I used to have to adapt traditional liturgies to make them more meaningful in the various ordinary and complicated pastoral situations I found myself. This book puts deep things in simple and beautiful words. A great buy. Recommended by my chaplain colleagues at the hospital.

This intriguing and imaginative book is the fruit of the author’s work as a hospital and hospice chaplain but also a freelance celebrant who was ordained into the Anglican priesthood but now draws on a wider range of traditions, especially those connected with the earth and the broadly Celtic tradition. The author offers the book as a companion to Common Worship and other official service-books, and it is a rich tapestry of liturgy for life-event ceremonies of all sorts. Tess Ward describes herself as a liturgical magpie and this is very much ‘her’ book, and it is probably best used as a springboard for our own creativity, rather than a supplemental set of fixed forms. The presentation of the book in the same format as some other Canterbury Press titles which are quasi-official such as Exciting Holiness could mislead an unwary minister if used unreflectively. Tess is an explorer of the edges, and while the newer denominational liturgies allow for substantial adaptation and creativity, a good deal of the material in this book goes beyond what a minister could legally use when offering public worship in the name of the Church of England. An obvious case in point is that liturgies of Blessing of a Civil Partnership are provided, but there are also more general questions about when liturgy that eschews all explicit reference to Christ can be properly used. So – a book that can help me stay fresh, but not one that I could easily have in my hand when leading a liturgy as a public minister of the Church of England.