Download or read book Sacred Longings written by Mary C. Grey and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""This book explores what is happening to the human spirit in a culture shaped and driven by [globalization], a culture where dreams, imaginations and desires are all manipulated...." What do we really want? Noted theologian Mary Grey believes we have gotten out of touch with our deepest desires and that the root problem is our acquiescence in global capitalism's most problematic characteristics. Story and symbol, she argues, can put us back in touch with out "sacred longings." Focusing on such simple yet profound symbols as water, light, and sacred space, she tries to reinstill a spiritual quest. In the end, she envisions spirituality--a kind of ecomystical renewal--as an element in the transformation of desire, lived out in Christian community. "For desire to be reborn, for sacred longings even to be named, not to mention fulfilled, there needs to be an embracing of the way of renunciation, simplicity and sacrifice. And that is counter-cultural..." As Part One looks at how our culture has lost heart, and Part Two analyzes are restless hearts, Part Three asks us to take heart and rekindle our thirst for righteousness.
Download or read book The Book of Longings written by Sue Monk Kidd and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinary novel . . . a triumph of insight and storytelling.” —Associated Press “A true masterpiece.” —Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.
Download or read book The Holy Longing written by Ronald Rolheiser and published by Image. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ronald Rolheiser makes sense of what is frequently a misunderstood word: spirituality. In posing the question "What is spirituality?" Father Rolheiser gets quickly to the heart of common difficulties with the subject, and shows through compelling anecdotes and personal examples how to channel that restlessness, that deep desire, into a healthy spirituality. This book is for those searching to understand what Christian spirituality means and how to apply it to their own lives. Rolheiser explains the nonnegotiables--the importance of community worship, the imperatives surrounding social action, the centrality of the Incarnation, the sustenance of the spiritual life--and how spirituality necessarily impacts every aspect of human experience. At the core of this readable, deeply revealing book is an explanation of God and the Church in a world that more often than not doubts the credibility of both.
Download or read book The Sacred Pulse written by April Fiet and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary life is leaving us frazzled, overwhelmed, and out of sorts. Our life's rhythm is often borrowed from the pace of life around us. Humans have created such a loud, fast tempo of perfection and production that we often forget--if we ever knew it at all--the rhythms designed for our well-being. In The Sacred Pulse, pastor and author April Fiet invites us to examine the frantic patterns of our lives to reclaim the deeper, sacred pulses that pattern our days. Through stories, scripture, and practical guidance for daily living, she lays out twelve rhythms--including gardening, handcrafts, friendship, and holidays--that are both sustainable and sustaining. Everyday acts like mealtime and shopping, and sporadic rhythms like the occasional snow day: reclaiming these patterns can remind us of the holy movement of God in the world. In a world of hustle and bravado, silencing the noise takes practice. The Sacred Pulse shows us how to strip away all of the competing beats we have settled for so we can tap into the joyful, holy rhythms of life.
Download or read book Holy Hunger written by Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2000-04-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wrenchingly honest, eloquent memoir “about true nourishment that comes not from [eating] but from engaging on a spiritual path."—Los Angeles Times In this brave and perceptive account of compulsion and the healing process, Bullitt-Jonas describes a childhood darkened by the repressive shadows of her alcoholic father and her emotionally reclusive mother, whose demands for excellence, poise, and self-control drove Bullitt-Jonas to develop an insatiable hunger. What began with pilfering extra slices of bread at her parents' dinner table turned into binges with cream pies and pancakes, sometimes gaining as much as eleven pounds in four days. When the family urged her father into treatment, the author recognized her own addiction and embarked on the path to recovery by discovering the spiritual hunger beneath her craving for food.
