Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life
10 best books like Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life (Patricia Hampl): The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days, Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert's Search for Spiritual Community, Drinking the Rain: A Memoir, Stalking the Divine, Sister Wendy on Prayer, Looking for Mary: Or, the Blessed Mother and Me, Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing
| Author | Mary Rose O'Reilley |
| ISBN | 1571312544 |
Transcendence can come in many forms. For Mary Rose O’Reilley a year tending sheep seemed a way to seek a spirituality based not on “climbing out of the body” but rather on existing fully in the world, at least if she could overlook some of its earthier aspects. The Barn at the End of the World follows...
| Author | Kathleen Norris |
| ISBN | 1594489963 |
Kathleen Norris’s masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its relevancy to the modern individual and culture.
Kathleen Norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn’t drag herself...
| Author | Frederick Buechner |
| ISBN | 0060611839 |
This was insightful, uncommonly honest, and beautiful. I couldn't put the book down, but had to, twice, before finishing the mere 112 pages (3 chapters called "Once Below a Time, Once Upon a Time, and Beyond Time").
I will not share any of the story, so as not to ruin any of it for future readers; however,...
| Author | Enuma Okoro |
| ISBN | 1935205102 |
If you sometimes feel lost on your spiritual journey, you'll find a trustworthy companion in Enuma Okoro, a purse shopping, tea-drinking, colon-cleansing, shaky follower of Jesus who just wants to find a godly man with good hair. But after her father's unexpected death, her grief seems to morph into...
| Author | Alix Kates Shulman |
| ISBN | 0865476977 |
A memoir of spiritualism and self-discovery from the acclaimed, award-winning author
At fifty, Alix Kates Shulman, author of the celebrated feminist novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, left a city life dense with political activism, family and literary community, and went to live alone...
| Author | Kristin Ohlson |
| ISBN | 0452286409 |
I picked up this book because I recently read an interesting essay written by Kristin Ohlson and thought I'd like to see what else she had written. (The essay, by the way, about memories in childhood, is here:
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/wh... )
From the cover, I see that this...
Sister Wendy Beckett, adored and renowned art historian, has spent years in silence and contemplation in her calling as a nun. Her celebrated television specials and books about art have led her many admirers to ask about her own faith and practices. For the first time, in this thoughtful examination...
| Author | Beverly Donofrio |
| ISBN | 0140196277 |
Entering her fortieth year, Beverly Donofrio, a "lapsed Catholic," inexplicably begins collecting Virgin Mary memorabilia at yard sales. Her search for kitsch, however, soon becomes a spiritual quest, leading her to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Medjugorje. There, she learns that Mary comes...
| Author | Nora Gallagher |
| ISBN | 0679775498 |
"Gracefully written and moving ... Things Seen and Unseen starts with Nora Gallagher entering the labyrinth of her life ... and ultimately it leads to the center of her being."--The Boston Globe
It started with an occasional Sunday, a "tourist's" visit to a local church. Eventually Nora Gallagher...
| Author | Reynolds Price |
| ISBN | 0743238540 |
Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels, stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In A Whole New Life, however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate...
| Author | Lynne M. Baab |
| ISBN | 0830832580 |
Let's give ourselves an A for effort.
We keep our minds so preoccupied with work projects that we act and think on autopilot.
We keep our kids so occupied with activities that they need day planners before grade school.
We keep our schedules so full with church meetings and housekeeping...
| Author | Muriel Spark |
| ISBN | 0395710936 |
This autobiography, now in paperback, offers a wonderfully vivid account of the people and places that inspired so much of Muriel Spark's writing, such as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Here, readers will find high comedy, betrayal, rigorous intelligence, the odd twist of faith, and mysterious grace--all...
| Author | Kate Simon |
| ISBN | 0140263314 |
I wouldn’t’ve read this if it weren’t for a class, but this was a really good book! it reminded me of The Bread Givers which I read last year about a girl growing up in the Lower East Side. the sexual awakenings she had were spoken about in such stark detail and without emotion that I was a bit appalled....
In Cod We Trust: Living the Norwegian Dream
| Author | Eric Dregni |
| ISBN | 0816656231 |
"Eric Dregni's great-grandfather Ellef fled Norway in 1893 when it was the poorest country in Europe. More than one hundred years later, his great-grandson traveled back to find that (mostly due to oil and natural gas discoveries) it is now the richest. The circumstances of his return were serendipitous;...
| Author | Marva J. Dawn |
| ISBN | 0802804578 |
“But I don’t wanna go to church!” Marva Dawn has often heard that cry—and not only from children. “What a sad commentary it is on North American spirituality,” she writes, “that the delight of ‘keeping the Sabbath day’ has degenerated into the routine and drudgery—even the downright...
Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album
| Author | Teresa Jordan |
| ISBN | 0679751351 |
"Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album," published in 1993, is part memoir and part family history and it succeeds on both levels. It is an impressionistic account and not a straight chronological narrative, but the pieces all fall into place by the time the reader arrives at the last page....
| Author | Richard Rodríguez |
| ISBN | 0140096221 |
This is a short discussion essay I wrote in Spring 2007 regarding this book:
What if I Am You?:
Cultural Hybridity in Richard Rodriguez’s Days of Obligation
Tanya Collings
What if we are not diverse? What if I feel myself becoming like you? What does that mean? What if...
| Author | Eileen Simpson |
| ISBN | 0374522618 |
In 1942, Eileen Simpson—then Eileen Mulligan—married John Berryman. Both were in their twenties; Eileen had just graduated from Hunter College and John had but one slim volume of poetry to his name. They moved frequently—from New York to Boston, then Princeton—chasing jobs, living simply,...
The Way Is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago
| Author | Arthur Paul Boers |
| ISBN | 0830835075 |
The Word Guild 2008 Canadian Christian Writing Awards finalist! Pilgrimage is a spiritual discipline not many consider. Aren't the destinations far? Don't they involve a lot of time and walking? Just a few years ago, Arthur Paul Boers wasn't thinking about pilgrimage either. But he began to sense...
Not God's Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms
| Author | Holly Ordway |
| ISBN | 1586179993 |
What happens when an atheist college professor at spiritual ground zero asks herself: "What if God is real?" In this memoir of her conversion, Holly Ordway turns her analytical mind toward the path that leads from darkness to light-from death to life. Simultaneously encouraging and bracing, she offers...
A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life's Big Questions
| Author | James Martin |
| ISBN | 0829425829 |
Many of us have questions about the Bible: Can we believe the Bible? What was Jesus’ mission? What is sin? Does hell exist? Is anyone beyond God’s forgiveness? In A Jesuit Off-Brodway, James Martin, SJ, answers these questions about the Bible, and other big questions about life, as he serves as...
Thrift Store Saints: Meeting Jesus 25¢ at a Time
| Author | Jane F. Knuth |
| ISBN | 0829433155 |
A thrift store in inner-city Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Exactly the place where you'd expect to meet Jesus, right?
Jane Knuth's middle-class, suburban, church-going background had not prepared her well to serve as a volunteer at an inner-city thrift store. Reluctantly, she decided to give...
