On Nov 18, 2009, at 3:47 AM, "Paul Mowat" wrote:

Meg: Paul has taken years to make sense of healing from addictions and the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. His unpublished manuscript is searching for a home, but here is a two page description. Am sure he would love to hear from you.

Title of thesis: A Therapeutic Model that uses Desert Spirituality for the Healing of Addiction
Summary:

Pastoral/soul care is down to anyone who finds him or herself in a position to reach out and come alongside someone on life's journey. It is essential for christian pastoral/soul care to acknowledge the presence of God in the situation and share this knowledge with whomever he or she is seeking to care for. God's presence gives the individual sufferer the assurance of hope in whatever the circumstances.

The Writings of Nil Sorsky

Meg: For this study you will find two basic texts of Nil Sorsky’s writings. I suggest you start with Father George Maloney's fine study that is one of the Paulist Classics of Western Spirituality. Then, we are privileged to have a critical edition published by Cistercian Publications.

Nil Sorsky, The Complete Writings from the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

This book is written by George A. Maloney,S.J. published by Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey: 2003 (ISBN: 0-8091-3810-7).

Living in Christ: Essays on the Christian Life by an Orthodox Nun

By Mother Raphaela
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1998
Crestwood, New York
ISBN: 978-0-88141-199-7

Meg’s comments: In contemplative monasteries the Abbess gives short chapter talks almost weekly. These are reflections on the lived experience of the monastic way of life. Perhaps this book should be read not so much for its content but for its method. What would 19 little talks be for each of us?

Hidden Holiness

By Michael Plekon
Foreword by Rowan Williams
University of Notre Dame Press 2009
Notre Dame, Indiana
ISBN: 978-0-268-03893-9

From the Forward:

Father Michael Plekon has written before about holiness in the modern Orthodox world, and has done so with learning, profound sympathy, and imagination. Here he extends his reach, boldly, to discern the marks of Christ-like holiness in figures both inside and outside the Orthodox Christian family, not to say at the edges of any sort of explicit Christian faith.

Survival or Prophesy? The correspondence of Jean Leclercq and Thomas Merton.

It is Monastic Wisdom Series: Number Seventeen. Cistercian Publications. Available from Liturgical Press Collegeville MN. BX4705M542A 2008.

This exchange of letters between two monastic giants is instructive for juniors. Note the passion for the monastic life. Their conversation, now a half–century ago, is prophetic and we are still living into the consequences. I’ll list ten points for you to notice in your reading of the text:

A Blessed Life
Benedictine Guidelines for Those Who Long for Good Days

By Wil Derkse
Translated by Martin Kessler
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-1863-9
$11.95

From the introduction:

…Two things are clear at once. Benedict’s program is fully dynamic: we need to hurry to give a good turn to our life. For the rest, it will subsequently appear that we, having made that choice, still have a long and patient way to go.

The second element is that Benedict offers a way of life which grants joy and contentment, a life on which blessing rests. Who does not long for “good days”?

The Benedictine perspective wants to be attractive, as we will read further on in the Prologue. That does not mean that this way is easy, but that is true of everything worthwhile. How much practice is needed before anyone can play the cello concert of Edward Elgar superbly?

Anyone who begins this way is often attracted by something or more often, by someone: an experience of a concert, or the film about the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, or a teacher. It costs a lot of effort and much guidance by experienced musicians to develop into a cellist who in turn know how to touch the souls of others. But what gratification and joy when the music really succeeds! At that point, the patient drudgery and persistent practice is forgotten.

Benedict presents to his candidates a comparable road: “We will therefore establish a training school for the service of the Lord. In its plan we hope to prescribe nothing that is too difficult, or that is too heavy.

Seeking Life
The Baptismal Invitation of the
Rule of St. Benedict

By Esther de Waal
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-1880-6
$19.95

Meg: This book, though small, is a large contribution to excellent scholarship and devotion for those of us who follow the Rule of Benedict. It came just in time for lent. I fully recommend it to those of us who renew those Baptismal Promises on Easter Saturday Vigil. Ash Wednesday is the time to start this annual pilgrimage toward our ongoing-conversion.