Download or read book The Five Longings written by David Richo and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How identifying what you want can reveal deep truths about yourself—and how working with those longings can lead to a happier, more satisfying life If you’ve ever had a vague sense that something’s missing from your life, congratulations: that longing for something better is a sign of being fully human, fully alive. But what’s even more wonderful, according to Dave Richo, is that when you identify and carefully examine the things you long for—like love, meaning, freedom, happiness, and growth—you not only discover deep truths about yourself, but you also find that the things you long for were never really “missing” at all. Richo provides enlightening advice and practices for accessing just this kind of profound self-discovery, illustrated by a wealth of examples from depth psychology, religion, and literature. Our longings in fact point to the presence of something transcendent in us, he shows. In seeking something better, we are seeking that which we already are. “David Richo does a brilliant job unpacking the unhealthy versions of ego that confine us. Through psychological and Buddhist wisdom teachings and a range of powerful practices and meditations, we are guided beyond the identity of separate self to the loving awareness that is our deepest essence.” —Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
Download or read book Immortal Longings written by Fergus Kerr and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fergus Kerr's study - which is derived from his highly-regarded Stanton Lectures, delivered in the University of Cambridge in 1994/5 - focuses on the more or less obvious theological commitments of several much-discussed contemporary philosophers. By so doing, the author daringly extends the agenda of what is usually considered to be 'philosophy of religion.'. The ramifications of his study are extensive: even if philosophy is not at bottom theology, as von Balthasar once claimed, the theological preconceptions in much modern philosophy would seem to deserve considerably more attention than they have received hitherto.
Download or read book Hunting Magic Eels written by Richard Beck and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a secular age, a world dominated by science and technology. Increasing numbers of us don't believe in God anymore. We don't expect miracles. We've grown up and left those fairy tales behind, culturally and personally. Yet five hundred years ago the world was very much enchanted. It was a world where God existed and the devil was real. It was a world full of angels and demons. It was a world of holy wells and magical eels. But since the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment, the world--in the West, at least--has become increasingly disenchanted. While this might be taken as evidence of a crisis of belief, Richard Beck argues that it's actually a crisis of attention. God hasn't gone anywhere, but we've lost our capacity to see God. The rising tide of disenchantment has profoundly changed our religious imaginations and led to a loss of the holy expectation that we can be interrupted by the sacred and divine. But it doesn't have to be this way. Hunting Magic Eels shows us that with attention and an intentional, cultivated capacity to experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives, we can cultivate an enchanted faith in a skeptical age. This new paperback edition includes a foreword from Sean Palmer as well as four new, additional chapters, including "Why Good People Need God," "Live Your Beautiful Life," and "The Primacy of the Invisible."
Download or read book Sacred Rhythms written by Ruth Haley Barton and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-12-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Logos Book Award Do you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Do you wonder how you might truly live your life as God created you to live it? Spiritual disciplines are activities that open us to God's transforming love and the changes that only God can bring about in our lives. Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a "rule of life" that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life. Each chapter includes exercises to help you begin the practices--individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation. The choice to establish your own sacred rhythm is the most important choice you can make with your life.
Download or read book Immortal Longings written by Erin Eldridge and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014-06-20 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Immortal Longings” was conceived as a gentle love story. John Ryan, a talented young detective with the Seattle Police, and considered by many to be a playboy ‘ladies’ man’, is in reality searching for his soulmate, and finds her quite unexpectedly in the daughter of one of Seattle’s richest families. From vastly different backgrounds, they seem to be made for each other, but almost immediately their love confronts challenges that test them sorely. The theme of the book is about facing up to life’s tribulations and overcoming them through the power of love.
Download or read book Finding Salvation in Christ written by Christopher D. Denny and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finding Salvation in Christ brings together some of the most important figures in contemporary theology to honor the work of William Loewe, systematic theologian and specialist in the theology of Bernard Lonergan, SJ. For over three decades Loewe's writings have sought to make classic christological and soteriological doctrines comprehensible to a Catholic Church that is working to integrate individual subjectivity, communal living, and historical consciousness in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Essays included in this volume assess Loewe's reinterpretation of patristic and medieval Christology from Irenaeus to Anselm of Canterbury, and explain the significance of the theology of Lonergan and Loewe for the fields of soteriology, economics, family life, and interreligious theology. While some recent postliberal theologies have polarized the church's relationship with contemporary culture by minimizing similarities between Christianity and other worldviews, the contributors in this volume continue Lonergan's project of integrating the findings of various intellectual disciplines with Christian theology, and use Loewe's historical and systematic work as a guide in that endeavor. While Lonergan's "transcendental Thomism" has been criticized by both traditionalists and revisionists, essays in this collection apply Loewe's theological methodology in a variety of ways to demonstrate that time-honored doctrines about Christ can be transplanted into new cultural contexts and gain intelligibility and credibility in this process. Having lived and labored through the far-reaching changes in Catholic thought introduced in recent decades, Loewe's career provides a model for theologians attempting to build bridges between the past and the present, and between the church and the world.
