We Sing While There's Voice Left (Zeller)

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In this book it is the "light and more hopeful" parts of life that Dom Hubert van Zeller examines in his surprising and challenging reflections. He writes: "Happiness, then, is not a matter of having a dream and working round towards its realization; it is much more a matter of being in tune." Sometimes we have everything we want and yet discover that we have not "arrived." Will our desires change before being satisfied? Rather, "the real danger is not that our view of happiness may change too much but that it will not change enough." As always, van Zeller encourages the supernatural view of things. He asks and (sometimes) answers questions such as:

• How do you synthesise mental and vocal prayer?
• What is the good of a liturgical, ritualistic way of praying?
• Are there "misfits" in the world who are meant to be misfits?
• How does one benefit from spiritual dryness?
• What happens when you leave out contemplation from your life?
• What are we to expect from prayer if our prayers often seem unanswered?

The last volume in a loose series of four, this book further delves into inviting every soul to participate in a true Christian mysticism, while admitting "that there can never in this life be a satisfactory solution to the problem of prayer." Dom Hubert concludes: "A rather dreary project? Not at all! It is the most challenging and tremendous that God can offer to the heart and mind of man. It is the invitation of Divine Love."

Born in British-controlled Egypt, Dom Hubert van Zeller (1905–1984) was a Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey in Bath, England, where he was educated. Of his scholastic career he said that he “passed no examinations—merely by-passed them.” The author of numerous books ranging from scriptural commentary to fiction and biography, he was also renowned as a minimalist sculptor and cartoonist. He was a friend of Ronald Knox and of Evelyn Waugh, who described Dom Hubert’s writings as “characterized by vitality and elegance.”