Coming from from the Ioan Community, A Star-Filled Grace offers resources on beloved Advent and Christmas themes for churches, ministers, study groups and individuals at a time when there is a genuine interest in fresh ways of telling the Christmas stories.

In poetry, liturgy and narrative, Rachel Mann questions the cosy and sentimental view of the festive season and takes seriously the idea that God in Christ is born as a vulnerable outsider who transforms the world in radical ways.

Intended to be usable in a wide range of liturgical and study contexts, this book revisits biblical voices, characters and stories with a sophistication and simplicity that speaks to readers from a diversity of theological and spiritual perspectives.

As Rachel Mann writes, 'At the centre of the Christmas story is a God who disturbs our concepts of power, authority and status. A young girl becomes the bearer of God and speaks with extraordinary authority. God is incarnated not in the halls of power but among peasants and nobodies. In the Christmas stories, meaning and possibility are constantly played with; identity is reworked and redefined.'

The Iona Community is an ecumenical movement of men and women from different walks of life and different traditions in the Christian church. They are:

• Committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to following where that leads, even into the unknown.
• Engaged together, and with people of goodwill across the world, in acting, reflecting and praying for justice, peace and the integrity of creation.
• Convinced that the inclusive community it seeks must be embodied in the community it practises.