‘Arise my love’: The invitation of the Song of Songs

Dr Stefan Reynolds and Rev Graeme Watson

Saturday 30 March

10.30 am – 4.00 pm

Cost £30 Concessions £20

Please bring a packed lunch.  Coffee and tea provided

This day will look at the story behind what was long considered the greatest poem ever written. How a human love story came to carry mystical symbolism when so many commentators had despaired of finding it? Revd. Graeme Watson and Dr Stefan Gillow Reynolds have together spent years exploring how we can retrieve the Song of Songs as a poem for our time. In this day they will both introduce aspects of the Song and look at how, as a poem, it is suitable for Lectio Divina and contemplative prayer.

Graeme Watson is an Anglican priest, who has worked in pastoral posts in UK and in Tanzania, and in training men and women for ordained and lay ministries.  In 2003 he was the co-founder of an ecumenical weekly Christian Meditation group at St Mary’s Parish Church in Stoke Newington. He is a spiritual director, leads poetry workshops and retreats and teaches meditation in the WCCM.   He is the author of “Strike the Cloud: Understanding and Practising the teaching of the Cloud of Unknowing”, SPCK, 2011; The Song of Songs: A Contemplative Guide, SPCK, 2014. He has recently recorded 8 talks on The Cloud of Unknowing (available on www.wccm.org ).

Dr Stefan Reynolds is a well-established speaker and writer on Christian mysticism, as well as Director of Retreats at Mount Melleray Abbey in Ireland. His books include “Living with the Mind of Christ: Mindfulness in Christian Spirituality” and “The Wisdom of Love in the Song of Song”s (Hikari Press, 2018). He has a PhD from London University on Middle-English Mysticism and MAs in History of Christianity, and Christianity and Inter-Religious Dialogue.

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