On the Jesus Prayer from the Ascetic Essays of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov

Translated by Father Lazarus.
Foreword by Bishop Kallistos Ware.
New Seeds: Boston and London 2006.
ISBN 1-59030-278-8 BT590
J2814713 2005
$15.95

From the cover:

An ideal guide to the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Thousands have fallen in love with this anonymously authored book The Way of the Pilgrim – the account of an ordinary man’s encounter with the Eastern Orthodox Christian practice of the Jesus Prayer, which consists of the constant repetition of the short phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.”

Love’s Trinity
A Companion to Julian of Norwich

Meg: More than a critical edition this is a sustained lectio on Julian of Norwich. Maybe it is not so much to be read as to be imitated!

Long text translated by John-Julian, OJN
With a commentary by Frederick S. Roden, AOJN
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-5308-1
$39.95

From the Forward:

To track and illuminate the spiritual and theological depths of Julian’s work is a tremendous challenge and can be undertaken fruitfully only by someone immersed in the unique spirituality that underlies her writing.

The unique aspect of this present book is that it is written by a person who, while an academic himself, has been deeply and significantly engrossed in Julian’s teaching on a spiritual and devotional level for many years and is able more than any other writer I have read to bring all of Julian’s fourteenth-century insights alive, demonstrating their continuing relevance to our twenty-first-century hunger for a valid Christian spirituality.

Ministry That Transforms
A Contemplative Process of Theological Reflection

By Kathleen McAlpin
Forward by Mary Jo Leddy
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-3222-2
$15.95

Meg: While in Bolivia I took the time to reread Mary Jo Leddy’s Reweaving Religious Life. Her writing is clear and compelling. This book takes the window of opportunity for engaged ministers to have a method for theological reflection. The abstraction from a clinical and/or academic discipline shifts mindless reaction to full operational discernment. If I used this book in a teaching situation I’d recommend it for anyone in the path of self-less service.

A Listening Heart:
The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness

By Brother David Steindl-Rast.
Introduction by Matthew Fox
New York: Crossroad, l999; 125 pp.; $14.95 paper

This book is to be read and experienced rather than talked about. So, this review serves as a notice to buy and enjoy. It’s a treat. Seldom does a gifted author get a second chance sixteen years later to do a revised edition of a winner that was published in l983 under the same title.

Br. David is known for his teachings on gratefulness of heart.

from Cistercian Studies Quarterly:

Thomas Merton, Cassian and the Fathers, Initiation into the Monastic Tradition

edited by Patrick F. O’Connell.
Forward by Patrick Hart, OCSO,
Preface by Columba Stewart, OSB Cistercian Publications: Kalamazoo, Michigan 2005.

This book is worth waiting 50 years for: Like Scripture we are privileged to live in our day with translations of the Gospels rather than travel on those dusty roads with Jesus those public years. We might have missed the significance of Jesus Christ.

We have in this book of Thomas Merton’s, 14 taped lectures on John Cassian. Gethsemani Abbey taped more than 600 lectures of Merton between l962-1968. Scholar Patrick O’Connell brings to us a thorough textbook with an extensive history to situate John Cassian and the monastic life in late antiquity.

We read the written notes for lectures about the significant desert fathers: Origen, Anthony, Pachomius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nyssa, Hilarion, Jerome, Macarius the Great, Pseudo-Macarious, Evagrius. Then there are the actual lectures on Cassian followed by textual notes, table of correspondences, bibliography for further reading, acknowledgments and an index.

In this House of Brede

by Rumer Godden
Loyola Press 2007
Chicago, Illinois

The Loyola Press recently reissued In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, a classic novel about a Benedictine abbey. Offering valuable insights, the book describes in wonderful detail the life of a monastic community over 15 years. The story begins when Philippa Talbot, a senior civil servant in London, announces her resignation in order to try her vocation as a Benedictine nun.

