There is a dream the dawn inspires
of all that is awesome and beautiful;
a world of love and laughter
of family and friends.
But soon the dawn gives way
to the busy world of work and wealth
and its more superficial dreams
that make our native one unreal.
But our deep dream will not be silenced
as it is the Trinity dreaming in us
of sharing all they have and are
in their quiet revolution.
The Dream
There is a dream built into each of us and it is so deeply ingrained that it is always trying to surface and to engage us no matter how much we neglect or ignore it. This dream is of the happiness we hope for from the relationships we engage in but above all from the love that creates and sustains these.
We see how we struggle to realise our dream in the stories people tell in novels, in films and on television. But we also see what happens when we abandon the pursuit of our dream and allow ourselves to be seduced by more superficial ones. When this happens we often experience a sense of sadness and isolation and this may make our dream of the happiness we seek in love and relationships seem unrealistic. A saner conclusion may be that even though human love, in spite of its deficiencies, can give us a good impression of our dream it cannot realise it in the way we long for. We must look beyond the human to find this.
The eight books on this website are all about the passionate desire of the three persons of the Trinity to realise our dream in an extraordinary way. This they plan to do by revealing their love for us and how its attractiveness can draw us into their own intimate relationship and into the happiness they share. However, if this dream is to be realised we must be willing to make the radical change of mind and heart involved in making our own of their love. This is a quiet revolution in the sense that it takes place according as we are willing to make the changes called for if we are to realise the dream they have for us.
The story of eight books
The story of the unfolding of my God given dream is imaged here in the branches and fruit of the tree of life. This unfolding centres on two experiences that have shaped me. The first began shortly after I left school when I did a retreat and was captivated by Jesus, by the way he loves and relates. The second experience emerged some years later when I began to teach and discovered how difficult it was to convey to others my experience of Jesus.
Then in my fifties, when I had spent ten years teaching young people how to explore their beliefs and another ten helping adults to explore what their Christian faith meant to them, I felt a compelling desire to write. What I wanted to write about was a vision I had been led to of the passionate desire of the three persons of the Trinity to reveal their passionate love for each of us. The following words of Karl Rahner I had been struck by as a student came to inspire all I was to write: "The most important fact in all Theology and Spirituality is that the three persons of the Trinity want to reveal themselves to each person".
I also discovered that to present this vision effectively I had to make use of four mutually enriching kinds of experience we have of the Trinity’s love of us. In other words, we need to make use of our experience of love in our own story and in the stories others tell. Then, if the story of God's self-revelation in the Bible is addressed to these two kinds of experience, it generates a fourth kind of experience we call traditional wisdom. This is a body of convictions we each develop about what is true, worthwhile and beautiful.
Out of all this experience of how my parents, my family and my friends have given me such a rich impression of the wondrous love of the Father, of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit there emerged the eight books on this websight.
How the books are related
The eight books on this websight are intimately related. They are like branches that are rooted in the intense desire of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to reveal themselves as love to each of us. Thus the three persons in sharing all they have and are plan to realise their dream for us.
Two books give an overview of all eight.
The Quiet Revolution describes two ways of seeing life that bid for our allegiance: one makes a priority of work, wealth, possessions and the prestige we get from these, the other makes a priority of the relationships that the Trinity initiate when they reveal their love for us.
The Search for Something More maps out the journey we must undertake if we are to find our true happiness in the way we love and relate. We look at how we do this by answering four calls of adult life, the call to identity, to intimacy, to generativity and to integrity.
Two books are about the Father's love and providence
Nine Faces of God describes nine aspects of love that God the Father passionately desires to reveal to us. It also looks at a way of fostering belief in this love.
Follow Your Dream describes how we go about realizing the dream of the happiness to be found in the relationships the Father’s love seeks to establish with each of us. We explore how this love challenges us to accept and affirm not just ourselves and others but the whole of creation just as the Father does.
Two books deal with Jesus' love and the environment it creates
Nine Portraits of Jesus looks at nine aspects of his Father's love that Jesus portrays for us in human terms. We also look at how we can learn to make our own of this love.
Love Remembered portrays the mass as a celebration of Jesus' love of us and of the network of loving relationships it creates and maintains for us.
Two books deal with the Spirit's love and leading
A World Alight With Splendour describes how the Spirit give us a gift of divine love and seven gifts to explore this love and the dream it inspires.
Only If You Wrestle shows how in practice the Spirit leads us on our journey into the Father’s love as it is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We also examine how the Spirit teaches us the art of reflection and prayer that we need for this journey.
The themes of the eight books
There are five themes that run through the eight books on this websight. These centre on the passion with which the persons of the Trinity wish to reveal themselves to us and on the revolutionary change of mind and heart this calls for.
The first theme focuses on the revolution involved if we want to answer Jesus’ essential call to believe the good news of God’s love and the dream it inspires. Competing with this for our time, energy and resources is the allure of a more superficial dream. This is of a sense of worth we get from our outer world of work, wealth and possessions. If we wish to establish a more healthy balance between these two worlds we have a revolution on our hands, a radical change of mind and heart.
The second theme is the passion with which the Father, Jesus and their Spirit want to reveal themselves as love to each person. There are nine aspects of this love which we seek to become aware of and to believe in as they emerge for us in the Bible story.
The third theme centers on the dream which the love of the three persons of the Trinity inspires in us. It is a dream in which the attractiveness of their love draws us into an intimate relationship that is characterized by joy.
A fourth theme deals with how we experience the Trinity’s dream for us in four mutually enriching ways. We experience it in our own story when we remember the love we have received but also in the way love emerges in the stories other people tell in songs, films and novels. At the deepest level we experience this dream of love and intimacy in the way it unfolds in the Bible story. Finally, there is a synthesis we each construct from these three kinds of experience and it consists in a body of convictions we have about what is true and worthwhile in life.
The fifth theme faces the tragic fact that most of our experience lies dormant. So, we seek to notice and name the wisdom we have accumulated through learning the art of reflection and then how we can enjoy and make our own of this wisdom through learning the art of prayer.
