The Cup of Our Life: A Guide for Spiritual Growth
10 best books like The Cup of Our Life: A Guide for Spiritual Growth (Joyce Rupp): The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions, With Open Hands, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, A Book of Hours, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love, In the Sanctuary of Women: A Companion for Reflection & Prayer, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
This is not an analysis of mysticism, it is a collection of primary sources grouped by the cultures that wrote them, with very brief introductions into each section. As such, it is an interesting first glimpse at the subject, but the author’s repeated references to the end of the world, “the human...
| Author | Henri J.M. Nouwen |
| ISBN | 1594710643 |
The quote that went into my bones and will never leave me:
Praying means giving up a false security, no longer looking for arguments which will protect you if you get pushed into a corner, no longer setting your hope on a couple of lighter moments which your life might still offer. Praying means...
| Author | Marjorie J. Thompson |
| ISBN | 0664229476 |
Few books in Westminster John Knox's publishing history have been so embraced and so loved as Marjorie Thompson's Soul Feast. First released in 1995, this spiritual classic continues to be a best-seller, as thousands each year accept her invitation to the Christian spiritual life. Offering a framework...
| Author | Lauren Artress |
| ISBN | 1573225479 |
Walking a Sacred Path reintroduces the ancient Labyrinth, a walking meditation that transcends the limits of still meditation. Walking the Labyrinth has emerged today as a metaphor for the spiritual journey and a powerful tool for transformation. This walking meditation is an archetype, a mystical...
| Author | Wayne Muller |
| ISBN | 0553380117 |
In today's world, with its relentless emphasis on success and productivity, we have lost the necessary rhythm of life, the balance between work and rest. Constantly striving, we feel exhausted and deprived in the midst of great abundance. We long for time with friends and family, we long for a moment...
| Author | Thomas Merton |
| ISBN | 1933495057 |
This book is set up in the daily liturgical cycle, but instead of prayers from a lectionary or scripture readings, it is entirely composed of Thomas Merton's thoughts on silence, contemplation, nature, and listening to God. It's a great way to silence your soul to listen to God, and a good balance to something...
| Author | Dennis Linn |
| ISBN | 0809135795 |
In this book the Linns (a husband and wife, and the husband’s brother) invite us to practice the examen, a technique for reflecting on the events of our day, passed down by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Though it can be phrased many ways, the examen centers on two basic questions: For what...
| Author | Daniel Homan |
| ISBN | 1557254419 |
Today's culture is increasingly hostile and suspicious toward anyone who appears to be different--especially when tragedy strikes. Our instinct is to bolt our doors and protect the ones we love. But deep within the heart of Benedictine spirituality lies a remedy to hatred, fear, and suspicion: hospitality....
| Author | Jan L. Richardson |
| ISBN | 0835810305 |
Jan starts with Eve and asks the readers to engage the story without the lens of interpretation that has defined the story of the fall of man, an explanation of how sin entered the world. She invites the readers - as women - to trace our own lines of longings, our own reaching, and taking, and tasting, and...
| Author | Benedicta Ward |
| ISBN | 0140447318 |
The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In contrast to the formalised and official theology of the "founding fathers" of the church, the Desert Fathers were ordinary Christians who chose to renounce the world and live lives...
| Author | Neil Douglas-Klotz |
| ISBN | 0060619953 |
Neil Douglas-Klotz offers a radical new translation of the words of Jesus Christ with Prayers of the Cosmos. Reinterpreting the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes from the vantage of Middle Eastern mysticism, Douglas-Klotz, the Sufi Founder of the worldwide network of the Dances of Universal Peace,...
| Author | William Sloane Coffin |
| ISBN | 0664229484 |
Along with MLK, William Sloane Coffin was my greatest inspiration to get involved in activism and nonviolent civil disobedience. The guy's a legend--he was a freedom rider in the 60s, an adamant Vietnam War opponent, and he was out getting arrested for LGBT activism when he was almost 80 years old. He...
| Author | Frederick Buechner |
| ISBN | 0060611391 |
In Wishful Thinking, the first book in his much-loved lexical trilogy, Frederick Buechner puts the language of God, the universe, and the human spirit under his wry linguistic microscope. In his often ironic and always keen-sighted reflections on such terms as agnostic, envy, love, and sin, he invited...
| Author | Matthew Fox |
| ISBN | 0939680041 |
Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century mystic, prophet, feminist, declared heretic, and an early advocate of creation-centered spirituality. This tradition affirms humanity’s potential to act divinely, and it embraces life--living and dying, growing old and sinning, groaning and celebrating--as...
The Practice of Spiritual Direction
| Author | William A. Barry |
| ISBN | 0866839518 |
Short Review: I am considering going to formal training to become a spiritual director. Because I am who I am, I decided to read widely about spiritual direction as part of the decision making process.
This is a classic (originally published in 1982). The authors are Catholic, but it is widely...
| Author | Barbara Brown Taylor |
| ISBN | 1561011576 |
"Reading of God's silence in the Bible gives me courage to explore the practice of restraint in preaching--not as a deliberate withholding of God's word nor, I hope, as a rationale for my own reticence, but as a sober reaching for more reverence in the act of public speaking about God." In these 1997 Lyman...
A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary
| Author | Macrina Wiederkehr |
| ISBN | 0062548689 |
I picked this up because of the image of a treeful of angels, and it didn't disappoint me. It's filled with many poetic imagages, reflections, poems and stories of her experiences of the holy in her ordinary everyday life. A quote from Etty Hillesum a holocaust victim, "It still all comes down to the same...
Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey Into Meditative Prayer
| Author | Richard J. Foster |
| ISBN | 0830835555 |
2011 Leadership Journal Top Book of the Year"At the very heart of God is the passionate disposition to be in loving fellowship with you. . . . From the human side of this equation it is meditative prayer that ushers us into this divine-human fellowship." Richard Foster, bestselling author and founder...
Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality
| Author | Margaret Silf |
| ISBN | 0829413669 |
#69 - 2010.
A review book from Loyola Press that I received some time ago. I've been interested in Ignatian Spirituality for a while and this has a more general take so far than some books I've read. However, that is not a negative thing. Silf's overview is highly interesting and makes a lot of sense....
The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life
| Author | M. Craig Barnes |
| ISBN | 0802829627 |
"Today's pastors -- often expected to be multi-tasking marvels who can make their churches "successful" -- are understandably confused about their role. Craig Barnes contends that the true calling of a pastor is to help others become fully alive in Christ, to be what he calls a "minor poet," or a poet...
The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God
| Author | Ronald Rolheiser |
| ISBN | 0824522753 |
My second Rolheiser book, and as with the first I was immensely blessed and challenged by his words. His chapter on modern contemplative barriers (narcissism, pragmatism and unbridled restlessness) struck to the heart of my millennial DNA. I admittedly struggled through Part II (Three Contemplative...
Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints
By meditating on personal examples from the author's life, as well as reflecting on the inspirational life and writings of Thomas Merton, stories from the Gospels, as well as the lives of other holy men and women (among them, Henri Nouwen, Therese of Lisieux and Pope John XXIII) the reader will see how...
