These spiritual reflections guide their readers toward God’s embrace.

In Embracing God, Marsha L.. Dutton surveys the interwoven structures and themes of five treatises, showing how Aelred guides his readers to cling forever to God through memory, which is one of the three faculties of God’s image placed in humankind at creation (alongside reason and will). Individual chapters explore meditations on Jesus’ life, spiritual friendship, the eucharistic nature of Cistercian spirituality, and the nature of the soul.