Spirituality

Theopoetics is a collection of poetry filled with reflective inspiration from the heart and mind of a person filled with pathos over the plight of humanity. Each poem reflects his personal wrestling with theology and reality as he is determined to bring God into the world with a synthesis of pathos, intellect, experience, and words. The aesthetic of poetry provides the author with an expressive outlet to imagine life within a genre where limitations give way to possibilities, in a world where the concretization of society prevails. Theopoetics is an effort to communicate spirituality combined with theology into words; words that ignite the soul with hope and challenge. Each poem contains numerous theological insights born from years of teaching students both in the classroom and abroad. These efforts at educating have been in active pursuit of bringing tikkun olam, that is repairing the world, to oppressed persons and various communities of need. The author is committed to the idea that theology must be practical with ready application for participating in salvation as both personal and historical. As a practitioner of nonviolence his calls for peace resonate throughout the book. Theopoetics is for persons seeking a spiritually challenging devotional experience. ""These poems by Phillip Garner are coming from his deep held convictions, his Christian faith, and personal experience. They are inspiring and encouraging and a reflection on his encounter with challenging social, political and economic reality. They show consistent faith struggling in a world of sin, yet they bring hope in a dark world. His poems speak of a life's journey seeking justice and equality for the poor and the oppressed. They are powerful poems of truth that will help us be better, more compassionate people."" --Shay Cullen, Founder and President, PREDA Foundation ""I tend to be transfixed by that which transforms. My experience with Theopoetics, a book that stands apart from Garner's other works, proves it to be not only a primer toward a fuller understanding of scripture, as do all his books, but also a devotional guide. In a word, it's deep."" --David Moore, St. Stephen's University Phillip Michael Garner is an avid reader and competent interpreter of a vast array of theological efforts. Mike was raised in a small town, in a citrus valley in California. At thirteen he worked alongside Spanish speaking immigrants. His earliest religious experiences were in a small Pentecostal church. He was educated at Azusa Pacific University. His international experiences among the poorest people in the world provide the backdrop for the pathos in his writing.

"A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." --Barack Obama

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

Things Fall Apart

is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.

With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried  is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.

A woman sits in prayerful meditation, waiting to offer her first confession in more than thirty years. She holds a small book on her lap, one that she's made, and tells herself again the Bible stories it contains, the ones she has written anew, for herself, each story told aslant, from Jonah to Jesus, Moses to Mary Magdalen. Woven together and stitched by hand, they provide a new version, virtually a new translation, of the heart of this ancient and sacred text. Rakow's Bernadette traces, through each brief and familiar story, a line where belief and disbelief touch, the line that has been her home, ragged and neglected, that hidden seam.

The result is an amazing book of extraordinary beauty, so human and humorous, and yet so holy it becomes a work of poetry, a canticle, a song of lament and praise. In the private terrain of silence and devotion, shared with us by a writer of power and grace, Rakow offers, through Bernadette, her own lectio divina for the modern world.

No reader will forget this book or be able to read the Bible itself without a new perspective on this text that remains, arguably, Western civilization's greatest literary achievement.

Thomas Merton and the Celts offers a new lens through which to view Merton's life and spirituality. By examining unpublished letters, notebooks, and taped conferences for the Trappist novices--previously unavailable to the general reader--the author breaks new ground in Merton studies, revealing Merton's growing fascination with his Welsh ancestry, Celtic monasticism, and early Irish hermit poetry. Merton, having immersed himself in reading about Celtic Christianity--not just about liturgy, but about household rituals, illuminated manuscripts, high crosses, and hermit poetry as well--recognized in these ancient hermits who lived on ""water and herbs,"" experienced kinship with creatures, and wrote poems about the birds a mirror of his own desires. Indeed, in a profound way and at a deep level, Merton discovered himself in Celtic Christianity. ""Monica Weis has done a wonderful job of pulling together from Thomas Merton's vast corpus, published and unpublished, his many references to Celtic Christianity, in particular to its literary, monastic, and eremitical traditions. She brings them together into an integrated paradigm of understanding that Merton was a pilgrim and a hermit, and a man who moved back and forth, as did many of the Celtic monks, between home and exile. Particularly interesting are her revisionist views of St. Patrick and of the Synod of Whitby, and (a revelation to me) her exposition of Irish hermit poetry. Warmly recommended."" --Donald Grayston, Former President, Thomas Merton Society of Canada and International Thomas Merton Society; author, Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon (Cascade, 2015) ""Monica Weis's presentation of Merton's interest in Celtic Christianity is thorough and engaging, giving the reader a rich depiction of how the vibrancy of the Celtic world captivated and inspired Thomas Merton in the final decade of his life. The enthusiasm of both Merton and Weis for their subject is infectious and will encourage the reader in their own search for both the 'Promised Land of the Saints' and in their striving to live out of a 'transfigured center.'"" --Paul M. Pearson, Director, Thomas Merton Center ""Known for her insightful study of Thomas Merton's environmental vision, Monica Weis now invites readers to join her in exploring Merton's abiding fascination and deep resonance with Celts and Celtic Christianity. Carefully researched and skillfully written, this book adds a vital dimension to our understanding of Merton's spirituality. A fresh, rich, and valuable contribution to Merton studies and to the growing body of work on Celtic spirituality!"" --Christine M. Bochen, Professor of Religious Studies and William H. Shannon Chair in Catholic Studies, Nazareth College ""Monica Weis quotes from a letter of Thomas Merton to Hans Urs Von Balthasar confessing that his own immersion in the study, scholarly and personal, of Celtic monasticism has become 'a real avocation with me. . . . I can think of nowhere in the West where monastic culture was so drenched in brilliant color and form, with such dazzled love of God's beauty.' It is the special gift of this book that Weis has captured the multi-textured dimensions of Merton's 'Celtophilia, ' and in so unearthing the familial and intellectual roots of his love of the Celtic imagination has compellingly demonstrated Merton's realization that in discovering the Celtic world a whole new perspective had opened up for him--and for us as well, thanks to Weis's diligent and ardent labor of love."" --Michael W. Higgins, Religious Studies Professor and Vice-President for Mission and Catholic Identity, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT Monica Weis, SSJ is Professor Emerita of English at Nazareth College, Rochester, NY. She is the author of Thomas Merton's Gethsemani: Landscapes of Paradise (2005) and The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton (2011).

This collection of essays stuns the reader at every turn of the page...both an enticing depiction of abundant life in Jesus Christ and a warning of the persona sacrifice and labor necessity to acquire it. Ironically she compels her audience to desire to live honestly and in joyous communion with God while cautioning that such spiritual growth comes neither by magic, nor feigned piety, nor laziness. It comes by 'proven ability to be responsible and willing to work, plus the inner resources to function or stimulation' These essays are for those who are serious about giving up excuses, complaints, ingrained bad habits and the blame of others for all their problems. They are not 'chicken soup for the soul;' They are strong medicine for intransigent sin. They are the cold showers for hot passions that have led us to anxiety, depression, power trips, and problems with relationships. They are gems of sound, solid advice to water a parched soul. Deborah Belonick

The famed lecturer and teacher explains the principle that there is an inner grace available to all and offers concrete directions for hearing and understanding the voice of God.

Foreword by Pope John Paul II
Translated by David Glenday

A little more than a year before his death, Pope John Paul II gathered his closest aides for an extended retreat at the Vatican. During this retreat Bruno Forte offered a series of meditations revolving around Jesus' words in John 8:12: Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Now translated by David Glenday and collected in this lovely book, these meditations draw us into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and orient us toward the mission of the church. A master of thoughtful questioning, Forte shepherds his readers through the classic Ignatian spiritual exercises: a day of purification, a day of illumination, and three days of reflection on Easter, the church, and mission.

Each day includes four meditations, two reflecting on the day's theme followed by two careful considerations of scriptural texts. Forte concludes his meditations with questions that provoke deeper reflection on our own faith journeys.

Thoughtful, insightful, and nurturing, Forte's book has much wisdom to offer all Christians who desire to follow more closely the Light of life.

To Pray and to Love is for all persons who want to pray but do not know how, who pray but feel uncertain about it, and who pray happily but want to grow more deeply. For those who have longing for prayer and yet have never prayed, the author offers some specific suggestions about attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that get in the way of our prayer without us even noticing. Bondi also shares some of what the founders of early monasticism had to say about prayer and Christian love that she has found especially helpful over the years.

- First-person narrative of significant years in the life of the Episcopal Church - Former Presiding Bishop, well-known throughout the Anglican Communion Frank Griswold writes out of his understanding that "all things have the potential to reveal the Divine and the mystery of love that lies at the heart of the universe . . . " Though a teacher, preacher, recognized ecumenical and interfaith leader, and former head of the Episcopal Church, he describes himself as a seeker still, "a person under construction." Griswold's opening words set the tone: "These pages are the fruit of my effort to gather up fragments from what I have learned along the way about myself, about love and longing, about God and God's ways with us. If you are drawn, as I have been, to follow lines of spiritual motion, perhaps the stories and reflections in these pages will be an encouragement along the way. You may discover revelatory moments in your own life you have overlooked because they seem so ordinary and mundane . . . " Though not a memoir, the book includes autobiographical material to give readers a sense of the writer as a friend and companion who shares their journey. It also illustrates and brings to life various teachings drawn from the Great Tradition as well as contemporary authors and spiritual guides.