Download or read book Prayer written by Ronald Rolheiser and published by Franciscan Media. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prayer: Our Deepest Longing looks at the issues facing people of faith in today’s culture, and offers a way of more effectively dealing with them by seeking out opportunities for prayer. With simple, down-to-earth language, Rolheiser illustrates the importance of prayer and offers techniques on how to pray, using examples from daily life, Scripture, and contemporary writers. He delves into the places that we fear to go with our issues about prayer, encouraging us with gentle kindness and words of hope and inspiration. The book is divided into five sections. 1. Why Pray? Illustrates the purposes and benefits of prayer for ourselves, as well as for the broader Catholic community and even the world. 2. Why Is It so Hard? Notes how our contemporary culture conspires against taking time out for solitude and prayer, and how our own ego—with its fears, restlessness, and narcissism—can work against developing a deeper relationship with God through prayer. 3. What Is Prayer? Outlines the two basic types of prayer, that is, affective (personal) and priestly (for the world). This section also notes the many ways or methods for each type of prayer, such as meditation, contemplation, the divine office, the Mass, and Scripture. 4. Sticking with It When It Gets Hard. This section covers the development of mature prayer, discussing ways to pray in times of boredom, disillusionment, crisis, helplessness, or after a loved one’s death. 5. Mysticism. Here we learn about this increasingly popular form of intimate relationship with God. There will be a leader’s guide for this book, making it an ideal resource for use with prayer groups, small faith communities, and retreats. This is a book for all manner of believer, whether your faith is solidly rooted in Catholicism, wavering between the Christianity of childhood and non-participatory faith as an adult, or just not sure what you believe—or whether you believe at all. It addresses topics that typify our culture, such as narcissism, pragmatism, efficiency, and self-gratification, and that work against a healthy spiritual life. Finally, the book takes us to a place of contact and comfort, in relationship not only with God but with our true selves as well.
Download or read book Spiritual Education in a Divided World written by Cathy Ota and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-03-15 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the era of globalization debate has turned to the vital need for a thorough understanding of its impact on the spirituality and health of the youth of today. Spiritual Education in a Divided World recognises the urgent need for effective research in this area. This exceptional volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to tackle the key questions. Bringing together leading international experts, including Zygmunt and Mary Grey, the book combines research and training issues with practical professional experiences. The first section examines how globalized patterns of economics, conflict and consumerism are affecting the spirituality and imagination of children, young people and their families. In the second and third sections, practical responses from research and from professional experience are presented and critically evaluated. Readers in professions across teaching, youth work, social work, chaplaincy, nursing, mental health, as well as those concerned with community economics and environmental issues, will find in this volume an exciting, diverse and coherent collection of essays which offers wider perspectives on their work. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of Children’s Spirituality.
Download or read book Death Devoted Heart written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan and Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a "mere trifle"--a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. Death-Devoted Heart explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. Scruton boldly attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries. He also offers keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. His argument touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. Roger Scruton has written an original and provocative account of Wagner's music drama, which blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Sacred Companions written by David G. Benner and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We need companions on our spiritual journey. In this inviting guide, David G. Benner introduces readers to the riches of spiritual friendship and direction, explaining what they are and how they are practiced. Through prayerful, guided attunement to God's activity, sacred companions provide care for the soul, and Benner models the kind of traveling companion who can move us toward deeper intimacy with God.
Download or read book The Value of Sacred Music written by and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009-03-23 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of historically significant essays focuses on the purpose and function of sacred music. Issues of historicity, spirituality, standardization and other topics central to the study of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish sacred music from 1801 to 1918 are explored. Moving from musicology to psychology and to religious studies, this volume captures the breadth of scholarship available in the field, as well as serving as a useful introduction for those readers just beginning their study of sacred music.
Download or read book Five Pathways to Wholeness written by Roger Hurding and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five Pathways to Wholeness examines a variety of approaches to pastoral care: biblical counselling, the healing ministries, pastoral counselling, spiritual direction and social change. Bringing together material from a range of sources, and offering numerous engaging real-life illustrations, the author compares and evaluates each of the five approaches in its own right. At the same time, he encourages those who favour a particular pathway to respect and understand the raison d'etre of the other four. All five, he believes, can move to a more truly 'integrational' theological and psychological viewpoint.
