A Seventh Collection of Reflective Prayers


Book Description

These Reflective Prayers are the result of permitting a gentle reading of the lectionary texts for a given service to resonate in me and emerge as a searching engagement of the word with my spirit in a mood of settled joy. The ninety samples given are the most recent, in order, at the time of publication.







The Burl Becomes the Blossoming


Book Description

Poetry writing has proven proficient at helping me see what is there to be seen. I will see or hear or reflect on something which then provides an image, a nuance that emerges in a word, a line. The single line and image, written, provides a cadence, a focus of sound and echo that invites a second line, and more. Usually, they come quickly and run until they tell me they are done and the poem is complete. This book draws upon such poems over a pair of sweeps of my history plus a sampling of more current poems that strike me as desirable in this collection. These pieces of my past often recollect for me the occasion but also leave that occasion obscured and allow the poem to do its work of creating an image and a flow in my own mind. The poems, in my experience, write their meaning on my mind. And, I hope, on yours as well. For then the poems do their work.




Writings on the Spiritual Life


Book Description

Abbot Andre Louf said that, when a person decides to get serious about the spiritual life, s/he should acquire a spiritual director. Wayne Proudfoot argued that the form of religious experience depends upon the tradition in which it is perceived. Georges Bataille searched out the meaning of his own intense inner experience in non-traditional ways. This book seeks to follow the meaning of traditional measures of the spiritual life learned through the experience of the author once his spiritual life decided to choose him.




Every Moment Holy, Volume Two


Book Description

EVERY MOMENT HOLY, Vol. 2: DEATH, GRIEF, & HOPE, is a book of liturgies for seasons of dying and grieving--liturgies such as "A Liturgy for the Scattering of Ashes" or "A Liturgy for the Loss of a Spouse" or "A Liturgy for the Wake of a National Tragedy" or "A Liturgy for the Weighing of Last-Stage Medical Options." These are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose and eternal hopes even when, especially when, suffering and pain threaten to overwhelm us. -over 100 liturgies for seasons of dying and grieving -beautiful leather-bound hardcover -over 20 illustrations by Ned Bustard -silk bookmark -gilded edges




Miscellaneous Short Bible Studies


Book Description

These are bible studies of a limited scale, developed and led by the author with two of the congregations he served. The first congregation was in Mantua OH in the late 1970s, from which the first three bible studies arose: Ruth, Lamentations, and The Infancy Narratives. The second congregation was in New Martinsville WV from 1998 through 2003, these being done is a slightly different style: Psalms of Ascent, Selected Psalms, The Speech of Stephan, Encountering God, Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 & 7. I sought to bring a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the study of the bible among those congregation members who chose to attend. This revisiting of those studies prove once again their value to me. I hope they prove to be so for you as well.




Psalms and Selected Canticles


Book Description

The Book of Psalms in the Bible attracts a great deal of devotional attention from many people, including this author. This attention turned in the Spring of 1993 toward a project of translating the Psalter from the original Hebrew. This was as a spiritual as well as scholarly task for me. The end product, with a few other Hebrew poems added to the collection, came complete in the Spring of 1994. In the late summer of 2022, I took to revisiting my work, revising and correcting it as I found it necessary, and brought to this format in the late Autumn of the same year. I had sought to provide a translation in the immediacy of the present tense, as free as I could manage of the generic masculine, and as lively as I could manage to formulate. I wanted to convey the energy of spirit and of devotion that I felt in the text as I had engaged it. As I brought my revisitation to a conclusion, I felt I had achieved what I had hoped and wished to share it all with what readers I may accumulate, hopefully you.




God on Mute


Book Description

Pete Greig, the acclaimed author of Red Moon Rising, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie's fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow . . . even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest, and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers, and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope, and love beyond all understanding.




Grace in Tension


Book Description

We all face stress and tension in our daily lives. We might even wonder why our God of abundant goodness doesn’t remove the everyday struggles we face. Jesus’ interactions with Martha and Mary in the Gospel provide us the key to understanding how God shows us his love by allowing tensions in our lives. As we follow the sisters’ transformative journeys through their own struggles, reflecting on what transpires between Scripture verses, we see their initial tension become the catalyst that drives both Mary and Martha to the feet of Jesus — the place where all discover peace. Grace in Tension explores the areas where stress arises in our own lives. Each chapter ends with a thought-provoking prayer to inspire us to go to God with our problems, followed by questions for reflection to help us see all the ways he’s working for our good. God doesn’t create any of it, but he does show up amid life’s difficulties, ready to lead us through. No matter how big or small our struggle, when we seek him out, he reveals what we need to do to resolve our tension, transforming it into grace. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Claire McGarry is the founder of MOSAIC of Faith, a ministry for mothers of infants to school-aged children to explore their faith through motherhood. She contributes regularly to CatholicMom.com and blogs at ShiftingMyPerspective.com. She is the author of Lenten devotional With Our Savior, and her work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Keys for Kids, These Days, and Focus on the Family magazine. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.




A Diary of Private Prayer


Book Description

The classic collection of personal prayers updated in modern, accessible language.