Love Me Home is an invitation for you to go on a journey with the wounded healer Jesus Christ. The book is rooted in my experience both during and after the 30-day Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. I explore themes of embodiment, trauma, recovery, truth, mercy and forgiveness. Very deliberatly, I put the book together as a piece of art in itself and offer a unique blending of personal narrative, scripture passages, poetry, art and theological reflection. I share about my own journey so you get an idea about the soil this book has grown from. But the book offers enough space for yourself and where you want to go with it, that is the beauty of poetry.
My poems are honest and earthy and - so I have been told - speak even to folk who normally find poetry difficult to engage with. The accessible language will spark your imagination, bringing to life Gospel scenes and acting as a bridge for you to encounter Christ in your own heart and to pray your own Psalms. The poems are complemented by creative pieces of art that emerged during my own journey, expressing both something of my pain and the healing I found, and a deep trust that God has made his home in our body, a lovely dwelling place. They invite you to find your own creative expressions as you navigate your inner landscape.
The book wants to encourage you to open up to your own wounding and to allow the story you carry in your body to be touched by the light and life of Jesus, the Christ, who seeks to love all of us home. Love Me Home is a hopeful and courageous book that wants to be taken slowly and meditatively. It will speak to you wherever you are at on your spiritual journey and especially if you have suffered emotional, spiritual, sexual or physical violence or abuse.
“This remarkable book reveals in prose, poetry and art, how light and new life emerge, through suffering and struggle, out of darkness and death. It takes this foundational tenet of faith to a very personal and profound level, making it vibrant and meaningful for every spiritual pilgrim, but especially for those working through their own experience of emotional, spiritual, sexual or physical trauma or abuse. Christine achieves this at great cost as she shares with raw honesty her journey through the Spiritual Exercises, which opened deep wounds and became the foundation of an equally deep healing process as she found her own story intimately and inextricably interwoven with the Gospel story.”
MARGARET SILF Author of Landmarks and The Wisdom Years
LOVE ME HOME is AVAILABLE NOW!
About the book
Love Me home is a blend of personal narrative, scripture passages, theological reflection and 21 colour images of art. The first part of the book stays closely with the life of the historic Jesus and some of those who encountered or journeyed with him. It invites you to join them and enter into their lives. The poems and reflections follow the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The second part of the book translates this journey more explicitly into the ‘here and now’ of our lives in the 21stcentury and our unique life experiences: How do we relate to God in the midst of grief, trauma and hurt? That is a question many have asked before us.
Part 1
Introduction: How lovely is your dwelling place
1. In the womb of God: racham – mercy
2. Annunciation – rupture: can it be true?
3. God among us – breaking open: walk with me.
4. The zeal for my house will eat me – entering your pain:
let me carry this for you
5. Out of death comes life – I take you with me
Part 2
Introduction: Love me home more deeply
1. Give me a candle of the Spirit
2. Where were you?
3. Trauma
4. Our innocent core
5. Forgiveness
6. Healing will come
Artwork explained
Love Me home is available as softcover on 80gsm paper and is sold for £17.99.
The premium edition, sold for £25, comes with a hardback cover and 115gsm coated paper, which gives the book a very smooth feel. The hardback version will be released on 17 November and can be pre-ordered now. The book is 216x250mm and has 226 pages.
The book is printed on demand, which means that whenever you put in an order, your copy/copies will be printed and then sent to you. My distributors are Bookvault for both the hardback and softcover; and Kindle Direct Publishing for the softcover.
Where to get the book
As I have published this book as an independent author, if you live in the United Kingdom, you would support me the most if you purchased the book from The Great British Book Shop. Click here. But it is of course also available on Amazon.co.uk
If you live in Europe, the easiest way at this point in time is to order from Amazon. Both the softcover and hardcover editions are available there. I deliberately set the price for the hardback cover cheaper for buyers in Europe as there will be higher delivery costs. Click here: Amazon.de (it is also available on other Amazon sites in Europe).
If you live in the USA, both versions are available on Amazon.com. I have set a lower price for the hardcover edition there as well to account for the higher shipping costs. You could order the hardback version from The Great British Book Shop, too.
In the near future, the hardback version also will be printed in the USA which will reduce the shipping costs. I will update my website once my distributor, Bookvault, will enable this.
How you can support me
If you buy a copy of Love Me Home and it speaks to you, you can greatly support me by recommending it to your friends and/or leaving a review on an online platform or in a magazine. The most obvious place to leave a review is Amazon - you do not have to have purchased the book via Amazon to leave a review there:
1. Sign in to your Amazon account.
You need to be logged in with the account you normally use for Amazon purchases.
2. Go to the book’s product page.
Search for “Love Me Home Christine Barnabas” on Amazon or go directly to the link for the book here (link for the UK)
3. Scroll down to the “Customer Reviews” section.
You’ll see a button that says:
➡️ “Write a customer review.”
4. Click “Write a customer review.”
5. Choose your star rating (1–5 stars).
- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = Loved it!
Most readers choose 4–5 stars if they connected with the book.
6. Write your review.
There are of course other platforms where you could leave a review, e.g.
Good Reads or Google books. I will set up an author account with various platforms soon.
And I would love to hear from you directly! Use my contact page if you have any questions, feedback or if you wanted to leave a review which I could use for my website.
Exhibition
I am planning to have a wandering exhibition with my artwork in the United Kingdom. Watch the space for more information!
My dreams for the book
My dream for the book is that it will deeply speak to people on their spiritual journey, that it will open up an experience of how the human Christ walks beside us and wants to carry for and with us what we cannot bear alone. I want to reach out to people in prison in particular, bringing good news of Christ who forgives, restores and heals - both in what we have done and what has been done unto us.
Consecrated Celibacy - A Fresh Look at an Ancient Calling
You can order the book at Sacristy Press , Amazon (and many other places)
or at Northumbria Community
In this book I explore the vocation to Consecrated Celibacy outside of traditional Religious Orders. As you might have discovered whilst browsing my website, I have made a commitment to that state in life in 2011. Since then, I have met an increasing number of men and women who feel called to this commitment, but who clearly sense that joining a traditional Monastery or Religious Order is not for them.
The book looks at how Scripture and Tradition affirm both this vocation, and - more generally - living as a single person in a Church culture that often emphasizes marriage and family. It provides insights into how the calling to Consecrated Celibacy might be discerned and lived out, making practical suggestions. It also addresses questions around sexuality in a wider context. This book will be a valuable resource for any single person, those discerning a calling to Consecrated Celibacy, Spiritual Directors, and New Monastic Communities who want to re-imagine 'the pathways of old' for our day and age.
"At a time when classical religious life is experiencing a worldwide paradigm shift and new monastic communities are emerging across the ecumenical spectrum, this thoughtful study of consecrated celibacy comes exactly at the right moment. Combining honesty and clear-sightedness, the book addresses a topic that is overdue for serious attention."
Gemma Simmonds, Religious Life Institute, Cambridge
You can watch an interview from the book launch on my blog
You can find a review about my book by
The Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen, Archdeacon Emeritus of Hackney (East London) in the Church Times.
A review from the evangelical stable can be found here
My Little Dandelion - Prayer poems of longing and hope
The second edition of My Little Dandelion will be available again soon.
It was first published in 2014. It is a collection of poems and comes with illustrations by my friend Ute Plank.
