Monk in the Market Place: … and the Simpsons

Monk in the Marketplace is the autobiography of Ray Simpson, founding guardian of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, much-loved author of books on Celtic spirituality, and a major influence on the new monastic movement across the world. Ray’s memoir charts human pain and God incidents in his childhood and college, baptisms of fire in industrial heartlands and multi-racial London, pioneering a Village of God at Bowthorpe, Norwich, the call to be a contemplative in the market-place and to live without a salary, his co- founding of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, and twenty years as founder of the Celtic Christianity library and Open Gate Retreat House on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (‘the spiritual capital of England’). This could become a classic ‘diary of a soul’ and his excursions into the Simpsons are hilarious.