Over the past thirty years, while offering retreats, spiritual direction, and preached missions, the author was privileged to accompany many on their spiritual journey. She highlights here their common desires for peace, purpose, and meaning in life, ways to deal with suffering and death, among other life experiences. The author recounts how each experienced a "breakthrough" moment in their relationship with God.
Reading these stories, one can easily recognize that transforming moment when each person experienced God's compassion and as a result, everything changed in his or her life. These stories capture various dynamic aspects of our spiritual journey with God and others. Ultimately, at the heart of our spiritual journey is God's never-ending desire to draw us into a loving relationship. We too can rediscover that God has been searching for us, while we have been searching for God. Through the reading of these stories, scripture, and insights, we can reclaim our own desires and continue to deepen in loving union with our compassionate God, and be "carriers" of compassion for others.
Virginia A. Blass maintains a ministry of spiritual direction, parish missions, retreats, and conferences. She is a lay member of the Passionist Preaching Mission of the St. Paul of the Cross Province and a longtime collaborator in ministry with the Northeast Province of Jesuits. She resides in New Hampshire.
Shusaku Endo is considered one of Japan's greatest modern writers. His novel Silence is acknowledged as a masterpiece and has been translated into many languages. The Final Martyrs, published in English just before his death in 1996, reinforced his reputation as a major literary figure. Endo was born in 1923 and converted to Christianity as a boy. His stories and novels attempt to integrate his religious faith with Japanese culture.
Shusaku Endo was born in Tokyo in 1923 and converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
Beginning to Pray has established itself as a modern spiritual classic. Hailed by both Catholics and Protestants, it was written by an Orthodox archbishop for people who had never prayed before, and has been read and loved by persons at all levels of spiritual development.
Archbishop Anthony Bloom (born Andrei Borisovich Bloom in Lausanne, 1914; died August 4, 2003) was a distinguished Russian Orthodox bishop, spiritual writer, and broadcaster in Great Britain and Ireland
A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration
David Richo, PhD
Psychological and spiritual adulthood does not come automatically with age. It requires ongoing and ardent work on ourselves. It involves articulating our own truth and acting in accord with its challenges.
How to Be an Adult is a thoughtful, accessible guide filled with useful quotations and reflections for meditation, as well as other techniques and concrete advice on the process of growth. The new appendix provides readers with practical ways to show integrity and loving-kindness.
David Richo, PhD, is a psychotherapist, teacher, and retreat leader in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, California. He is the author of many books and emphasizes spiritual perspectives in all his work.
