The Cloister Conspiracy--by Brian Shenton(AKA Charismatic)-A Kindle ebook.
Set in academia,this insapiring story of intrigue and soul-searching is simply magnanimous in its splendour.Read for free three chapters--on Amazon.co.uk/kindle books

Winning competition

Review of Anita Shreve's novel 'Body Surfing':Anita Shreve's drama is a polished performance of nuanced social observation, ersatz romance and cloying tragedy,Partway through the narrative, Sydney Sklar, like me, is left reeling from an unexpected blow. A simple, beautiful sentence like"a lobster making its new shell", then a moment later Shreve produces a minature symphony of word-strangeness:aesthetically subverting.And she brings out in paragrams the secret metonymic chain-with a beautifully constructed referential mode... and the co-prescence of intra textual movements, finally reaches a synthesis.She understands that the world is co-terminous with the logic of her beautiful and captivating prose.

The attractiveness of prayer

Those who really pray, go very often to the heart of a subject, in a very direst and simple way.In conversation with them, it seems pointless to advance the usual reasons, excuses and polite camouflage of ordinary social talk. Because true prayer is contact with reality, then prayerful people are real people. This reality gives them a certain attractive simplicity.It is the complicated person, the confused, the unreal and the false, pretending personality which surrounds itself with a cocoon of words which form a defensive barricade. I have always found that the truly prayerful have a devastating and somewhat surreal simplicity.
Someone who met the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin said about him:"The look in his eyes when they met yours, revealed the man's soul; his reassuring sympathy restored your confidence in yourself. Just to speak to him made you feel better;you knew he was listening to you and he understood you. His own faith was in the invincible power of love."This gift was not merely his natural bonhomie, but sprang from his deep life of prayer...

Poetry in Motion

Earthly Splendour

Merry making, sun-kissed, drenched in tender petals

The earth grew bright and the warmth swelled

Energetically,full of promise, it boldly leapt out

And transformed the whole area into a beautiful expanse.

Silence gave way to rustling music, woven around

Enveloping the mysterious murmering sounds

Opening a wide unmatchable beatitude

Of enormous good; a kindness of warmth and love

All the friendly attributes that continue to grow.

This endangered earth, now blossoms

And fills the masses of soil and sand

With fresh green abundance

And open skies, yielding masses of brightly shining rays

Penetrating, enhancing, uplifting coruscating clouds

Which float across, and seek out

Other lingering dormant masses

Giving out wonders of earthly love

Creating gracious, stunningly pulchrititudinous scenes

Around soft,caressing gentle furtive winds.

Uplifting, comforting, the grand opening swells

And unveils once again the enchanting areas

Spread out, and encompass mountanous cliffs

Hilly escarpments which fill out

And reach ever outward and upward

To the green land

Of promise, of a better way to live

Magically enhancing the voluminous and gracious heavenly spendour

Filling, sifting swirling, without looking back

Set in a world,

At peace.