Ruth Burrows OCD – författare

There is a seismic shift necessary from being religious to being a true disciple. Here is the contemplative's perspective. It is an abiding sorrow to the author that many faithful religious people, even regular church goers, understand so little of the great truths they so sincerely profess to believe, especially among young people. Unless a real love for Jesus is awakened in their hearts, unless they have been helped to see something of the sheer wonder and beauty of the contents of the faith in which they are instructed, how can they withstand the atheism of our materialistic society? There is a vast difference between being religious and faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ. There is an inner disturbance and distress among people today which can be a secret call from the Spirit to go beyond the externals to a purer, deeper faith, to an encounter, mysterious by its very nature, with the living and true God revealed in Jesus Christ. What seems so very simple is in fact shatteringly profound. This is the contemplative's genius.

Prayer is a word we take for granted, but what do we mean by prayer?Almost always when we talk about prayer we refer to something we DO. But Burrows argues that our Christian knowledge assures us that prayer is essentially what God DOES. And what God is doing for us is giving us the Divine Self in love. This is the vision of a contemplative nun who contradicts the heresy of so much modern spiritual writing. The growing fascination in the contemplative and monastic life is evidence of the profound appeal of this approach. For this there is a real hunger. Ultimately, we live for God and not for ourselves.

One of the outstanding Carmelite authors of today has now written on the vision and aspirations of the great foundress of her order,St Teresa of Avila. The key to that vision was passion - not some state of heightened religious emotion, but an all-engrossing preoccupation with God. But, as Ruth Burrows points out, what all too often happens in practice is that the day-to-day lifestyle becomes adapted to non-passion: she argues, passionately, that faithful observance - the horarium, the 'detachment from created things' obedience, the relationship between sisters - provides an almost perfect situation for receiving a very great love of God, and that the structure must not be adapted to a lesser love. This, perhaps her most important book to date, is written primarily for fellow members of her own Order.But this particularly, and the detail and clarity with which she expresses it, makes Carmel a book of profound interest to all contemplatives, to priests and religious with more active apostolates, and to laypeople - in a word, to all Christians who see the 'passionately pursued' comtemplative life not only as a core vocation in the Church, but as a source of inspiration for their own spiritual lives.

An exchange of letters on prayer between British diplomat Mark Allen and Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows. 'I had to read some books, looking for help. Some set out to teach how to pray. I was very interested in these because they appeared to offer to take the problem head on. But somehow they didn't. They offered techniques about how to sit quietly and about some people finding it helpful to create a "praying corner" in the home. All this seemed like other people's Christmases - nice, of course, but happening at arm's length. At a deeper level, I had a horse sense that concentrating on creating a state which I might enjoy and be able to say I had mastered, I could not accept that there wasn't something more than this to prayer.' Thus Mark Allen, on his own view of the problem of prayer at the time when he first met Ruth Burrows. The friendship that followed led to a correspondence and, in due course, led to this book - to these Letters on Prayer, in which cant and technique and simple nostrums are eschewed, but prayer and faith are discussed both in depth and in a language we can all understand.

Ruth Burrows is a Carmelite nun, and the author of three outstanding books on prayer - Essence of Prayer, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer and Interior Castle Explored (all published by Continuum).This book is her autobiography - the account of a life empty of outward incident after her early years, but rich with her own spiritual growth. She writes of the Christian's relationship with others and with God, of prayer, of the life of the Spirit.She presents these ideals in no abstract way, but in the intimately personal terms of one individual's - her own - struggle to live them to the full.

A reissue of a Sheed and Ward backlist spiritual classic by a widely-praised and bestselling author.Interior Castle Explored is a penetrating interpretation of St Teresa of Avila's central teaching on prayer. But it is more than a contemporary Carmelite commentary on that 16th-century Carmelite classic; it is also, in its own right, a guide to the life of deep union with God.

Burns & Oates are proud to reissue Ruth Burrows' critically acclaimed work of spiritual theology, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer.When first published in 1976, spiritual theology as reflection on spiritual experience was a growing trend; but at the same time there was a new interest in, and a return to, the classical Carmelite theology of prayer, with an effort to formulate that theology in contemporary thought categories.Guidelines for Mystical Prayer embodies both tendencies. It offers a personal narrative, a reflection on the spiritual history of two gifted people, St Teresa and St John of the Cross; and yet it speaks clearly out of the Carmelite tradition, and in the language of today.Strong interest in Carmelite theology of prayer and the spiritual life has continued into the present; the success of Burrows' Essence of Prayer is testament to this.