Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman serve up a delicious banquet of wise tales from the world’ s greatest spiritual guides, including Jesus, the Buddh, Ramakrishna, and the Taoist sages. They offer contemporary readers a feast rich with wisdom and filled with timeless moral and spiritual lessons. Gathering lively and inspiring parables from both Eastern and Western traditions, from Christian, Buddhist, Sufi, Jewish, Native American, African, and Zen teachings, Soul Food illustrates the eterna truths: the greatness of the human spirit, the endless wonder and possiblity of live, the necessity of courage, love and laughter, and our quest for wisdom and virtue. Each story offers a glimpse of revelation, an example of virtue, or a moment of truth that will sustain travellers as they traverse the road to a more spiritual life..
Category: Spirituality
Earth Prayers
In forest clearings, beneath star-filled skies, in cathedrals, and before the hearth… women and men have always given voice to the impulse to celebrate the world that surrounds and sustains them. Now, as we face a diminished present and an uncertain future, the need to honor the interconnection between people and the planet is heightened. From Walt Whitman, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Black Elk, to Margaret Atwood, the Rig Veda, and the chant of a Samar fisherman, the varied voices linked here offer songs and prayers for land, sea, and air; graces for food; and invocations, poems, and passages that reveal in the common spiritual heritage of all who cherish creation..
Inanna
The Knowledge of the Holy
This timeless gift breathes a spirit of devotion for all Christians — those who are newly arrived and those who are committing themselves anew to Jesus Christ. Informative as well as inspiritional, The Knowledge of the Holy returns the towering Christian concept of God to the center of the religious mind, fostering a renewed appreciation of the magnitude of God’s glory..
Making All Things New
‘During the past few years, various friends have asked me, ‘What do you mean when you speak about the spiritual life?’ Every time this question has come up, I have wished I had a small and simple book which could offer the beginning of a response. I have felt that there was a place for a text that could be read within a few hours and could not only explain what the spiritual life is but also create a desire to live it. This feeling caused me to write ‘Making All Things New.’..’ ‘The beginning of the spiritual life is often difficult not only because the powers which cause us to worry are so strong but also because the presence of God’s Spirit seems barely noticeable. If, however, we are willing to live a life of prayer and practice the disciplines of solitude and community, a new hunger will make itself known. This new hunger is the first sign of God’s presence. When we remain attentive to this divine presence, we will be led always deeper into the kingdom. There, to our joyful surprise, we will discover that the power of our worries is weakening and all things are being made new.’- -from ‘Making All Things New’.
Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home
Best-selling author Richard J. Foster offers a warm, compelling, and sensitive primer on prayer, helping us to understand, experience, and practice it in its many forms – from the simple prayer of beginning again to unceasing prayer. He clarifies the prayer process, answers common misconceptions, and shows the way into prayers of contemplation, healing, blessing, forgiveness, and rest. Coming to prayer is like coming home, Foster says. ‘Nothing feels more right, more like what we are created to be and to do. Yet at the same time we are confronted with great mysteries. Who hasn’t struggled with the puzzle of unanswered prayer? Who hasn’t wondered how a finite person can commune with the infinite Creator of the universe? Who hasn’t questioned whether prayer isn’t merely psychological manipulation after all? We do our best, of course, to answer these knotty questions but when all is said and done, there is a sense in which these mysteries remain unanswered and unanswerable….At such times we must learn to become comfortable with the mystery’. Foster shows how prayer can move us inward into personal transformation, upward toward intimacy with God, and outward to minister to others. He leads us beyond questions to a deeper understanding and practice of prayer, bringing us closer to God, to ourselves, and to our community..
Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth : 20th Anniversary Edition
In the twenty years since its publication, ‘Celebration of Discipline’ has helped over a million seekers discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace, and a deeper understanding of God. For this special twentieth anniversary edition, Richard J. Foster has added an introduction, in which he shares the story of how this beloved and enduring spiritual guidebook came to be. Hailed by many as the best modern book on Christian spirituality, ‘Celebration of Discipline’ explores the ‘classic Disciplines,’ or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found. Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study, offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration, bring us nearer to one another and to God. Foster provides a wealth of examples demonstrating how these Disciplines can become part of our daily activities-and how they can help us shed our superficial habits and ‘bring the abundance of God into our lives.’ He offers crucial new insights on simplicity, demonstrating how the biblical view of simplicity, properly understood and applied, brings joy and balance to our inward and outward lives and ‘sets us free to enjoy the provision of God as a gift that can be shared with others.’ The discussion ofcelebration, often the most neglected of the Disciplines, shows its critical importance, for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. ‘Celebration of Discipline’ will help motivate Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth..
Telling the Truth
Telling the Truth is for the preacher who must pull the little cord that turns on the lectern light, must look out over the people and the silence, must begin to speak of a truth beyond telling. It is for the woman who wants to understand how people believe what they cheerfully acknowledge is a tragic, comic fairy tale. It is for anyone who believes that faith, like art, can hold a special mirror to human experience..