News, good and sad

Steve Payne was recently back in the States for a few weeks from Nairobi. While he was here, Liturgical Press released his most recent book, The Carmelite Tradition. This is taken from the press release:

Eight hundred years ago Albert of Jerusalem gave the hermit-penitents of Mount Carmel a way of life to follow. Since then, this rule has inspired and formed mystics and scholars, men and women, lay and ordained to seek the living God. In The Carmelite Tradition Steven Payne, OCD, brings together representative voices to demonstrate the richness and depth of Carmelite spirituality. As he writes, Carmelite spirituality seeks nothing more nor less than to stand before the face of the living God and prophesy with Elijah, to hear the word of God and keep it with Mary, to grow in friendship with God through unceasing prayer with Teresa, to become by participation what Christ is by nature as John of the Cross puts it, and thereby to be made, like Therese of Lisieux, into instruments of God s transforming merciful love in the church and society. The lives and writings in The Carmelite Tradition invite readers to stand with these holy men and women and seek God in the hermitage of the heart.

About the Author

Steven Payne, OCD, of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, is a member of the Carmelite Friars formation team at the Monastery of St. John of the Cross near Nairobi, Kenya, and director of the Institute of Spirituality and Religious Formation (ISRF) at Tangaza College, a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi. He is the past editor of ICS Publications and of Spiritual Life magazine and the author of several works in philosophy of religion, theology, and Carmelite spirituality. He is a member of the Carmelite Forum and of the Carmelite Institute in Washington DC, of which he is a past president.

Steve, as some of you know, was my closest friend among my brothers in the Carmelites, as well as one of the most brilliant men I have ever known. I congratulate him on the book. I also thank him for including an excerpt from my translation of Gratian's Treatise on Melancholy, a translation project I had undertaken with his encouragement.

On a sadder note, right before he left to return to his duties in Kenya, Steve told me about some health problems his 87-year-old father is having. Larry is a retired mathematics professor who taught for many years at Cornell and has received international recognition for his work. He and his late wife Ruth were often my gracious hosts at their home in Ithaca and generously providing many a restful week of relaxation at their cabin on a small lake in the Adirondacks. After getting back to Africa, Steve learned that his father may have lymphoma. The doctors are still running tests, but that is a grim possibility. So I commend Steve, his father Larry and the rest of the family to your prayers at this time.