The narrative of Holy Week is powerful and painful, and because we know how the story ends, it's easy to gloss over the difficult details and stay in the comfort zone of our understanding. Stephen Cottrell brings home, vividly and poignantly, the physical reality of the passion story. This is a book to stimulate thought, provoke discussion and create space for contemplation.

The Things He Carried: A Journey to the Cross: Meditations for Lent and Holy Week

Religion & Spirituality

Cottrell, Stephen

Christian Books & Bibles

SPCK Publishing

The follow-up to the author's highly successful The Things He Carried, this book takes the post-resurrection sayings of Jesus as starting-points and uses the same reflection format. The meaning and significance of the resurrection how it was first communicated and how it is communicated to us today, are explored by piecing together these sayings of Jesus. However, the content may not quite be what we imagine. Following the resurrection, we would expect the triumphant 'I have risen from the dead' Yet Jesus' statements are so different, so apparently innocuous, that they are often overlooked. The Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus; without it, says St Paul, we are to be most pitied. In this revelatory book of surprising reflections, Stephen Cottrell's retelling of the Easter story encourages us to slow down and hear it properly - perhaps for the very first time.

The Things He Said - The Story of the First Easter Day

History

World

The remarkable English painter Stanley Spencer produced a series of works entitled Christ in the Wilderness (1939-54), portraying the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness. These beautiful and compelling images give us a startling insight into Jesus? vocation and his own understanding of his ministry. In this attractive illustrated book, Stephen Cottrell reflects on five of the Christ in the Wilderness paintings, and reveals them to be a rich source of spiritual wisdom and nourishment. He invites us to slow down and enter into the stillness of Stanley Spencer?s vision. By dwelling in the wilderness of these evocative portraits, Stephen Cottrell encourages us to re ne our own discipleship and learn again what it means to follow Christ.

Christ in the Wilderness: Reflecting On The Paintings By Stanley Spencer

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

This Lent book offers imaginative reflections on Christ's crucifixion. Each of the seven chapters is focused on a different key character, who describes his or her experience of the Passion. The nails used to crucify Christ are used as a jumping off point for their reflections. Each character considers the questions, 'who killed Christ' and 'who was responsible.' Each chapter includes a Biblical passage, a meditative hymn, a reflection from the point of view of the character, and a short prayer. The book finishes with practical suggestions on how it can be used as a Lent study course. It is ideal for individual reflection or group study, and can also readily be adapted for use as a Good Friday liturgy.

The Nail: Being Part Of The Passion

Meditations on the story of Holy Week and the things Jesus did, from his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday until his arrest on Maunday Thursday.  One extraordinary week.  Jesus rides a colt into Jerusalem. He shows righteous rage in the temple. He eats with the wrong sort of people. He lets a woman anoint him with oil. He washes his disciples' feet. He breaks bread and shares wine. He prays passionately in the garden. He allows himself to be arrested.  Jesus stands in the prophetic tradition of those who embody what they teach. The things he did were carefully planned. And in this riveting book, Stephen Cotterell draws out their political and religious significance as Jesus moves towards his greatest and final act - his death and resurrection.

The Things He Did: The Story Of Holy Week

The Sleepy Shepherd is so dozy he completely misses the visit of the angels . . . and the chance to greet the Christ-child in Bethlehem. But one crucial night, years later, he makes an important decision―to be a real shepherd to a man whose friends have all fallen asleep . . . This beautifully illustrated children's book weaves together the Christmas and Easter stories in an unexpected and unforgettable way.

The Sleepy Shepherd: A Timeless Retelling of the Christmas Story

Children's Books

Literature & Fiction

In the first fully comprehensive study of one of the world’s most iconic musical instruments, Stephen Cottrell examines the saxophone’s various social, historical, and cultural trajectories, and illustrates how and why this instrument, with its idiosyncratic shape and sound, became important for so many different music-makers around the world. 
After considering what led inventor Adolphe Sax to develop this new musical wind instrument, Cottrell explores changes in saxophone design since the 1840s before examining the instrument's role in a variety of contexts: in the military bands that contributed so much to the saxophone's global dissemination during the nineteenth century; as part of the rapid expansion of American popular music around the turn of the twentieth century; in classical and contemporary art music; in world and popular music; and, of course, in jazz, a musical style with which the saxophone has become closely identified.

The Saxophone (Yale Musical Instrument Series)

Music

Yale University Press

The Archbishop of Canterbury's official Lent Book for 2004 Some of the last words Jesus uttered while hanging on the cross were 'I thirst.' These sorrowful words are simple, yet very human. Jesus Christ, the thirsty one, shares deeply in the mess and muddle of human living. The cross is about the suffering and the longing of Jesus; it shows us his pain and his love. This book---the 2004 edition of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book---helps penetrate the deep mystery of a God who goes on loving, no matter what. No matter how exorbitant the cost, no matter the obstacles in his way, Jesus was determined to be obedient until the end. As Stephen Cottrell peels back the layers of meaning in this simple cry of longing, he prays that readers will experience, as if for the first time, the magnificent and all-pervading love of God. Cottrell hopes that as we come to the great festival of Easter, we will know afresh that the one who thirsts is also the one in whom our own thirsts are quenched. Only by exploring the remarkable love of this nailed-to-a-cross God can we begin to understand our own mortality and suffering. Included is a foreword by Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

'I Thirst': The Cross--The Great Triumph of Love

Zondervan

Emmaus: Introduction

Cyhoeddiadau Mei

Congregations are often confused or uninspired by the emphasis on Old Testament themes during Advent and too "over" Christmas by December 26 to pay much attention to the gospel stories that follow Jesus' birth. Walking Backwards to Christmas starts at the end of the story, with Jesus' presentation to Anna and Simeon at the temple, and moves backwards through Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the wise men's visit, Jesus' birth in a stable, Mary's pregnancy, and finally to the much-earlier hopes and dreams of Isaiah and Moses.
 Telling the Christmas story through the eyes of both famous figures like King Herod and imagined characters like the innkeeper's wife, Stephen Cottrell invites readers to experience Jesus' birth anew, with greater appreciation of the dark themes and ancient figures relevant to the Advent story.

Walking Backwards to Christmas

Westminster/John Knox Press

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Books by Cottrell, Stephen