Books To Awaken Your Soul!

DAN WAKEFIELD................Returning: A Spiritual Journey. "One of the most important memoirs of the spirit I have ever read." -- Bill Moyers

MARDI TINDAL...........Soul Maps: A Guide to the Midlife Spirit. "Combines practical common sense with helpful suggestions for nourishing the midlife soul." Anglican Journal

PARKER PALMER..........Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. A small book with a profound message.

KEN GIRE.....................Windows of the Soul. Author "calls us to a fresh sensitivity to God's voice speaking..."

NICOLE JOHNSON.........Fresh-Brewed Life. A Stirring Invitation to Wake Up Your Soul.

RICHARD ROHR...........Everything Belongs. About contemplative prayer and the christian life in general.

RONALD ROLHEISER.......The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness.

GREGORY BOYD...........God of the Possible. A Biblical Introduction To The Open View Of God.
Also: Across the Spectrum (2002) and Is God To Blame? (2003) Sensible and readable discussions of Christian theology.

CLARK PINNOCK..........Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness(2001)

SCOTT WALKER...........Glimpses of God. Also author of "Life- Rails" and "Driven No More," (2002). Scott "tells an enthralling story."

FREDERICK BUECHNER..........The Eyes of the Heart. Chapter two on his friendship with the late poet James Merrill is moving. Honest and revealing. Buechner is one of my all-time favorites.

CHRISTOPHER de VINCK.....Only the Heart Knows How to Find Them,... Threads of Paradise,... and Nouwen Then. This author really opens himself to the reader.

RICHARD FOSTER...........Prayer:Finding the Heart's True Home.For lifestyle, read Freedom Of Simplicity.

THOMAS KEATING..........Open Mind, Open Heart

DOROTHY DAY ................The Long Loneliness. An intriguing woman. See Robert Coles'Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion.

CATHERINE MARSHALL........Something More: In Search of a Deeper Faith,and The Helper.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER.....The Cost of Discipleship, and Life Together.

M. BASIL PENNINGTON............Centering Prayer, Call to the Center.

WAYNE OATES.............Nurturing Silence in a Noisy Heart

AGNES SANFORD.............Sealed Orders (Her spiritual autobiography). I cherish a hand-written letter the late Agnes Sanford sent me years ago. Also, The Healing Light, Twice Seven Words.

JOY CARROLL WALLIS.....The Woman Behind the Collar. The story of Wallis’s wild youth, her calling to ministry, her struggle for ordination, and a tabloid wedding to a prominent American activist.

JERRY SITTSER..........When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayers (2003). Explores the mysteries and paradoxes of unanswered prayer.

ARTHUR PAUL BOERS......The Rhythm of God's Grace (2003). Uncovering morning and evening hours of prayer by a Mennonite author.

LEWIS B. SMEDES....... My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir (2003). The late Lew Smedes was a Christian theologian and ethicist. Taught at Fuller.

ROBERTA BONDI.........Memories of God: Theological Reflection on a Life.(1995)

JOYCE RUPP.........Praying Our Goodbyes(1988). About the spirituality of change.
Dear Heart, Come Home: The Path of Midlife Spirituality

BEN CAMPBELL JOHNSON...Hearing God's Call: Ways of Discernment for Laity and Clergy (2002).

TIMOTHY JONES..........The Art of Prayer.“…wisely human, spiritually practical, and wonderfully interesting” is how the late Lewis Smedes describes this book.

MARVA DAWN.............Joy in Our Weakness: A Gift of Hope from the book of Revelation

THOMAS GREEN............Opening To God, Weeds Among the Wheat.

BRENNAN MANNING..............The Signature of Jesus, Abba's Child.

MORTON KELSEY............Set Your Heart On the Greatest Gift. "Learning to listen is a key that unlocks the door to loving people."

DALLAS WILLARD...........In Search of Guidance, The Divine Conspiracy. (Christianity Today 1999 Book of the Year)

PHILIP YANCEY............Disappointment With God and What's So Amazing About Grace?

BROTHER LAWRENCE..........The Practice of the Presence of God. The humble cook who found time to spend with the Lord.

DANIEL BERRIGAN..........His autobiography, To Dwell In PeaceActivist Jesuit who also has written short commentaries on O.T. prophets.

JOHN ORTBERG.............God Is Closer Than You Think.

ELIZABETH O'CONNOR............Search for Silence

THOMAS R. KELLY..............A Testament Of Devotion An enduring spiritual classic.

NANCY ROTH..............The Breath of God Using the metaphor of breath; the "book reveals God to be wholly available in the ordinary round that comprises our days."

BARBARA R. ROSSING......The Rapture Exposed The Message of Hope In The Book Of Revelation. Not so much a spirituality book but a great alternative to the "Left Behind" fiction books.

CALVIN MILLER...........Into the Depths of God.Gives guidance to Christians who are not satisfied by superficial relationships with God.

ROBERT BENSON...........Between The Dreaming And The Coming True and The Body Broken (2003). Read "Body Broken" for Robert's denominational journey from the Church of the Nazarene to the United Methodist Church, to the Episcopal Church.

