Rachel Mann – författare

Dazzling Darkness is a true story about searching for one’s authentic self in the company of the Living God. Rachel Mann has died many ‘deaths’ in the process, not the least of which was a change of sex, as well as coming to terms with chronic illness and disability.Through these experiences she has discovered that darkness is as much a positive place as a negative one, inhabited by the Living God – the Dark God, the Hidden God. This is the God that many of us, because we try to make our lives safe and comfortable, are too afraid to meet. This is the God who is most alive in those things we commonly associate with the Dark – failure, loss and brokenness.The Christian church has legitimated certain ways of talking about God – male, fatherly, monarchical and so on. Many believe these descriptors tell the exhaustive truth about God. In accepting the complexity of her sexuality and identity, Rachel Mann has been able to explore with a greater freedom what God might look like to an ‘unconventional creature’ like her.This second edition of Rachel’s passionate, celebrated and nuanced book has been thoroughly revised and extended, with new chapters which re-examine what it means to live with ill-health and being trans nearly a decade on from the original publication of Dazzling Darkness.Rachel Mann is an Anglican priest, poet, scholar and broadcaster. The author of eleven books, her work has been shortlisted for the international Michael Ramsey Prize, and has been called ‘exceptional’ (Rowan Williams) and ‘astonishing’ (Michael Symmons Roberts). She regularly broadcasts on BBC Radio 2 and 4.

'Waiting can be beautiful and, at least sometimes, it takes us to the heart of the Holy.'As much at home with Strictly Come Dancing as the mystical writings of Julian of Norwich, Rachel Mann writes with disarming verve of something we all experience - waiting.It may seem unlikely when you're stuck on a train, or nervously anticipating hospital treatment, or simply fearful of an uncertain future, that there is treasure to be found in the waiting. Yet the Psalmist says, 'I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.'These luminous meditations tell stories of God waiting with us when we're in fear or distress; of coming - bidden or unbidden - to relieve our loneliness; of disconcerting us, desiring us and surprising us with joy... Most of all they remind us that Jesus Christ comes into the world as one long waited for; as the servant who waits on others; as the one on whom we are, adoringly, called to wait.Covering 4 weeks, each meditation ends with a prayer and questions for reflection, which may be used by individuals or groups.

Reflections for Daily Prayer continues to be one of the most popular and highly valued daily Bible reading companions. Continuing its tradition of excellence, regular favourites and new contributors offer insightful, informed and inspiring reflections on the scripture readings of the day, based on the Common Worship lectionary for Morning Prayer. Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, is the guest contributor for Holy Week. New voices this year include Gregory Cameron, the Bishop of St Asaph and author of the popular An Advent Book of Days and An Easter Book of Days; Chine MacDonald, author, broadcaster and Director of the religious think tank Theos; and Emma Parker, Deputy Warden of Cranmer Hall, Durham. For every day (excluding Sundays) of the 2023-24 church year, there are full references and a quotation from the day’s set of Scripture readings, concise and challenging commentary, and a collect. Also included is a simple order for Morning and Night Rrayer, and additional helps for nurturing a habit of regular daily prayer.

Reflections for Daily Prayer continues to be one of the most popular and highly valued daily Bible reading companions. Continuing its tradition of excellence, regular favourites and new contributors offer insightful, informed and inspiring reflections on the scripture readings of the day, based on the Common Worship lectionary for Morning Prayer. Isabelle Hamley, Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, is the guest contributor for Holy Week. For every day (excluding Sundays) of the 2026-27 Church year, there are full references and a quotation from the day’s set of Scripture readings, concise and challenging commentary, and a collect. Also included is a simple order for Morning and Night Prayer, and additional helps for nurturing a habit of regular daily prayer.

A Kingdom of Love is a lyrical interrogation of the place of the sacred and profane in a demythologised world from poet and Anglican parish priest, Rachel Mann.

Since C.H. Sisson's ground-breaking Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1984), Christina Rossetti's readership has burgeoned. Almost a century ago Ford Madox Ford claimed her as 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced', and - as Valentine Cunningham recently declared - she now sits at top table with Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Barrett Browning. Feminist and queer scholars have since laid claim to Rossetti; but her Anglo-Catholic faith was never incidental to the power of even her most secular poems and is at the heart of her imaginative work. As an Anglican priest and poet, Rachel Mann in her selection appreciates Rossetti's ambition while attending, too, to recent scholarship that focuses on the religious, feminist and fantastical elements in her work.

In the Bleak Midwinter explores the power of Advent and the joy of Christmas through the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Best known for her poems-turned-carols In the Bleak Midwinter and Love Came Down at Christmas, Rossetti’s rich and wondrous faith provides an inspiring seasonal companion. For each day from Advent Sunday to the Epiphany, Rachel Mann selects a poem and reflects on it, drawing on Rossetti’s many other writings including her devotional journals and commentary on biblical narratives. At a time when commercial pressures are at their most intense, this volume aims to lead readers to an encounter with God’s time and space, to find our true identity beyond all that would limit and diminish our humanity.

Love's Mysteries reflects powerfully on our fundamental limitations as creatures of flesh and bone, and what our experiences of grief, loss and fragility tell us about God and his astonishing choice to inhabit human flesh.Rachel Mann explores what happens when our bodies are under pressure, living under conditions of trauma, violence, pain or distress, suggesting that the precariousness of life might be where we most authentically encounter God. Her argument combines theological reflection with stories of communal and personal loss, from large-scale events such as terrorist attacks and the coronavirus pandemic to personal accounts of accompanying a dying person.Throughout, she explores how the universal experience of fragility and grief can help us understand our own lives and our relationships with God and with others.

Each year, the Holy Week and Easter double issue of the Church Times offers a wealth of seasonal reading and resources for worship and preaching. This volume, like its companion Christmas collection, draws together outstanding features from the past twenty years. It includes:* Meditations on the Stations of the Cross by the poet David Scott;* A short story set in Gethsemane by David Hart;* Timothy Radcliffe on the alternative to conflict symbolised by the Last Supper;* Sam Wells on Pilate and what he - and we - could do differently;* Richard Harries on the art of Good Friday;* Peter Stanford on Judas;* Michael Perham on why Easter celebrations should start in the dark;* Stephen Cleobury on the carols of Easter;* Mark Oakley on the poetry of the cross;* Paula Gooder on why the resurrection is central to faith;* Reflections on the season's lectionary readings, and much besides.In life Jesus had 'nowhere to lay his head' and in death was laid in a borrowed tomb. Mindful of this, all royalties from this book will go to the Church Homeless Trust.

Jane Austen – novelist, forthright letter writer, daughter and sister of Anglican clergy – had a rarely-matched insight into human character. Like Lent itself, she exposes frailty, caprice and pomposity without losing a profound and compassionate understanding of human nature. Her life was profoundly shaped by the church and Christian spirituality, making her writings an ideal accompaniment for the 40 days of Lent.Rachel Mann introduces Jane Austen, her world and her ideas, and, for each day of Lent, offers commentary on a short excerpt from her writing to explore how her faith can illuminate ours. She brings Jane's novels into conversation with biblical and spiritual ideas and also with today’s questions about class, sexuality and race. Themes explored include: The Triumph of Love, Learning Wisdom, Seeing Beyond the Surface to the Truth, Knowing Where Your Treasure Lies, The Temptation to be Prideful and Prejudiced, The Pomposity of Religion, Privilege and its Limitations, Duty and Good Manners, and much more.

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2024A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation 2024Inher second collection, Mann wrestles with the questions and possibilities raised when trans identity, faith and the limits of myth and language intersect and are tested. Eleanor Among the Saintsis a study in the queer joy found in counter-factuals and fantasy, shaped through the prism of the disputed story of Eleanor Rykener, a medieval trans woman, seamstress and sex worker.

Powerful and moving readings, stories and poems for Easter. The accounts of scapegoating, of power and violence and hope found in the gospels will always be current and significant. The story of Jesus Christ and of those who surrounded him remains a defining narrative of our time. Using artistic and theological licence, Rachel Mann writes with the voices of the characters involved in the biblical accounts of passion and resurrection. Unafraid to explore the darkest aspects evoked by these events, she says: 'The intention of both the more humorous and the visceral stories is to play with abiding themes of death and new life in ways which - in church contexts at least - break unusual ground. Some readers may find some of the language crude and offensive. It is not my intention to offend or outrage, but - to indicate that there are places and experiences where blasphemy is prayer and prayer is blasphemy.'

A Star-Filled Grace offers resources on beloved Advent and Christmas themes for churches, ministers, study groups and individuals at a time when there is a genuine interest in fresh ways of telling the Christmas stories. In poetry, liturgy and narrative, Rachel Mann questions the cosy and sentimental view of the festive season and takes seriously the idea that God in Christ is born as a vulnerable outsider who transforms the world in radical ways. Intended to be usable in a wide range of liturgical and study contexts, this book revisits biblical voices, characters and stories with a sophistication and simplicity that speaks to readers from a diversity of theological and spiritual perspectives. Rachel Mann is an Anglican parish priest, broadcaster and writer. She is resident poet and minor canon at Manchester Cathedral. Her work is widely published, including two previous books, The Risen Dust and Dazzling Darkness.

Priest, poet and broadcaster Rachel Mann believes the world is charged with a divine spark. She explains how in our encounters with what she terms ‘the spectres of God’, one can become at peace with limitation, precariousness, lack of certainty, and one’s fragility and fractures - and at the same time find in divine fragility the hope of the world. Drawing on her own experiences, in three short chapters (on the body, on love, and on time) Mann explores how God invites us, repeatedly, to live in a rich three-dimensional mystery that subverts the depressing flat-earth of modern life.