Embracing a Life of Meaning: Kathleen Norris on Discovering What Matters

This ebook is of the participant Workbook with the corresponding Small Group DVD available separately. In the small group using embracing a Life of Meaning, each participant uses his/her own Workbook for study and reflection. Embracing a life of meaning is part of the Embracing Series of small group studies, each led by a popular author, speaker, and teacher.

Place Matters5. Each dvd segment includes a 10-15 minute presentation by the leader, then a 10-15 filmed interaction with a small group of adults, discussing the presentation. In this study, award-winning poet and author Kathleen Norris provides a unique viewpoint on “what matters most. Session titles are:1.

Each program in this series includes a Small Group DVD and a Participant Workbook, each sold separately. Embracing a life of meaning is a five-session small group church study for adults and young adults incorporating a Participant Workbook and a DVD. The bible Matters3. Belief Matters2. We matter. The participant workbook is available in this eBook format as well as in print format.

Community Matters4.

Amazing Grace

She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world. A new york times notable book of the yearfrom the new york times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk, spirituality, a book about Christianity, and rediscovered faith.

Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Words like "judgment, " "dogma, " "salvation, " "faith, " "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary, " words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable.

Blending history, norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, etymology, and memoir, storytelling, theology, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion.

Quotidian Mysteries, The: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work" Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality Book 1998

The bestselling author of the cloister Walk reflects on the sanctifying possibilities of everyday work and how God is present in worship and liturgy as well as in ordinary life. Definitely not “for women only. ”.

Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life

Fascinated by this "noonday demon", so familiar to those in the early and medieval Church, Norris knew she must restore this forgotten but important concept to the modern world's vernacular. The extraordinary new york times bestselling masterpiece from "one of the most eloquent yet earthbound spiritual writers of our time" San Francisco Chronicle.

. Even as she struggled, norris recognized her familiar battle with acedia, a word she had discovered in early Church text years earlier. Kathleen norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn't drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldn't summon the energy for her daily tasks. An examination of acedia in the light of psychology, acedia & Me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, and Norris's own experience, spirituality, sometimes funny, the healing powers of religious practice, often provocative, and always insightful.

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The Cloister Walk

John's Abbey in Minnesota. Part record of her time among the benedictines, the cloister walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, its ritual, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, how immersion in the cloistered world-- its liturgy, its sense of community-- can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives.

In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, and relevant to us, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, no matter what our faith may be. An embrace of moral and spiritual contemplation. The new york times“A remarkable piece of writing. If read with humility and attention, Kathleen Norris's book becomes lectio divina, or holy reading.

The boston globefrom the iconic author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, a spiritual journey that brings joy to the meanings of love, grace and faith. Why would a married woman with a thoroughly protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, and scripture? This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, work, she found herself on two extended residencies at St.

A new york times bestseller and new york times notable book of the year“vivid, compelling.

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography Dakotas

A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography. With humor and lyrical grace, ” kathleen norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth San Francisco Chronicle.

   . A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book” about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Cloister Walk The New York Times Book Review.

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others

In holy envy, temples, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, and mosques. Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present.

Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is. Throughout holy envy, taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions—even those whose truths are quite different from hers.

The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God—a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.  . New york times bestsellerthe renowned and beloved new york times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world’s religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.

Barbara brown taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar.

Entering the Passion of Jesus Large Print: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

He risked his life when he dared to teach in the Temple. We take risks as we read and re-read these stories, finding new meanings and new challenges. In entering the passion of jesus: a beginner’s Guide to Holy Week, professor, author, and biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine explores the biblical texts surrounding the Passion story.

His followers risked everything when they left behind their homes, or anointed him with costly perfume. She shows us how the text raises ethical and spiritual questions for the reader, and how we all face risk in our Christian experience. Entering the passion of Jesus provides a rich and challenging learning experience for small groups and individual readers alike.

Jesus’ final days were full of risk. The book is part of a larger six-week study that is perfect for Lent and includes a DVD, and a comprehensive Leader Guide. The book’s six chapters include: jerusalem: risking reputation the temple: risking righteous anger Teachings: Risking Challenge The First Dinner: Risking Rejection The Last Supper: Risking the Loss of Friends Gethsemane: Risking Temptation.

Every move he made was filled with anticipation, danger, and the potential for great loss or great reward. Jesus risked his reputation when he entered Jerusalem in a victory parade.

Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants

While on retreat in a benedictine abbey, the author, a professor who was raised as a Pentecostal and a Baptist, observed how the meditative and ordered life of a monk lifted Jesus' teachings off the printed page and put them into daily practice. That is a mistake, writes Dennis Okholm, in Monk Habits for Everyday People.

Vital aspects of devotion, humility, obedience, hospitality, and evangelism took on new clarity and meaning. In their zeal for reform, early Protestant leaders tended to throw out Saint Benedict with the holy water. Paralleling that experience, okholm guides the reader on a focused and instructive journey that can revitalize the devotional life of any Christian who wants to slow down and dig deeper.

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Large Print: A Beginner's Guide to Advent - Light of the World

Join her as she traces the christmas narrative through the stories of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, and the visit from the Magi. In light of the world: a beginner’s guide to advent, professor, author, and biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine explores the biblical texts surrounding the story of the birth of Jesus.

As part of a larger four-week study that is perfect for Advent, it includes a DVD and a comprehensive leader guide. These stories open conversations around connections of the gospel stories to the Old Testament, the census and the stable, the importance of Mary’s visitation and the revolutionary implications of Mary’s Magnificat, the role of women in first-century Jewish culture, and the star of Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt.

The book provides a rich and challenging learning experience for small groups and individual readers alike.

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

All truth is paradox, " Lamott writes, "and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change. That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but "to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. In this profound and funny book, lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined.

Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward. Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. From anne lamott, even as i await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen, Thanks, the New York Times-bestselling author of Help, comes the book we need from her now: How to bring hope back into our lives"I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, Wow, " Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything.

Candid and caring, insightful and sometimes hilarious, Almost Everything is the book we need and that only Anne Lamott can write. But even when life is at its bleakest--when we are, stunned, exhausted, as she puts it, "doomed, and over-caffeinated"--the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand.