God of Surprises

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I think that Gerard Hughes' railing against the church in which he serves, a little intriguing as I wonder what else he would have done. This truth is illustrated in a letter written by an imaginary parish priest complaining of the disruptive behaviour of one of his parishioners. Creative and consolatory feelings are those that lead us to discovering more of our hidden treasure, whereas destructive and desolatory feelings lead us away from it. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

This may sound trite and simplistic, but it the writing and exercises are full of good advice about developing your relationship with God. Hughes' premise, that `Our treasure lies in our inner life', may cause eye-rolling suspicion of New Ageism to some readers. The booklet includes extracts from the original book plus new material written by Hughes for the course, and ends with suggestions for different ways of praying. In terms of content and presentation the book is very good and will give you an awful lot to think about, it certainly changed my view on a lot of topics, especially the seeking guidance chapters.The remainder of his thesis is essentially a guide to a personalised and internalised adaptation of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as a way of `finding' this hidden treasure. Through many practical suggestions for heightened prayer, including Ignatian exercises and Jungian exploration, God of Surprises guides readers along the inner journey which reveals to us a God we may not have expected to find.

At the end of the chapter, the author makes a wonderful comparison between the marks of true repentance vis-à-vis false repentance. God of Surprises is characterised throughout by practical wisdom and humanity, deep thoughts and light touches, and a very sympathetic style of teaching . This book has only one purpose: to suggest ways of finding the treasure in what we may consider a most unlikely field - ourselves. It feels like an enormous handbrake turn for the book to take as it should be concluding and as a result it doesn't really feel finished. Above all, it is a useful book – a book to be used by those who find it hard to forgive themselves: the stumblers and agnostics who hardly dare believe that God is within them.

Ignatios Loyola using the parable of the treasure found in a field for which a man sells everything to aquire. Written for ‘bewildered, confused and disillusioned Christians’ as a guide for the inner spiritual journey in which we are all engaged, God of Surprises has much to say to those who have a love/hate relationship with the Church to which they belong or once belonged. We may fight against finding him there because it means we are not our own since everything we are or have comes from God and has to be given back to him.

Chapter Twelve is not a treatise on decision-making, but offers some basic guidelines for individual and group decisions. The Final Chapter applies the insights of the book to a very real situation- the threat of nuclear war. Gerard Hughes covers a lot of ground in a deceptively short-looking book, so there’s plenty to get you thinking, and it will be worth going back to and rereading.As I have not read the original I cannot comment on it's updatedness but I am informed that any new material is minimal.