Grain in Winter (PDF)

This is a book for those whose life is in a state of change, who wait--though not for a clearly defined outcome--unsure of where they are going or where they may be taken. Often the need for change emerges within one of life's transitional periods: the early years of parenthood, ill-health, unemployment, redundancy, retirement, separation, divorce, or bereavement. These are those whom Donald Eadie calls "Saturday People"--people in a wide variety of circumstances learning what it can mean to wait within a sustained, bewildering, or messy period of transition. There is a long Saturday between the Friday of crucifixion and the Sunday of resurrection.

Periods of transition, particularly when we are in pain or distress, are no time for easy answers or religious cliches. Sustenance of a different kind is needed, coming from deep roots and underground streams. Grain in Winter offers a series of meditations and seed thoughts for those who find the waiting hard.

Donald Eadie is himself a Saturday person. He chose to learn about life in a Yorkshire mill when his contemporaries went on to university studies. Through marriage, Sweden is his second home. He has often been in the firing line for advocating justice and respect between people of all faiths, women and men, gay and straight people. In recent years he has lived with a serious spinal condition which forced him to retire early as Chairman of the Birmingham District of the Methodist Church. He has not given up being a much consulted Methodist minister, leading retreats and writing about spirituality.