ELIZABETH SHERRILL......All The Way To Heaven: A Surprising Faith Journey (2002)

HENRI NOUWEN............With Open Hands,... The Genesee Diary,... Reaching Out,...In the Name of Jesus,... Sabbatical Journey are just a few.

MICHAEL O'LAUGHLIN........God's Beloved: A Spiritual Biography of Henri Nouwen (2004).
"He was clearly a special sort of person, at once wonderful and perplexing."

REBECCA LAIRD & MICHAEL J. CHRISTENSEN............ The Heart of Henri Nouwen
"Opens up the passionate core of one of our era's most influential spiritual leaders."

CHRIS GLASER...........Henri's Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen's Legacy

"The spiritual life is reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human beings and to our God. We are called to reach out with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God." Henri Nouwen

A couple links...more at the end.

THE UPPER ROOM Resources for personal spirituality.

HENRI NOUWEN LITERARY CENTRE Get to know this modern-day mystic.

The Holy Inefficiency of Henri Nouwen

A better symbol of the Incarnation, I can hardly imagine.

-by PHILIP YANCEY

Once when I was dining with a group of writers, the conversation turned to letters we get from readers. Richard Foster and Eugene Peterson mentioned an intense young man who had been seeking spiritual direction from both of them. They responded as best they could, answering questions by mail and recommending books on spirituality. Foster had just learned that the same inquirer had also contacted Henri Nouwen. "You won't believe what Nouwen did," he said. "He invited this stranger to live with him for a month so he could mentor him in person."

Most writers jealously protect their schedules and privacy. Nouwen, who died of a heart attack this past September, broke down such barriers of professionalism. His entire life, in fact, displayed a "holy inefficiency."

Trained in Holland as a psychologist and a theologian, Nouwen spent his early years achieving. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, averaged more than a book a year, and traveled widely as a conference speaker. He had a résumé to die for-which was the problem, exactly. The pressing schedule and relentless competition were suffocating his own spiritual life.

Nouwen went to South America for six months, scouting a new role for himself as a missionary in the Third World. A hectic speaking schedule on his return to the United States only made things worse. Finally, Nouwen fell into the arms of the L'Arche community in France, a home for the seriously disabled. He felt so nourished by them that he agreed to become priest in residence at a similar home in Toronto called Daybreak. There, Nouwen spent his last ten years, still writing and traveling to speak here and there, but always returning to the haven of Daybreak.

I once visited Nouwen, sharing lunch with him in his small room. It had a single bed, one bookshelf, and a few pieces of Shaker-style furniture. The walls were unadorned except for a print of a Van Gogh painting and a few religious symbols. A Daybreak staff person served us a bowl of Caesar salad and a loaf of bread. No fax machine, no computer, no Daytimer calendar posted on the wall-in this room, at least, Nouwen had found serenity. The church "industry" seemed very far away.

After lunch we celebrated a special Eucharist for Adam, the young man Nouwen looked after. With solemnity, but also a twinkle in his eye, Nouwen led the liturgy in honor of Adam's twenty-sixth birthday. Unable to talk, walk, or dress himself, profoundly retarded, Adam gave no sign of comprehension. He seemed to recognize, at least, that his family had come. He drooled throughout the ceremony and grunted loudly a few times.

Later Nouwen told me it took him nearly two hours to prepare Adam each day. Bathing and shaving him, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, guiding his hand as he tried to eat breakfast-these simple, repetitive acts had become for him almost like an hour of meditation.

I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of the busy priest's time. Could not someone else take over the manual chores? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed me that I had completely misinterpreted him. "I am not giving up anything," he insisted. "It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship."

All day Nouwen kept circling back to my question, bringing up various ways he had benefitted from his relationship with Adam. It had been difficult for him at first, he said. Physical touch, affection, and the messiness of caring for an uncoordinated person did not come easily. But he had learned to love Adam, truly to love him. In the process he had learned what it must be like for God to love us-spiritually uncoordinated, retarded, able to respond with what must seem to God like inarticulate grunts and groans. Indeed, working with Adam had taught him the humility and "emptiness" achieved by desert monks only after much discipline.

Nouwen has said that all his life two voices competed inside him. One encouraged him to succeed and achieve, while the other called him simply to rest in the comfort that he was "the beloved" of God. Only in the last decade of his life did he truly listen to that second voice.

Ultimately Nouwen concluded that "the goal of education and formation for the ministry is continually to recognize the Lord's voice, his face, and his touch in every person we meet." Reading that description in his book ¡Gracias!, I understand why he did not think it a waste of time to invite a seeking stranger to live with him for a month, or to devote two hours a day to the menial care of Adam.

I will miss Henri Nouwen. For some, his legacy consists of his many books, for others his role as a bridge between Catholics and Protestants, for others his distinguished career at Ivy League universities. For me, though, a single image captures him best: the energetic priest, hair in disarray, using his restless hands as if to fashion a homily out of thin air, celebrating an eloquent birthday Eucharist for an unresponsive child-man so damaged that many parents would have had him aborted. A better symbol of the Incarnation, I can hardly imagine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today International/Christianity Today Magazine. December 9, 1996 Vol. 40, No. 14, Page 80

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