Presence

About the Book

Are we capable of intimately knowing the presence of another person? Can it be said that, if we believe that there is a God, we are able to know his presence with us? The author addresses these and other questions by first of all illustrating that we are, as persons, more than the physical components of our bodies. Our capacity for creative thought and action is integrally related with our physical nature but not bound by it. We may say that there is a transcendent quality in life to be seen in the achievements of poets, painters, composers and professional dancers as well as in the remarkable responses of ordinary people to live and die for other people, which can lift us above the mundane. The chapters on human and divine presence and on the presence of Jesus to us and in the Christian Eucharist propose the possibility of the reality of presence which has rarely been written about. The book is a very accessible introduction to presence as it can be perceived in today’s world.

About the Author

Aelred Arnesen read theology at Queens‰*ª College, Cambridge after the war, was ordained to a parish in Northumberland and in 1955 became a member of the Society of St Francis in Dorset. In 1966 he founded the Anglican Cistercian community at Ewell Monastery in Kent which closed in 2004. He now lives in West London. He has also written Worship as Believing - faith and reason in search of a theology of Eucharist, and The Possibilities of Prayer in the 21 Century with The Anglican Cistercians of Ewell Monastery, and Essays on Worship.