A Soulful Companion for the Modern Age
Elizabeth Oldfield’s Fully Alive is not just a book- it is a thoughtful companion for those seeking to live with integrity, presence, and purpose in an increasingly fragmented world. Drawing on her own Christian faith and years of experience facilitating deep public conversations through The Sacred podcast, Oldfield offers readers an invitation: to live more soulfully, more connectedly, and ultimately more courageously.
Life Beneath the Surface
Rather than presenting a neat formula for self-improvement, Oldfield’s approach is grounded in the messy, paradoxical beauty of real life. The book is structured around practices and reflections that support the cultivation of a well-rooted inner life, including attention, community, ritual, and rest. Her prose is gentle yet incisive, weaving personal narrative with social commentary and spiritual insight.
One of the book’s strengths lies in its ability to speak across spiritual boundaries. While Oldfield writes from within a Christian framework, her tone is invitational rather than dogmatic. She honours doubt, mystery, and pluralism, creating space for readers of many faiths – or none at all – to reflect on what it means to be “fully alive.”
Tending the Soul in Public and Private
Oldfield’s background in public dialogue shines through as she grapples with the tension between interiority and outward-facing engagement. Can we hold our values without becoming combative? Can we stay rooted without becoming rigid? She offers no easy answers, but instead models a posture of humility, curiosity, and love.
In doing so, she challenges the individualism and productivity obsession of modern culture, pointing instead to slower, more relational ways of being. Her writing encourages us to rediscover what it means to belong – to a community, to a tradition, to the natural world, and to something greater than ourselves.
Practices of Presence
Perhaps most powerfully, Fully Alive reminds us that spiritual life is not separate from everyday life. Oldfield’s reflections on domesticity, parenting, and friendship bring theology down from the ivory tower and into the kitchen, the office, the messy family dinner. She shares her own imperfect attempts at Sabbath, silence, and vulnerability with honesty and grace.
Each chapter gently suggests practices – small, soul-tending shifts that help us listen more deeply to ourselves and others. These are not productivity hacks but invitations to live more wholly and more humanly.
A Quiet Revolution
There’s a quiet subversiveness to this book. In a world obsessed with speed, performance, and polarisation, Fully Alive suggests that the most radical act might be to slow down, pay attention, and root ourselves in love. Oldfield offers no grand program for societal change, but her vision of spiritual depth and relational wholeness feels like the fertile ground from which such change could grow.
Final Reflections
Fully Alive is for anyone who senses that something is missing in the rush of modern life—who yearns for stillness amid noise, meaning amid fragmentation, and community amid isolation. It’s not a book to skim, but one to sit with, perhaps with a cup of tea and an open journal.
Oldfield doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. What she offers instead is something much rarer: companionship, humility, and a path back to the sacred in the everyday. In a culture starved for soul, Fully Alive is a nourishing read.
If this book resonated with you, you might enjoy others under the theme of Soulful Living & Inner Growth. These reviews explore books that invite deeper reflection, nurture emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and offer gentle guidance for living a more meaningful and authentic life. Let them accompany you as you slow down, look inward, and reconnect with what truly matters.