Spiritual Care book

For those of you who are interested in and enjoy my writing, I just wanted to flag up the now limited availability of a book of mine going out of print (I've linked the image to Amazon UK, where you can read what reviewers say, though there's no Look-Inside for this book).

There are two reasons you might want to read it.

Firstly, it's very useful if you are in any kind of Christian ministry. It's a practical guide to, and exploration of, what it says on the front — spiritual care of dying and bereaved people, looking at various different facets of loss including other reasons than death (eg job redundancy, loss of integrity, divorce, etc). It also includes a chapter in which I've given detailed advice for the officiant at a funeral. I've given templates for funeral prayers and committals covering the different religious backgrounds (atheist, agnostic, New Age and low-key Christian) that you may have to work with because they have no obvious designated officiant of their own.

Sometimes people write to me saying how helpful they have found it, especially if they become involved in hospice chaplaincy.

Secondly, you might want to read it if you are curious about me as a person, because it has more autobiographical detail in it than anything else I've written anywhere.

The publisher contacted me the other day to say sales have slowed so they are now letting it go out of print. They have 84 copies left, which they are selling off in the next few weeks, after which any left over will just be trashed I suppose.

The publisher only made paperback copies, not e-books, and currently does not offer it on print-on-demand, so once it's gone, it's gone.

I guess from time to time second-hand copies will be around, but I have no copies myself and I don't think a huge amount were ever printed — it's a bit of a specialist book.

So I'm just letting you know, because I do think it's worth reading, especially seeing as we all die at some point and so does everyone else we know.

I hope you don't mind the publicity: I usually prefer to stick to conversation and thinking here, but once in a while . . . This is not me making money, because even if they sell every copy they still have in stock, it won't take it past the (small) royalty advance they paid me. This book just didn't sell very well, but the people who read it were glad they did.