.

The Cross. The central symbol of the Christian faith. "Can a church be an authentic Church and not focus on the cross?" William Powell Tuck began answering that question in his book, The Church Under the Cross, and now he leads us into the second part of his answer in his new book, The Last Words from the Cross. "The words of our Lord on the cross have become very memorable. These words of Jesus have been designated as the seven last words. They are, of course, more than individual words. They are really sentences or fragments of sentences. One of these seven words is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Three of them are found in the Gospel of Luke, and three are recorded in John. No one gospel contains all of them. But, to me, that is a way of authenticating the gospels. Each writer drew on what he remembered or considered most important in those moments or what he had heard from others who shared their experiences." says Tuck. A study of these words gives us, His disciples, a deeper insight into Jesus' thoughts through suffering, facing death, and what His death meant to Him as He met our need for salvation. Rev Tuck further says, "These words reveal his personal agony, his concern for others, his forgiving spirit, his physical suffering, his ultimate trust and faithfulness in the One he had proclaimed. Even in his moments of forsakenness he still resisted the temptation to turn away ultimately from God's will or deny the One who led him to this shameful death as he identifies with sinners." This book is an ideal study for Lent, or at any time for a church that would like to better understand taking up their cross. And what church can't benefit from that?

There is a longstanding tradition that God whispers in our ears. He does not shout. It is in "the holy whisper," writes the Quaker mystic, that we hear Abba's voice, not in the noise of clamoring crowds or the incessant barrage of social media. To hear the voice of God is an awesome thing--to know his thoughts, to intuit his love, to participate in his good pleasure. It is both a gift to be received and art to be cultivated. It can call to us when we least expect; but we can train ourselves to become receptive listeners. We need help to separate the cacophony of voices calling to us from the quiet whisper of Abba--barely audible. Since our wordy world masks the quiet, respectful voice of God, we need to recognize the primary ways that Abba communicates with his creation. We must embrace practices that move us out of lives of distraction and exchange old patterns of living with new ways of seeing and hearing. From our deep Christian past we hear the voice of St. Augustine murmur, "Whisper in my heart, I am here to save you. I shall hear your voice and make haste to clasp you to myself."

Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary