GIVING UP WITHOUT GIVING UP

“This spare, candid and calm introduction to meditative practice will be a life-saving gift for many living in or on the edge of the darkness that regularly overtakes us in this uncontrollable world.” Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

A moving account drawing on Christian and Buddhist traditions of how the practice of meditation can allow us to accomplish ‘the gentle pilgrimage of recovery' from depression

‘The real thing' he writes, ‘needs to try and speak to the “via negativa”, the desert experience and the realisation of poverty of spirit in connection with the event we call depression'. While the language of Buddhism has much to say in this territory, Green emphasises that there is great scope to let the Christian Word speak alongside this and other ways of being with our silences.

Jim Green has worked for many years in the field of mental health with both local and national organisations, the Open University and the BBC. He describes his decades of meditation practice as ‘always learning to be a beginner'. Country of residence: UK