With Philippa, the reader enters the world of a large, enclosed monastery modeled after Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire. We follow her as she learns humility and obedience, is reconciled to past events in her life, and gradually releases her need to be in control. Interwoven with her life are the stories of the other nuns and sisters whose gifts and problems are as varied and complicated as those in any community.

Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit’s Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded and Complicated World

Reprinted with permission from Friends of Saint Benedict.

Sister Jeremy Hall, OSB
Liturgical Press 2007
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-3185-0
$14.95

With so many books on the Benedictine way of life, one wonders if another is going to tell us anything new; but, indeed, this one does. It is the fruit of Sister Jeremy’s lifetime of contemplative living and practice. We all know that the Benedictine way is a way of practice, not of theory: one must experience it in order to understand it.

Chaminade Crabtree, OCSO Patnership With Christ, A Cistercian Retreat given by Eugene Boylan, OCSO

Introduction by Nivard Kinsella, OCSO
Monastic Wisdom Series: 16
Liturgical Press. 2008
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN: 978-0-87907-016-8 (pbk)

This book is a critical edition of Eugene Boylan's life, teachings and writings. The preface and introduction is by those who also knew him.

The Art of Practicing, A Guide to Making Music From the Heart.

by Madeline Bruser
Three Rivers Press: 1997
New York, New York
ISBN 0-609-8017-5
$13.45

Madeline Bruser is a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and she applies inner Buddhist practice to the training as a mucisian.

From the back cover:

This landmark book enlightens amateur and professional musicians about a way of practicing that transforms a sometimes frustrating, monotonous, and overly strenuous labor into an exhilarating and rewarding experience.

Acclaimed pianist and teacher Madeline Bruser combines physiological and meditative principles to help musicians release physical and mental tensions and unleash their innate musical talent. She offers practical techniques for cultivating free and natural movement, a keen enjoyment of sounds and sensations, a clear and relaxed mind, and an open heart and she explains how to

Prepare the body and mind to practice with ease

Maha Ghosananda, The Buddha of the Battlefield

by Santidhammo Bhikku
For copies write to:
Atammayatarama Buddhist Monastery,
19301 176th Avenue, NE
Woodinvalle, WA 98072.
Telephone: 425-481-6640
Fax: 425-481-2142

Contents:

Introduction

Birth and Childhood

Rhythm of Life

Maha Ghosananda’s Education

Fifteen years in India

Meditation in the Forest

Walking into the Battlefield

Buddha of the Battle fields

Dhammayietra II

Dhammayietra III: Prelude to Elections

Dhammayietra IV: Landmines

Dhammayietra V. Forests

Dhammayietra VI: Reconciliation

Old Age

Maha Ghosananda proverbs

The Human Family

The Bodhi Tree

There Can Be No Peace with Landmines

Peace is Possible:

Stephen Harding, A Biographical Sketch and Texts

by Claudio Stercal
Translated by Martha F. Krieg
Cistercian Series: Number 226
Liturgical Press 2008
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-87907-32-8
$18.95 (pbk)

From the back cover:

Stephen Harding, the third abbot of Citeaux, is also an elusive historical figure. English by birth and a monk of Sherborne Abbey before the Norman Conquest, he journeyed to France and Rome before reentering monastic life at Molesme, only to leave with the founders of the New Monastery at Citeaux.

From 1108 to 1133, the period of the first Cistercian expansion, he served as abbot, and some say, was the formative genius behind the Cistercian order.

City of Prayer
40 days with Desert Christians

by Rachel M. Srubas
Liturgical Press 2008
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 970-0-8146-3095-2
$14.95 (pbk)

Christians are familiar with Matthew’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.

We are familiar with Jesus’ pithy responses to the devil at the end of those forty days:

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” and “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” But we are likely to be less familiar with the pithy sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers whom God led into the desert in surprising numbers throughout the early centuries of the church.

Survival or Prophecy? The Correspodence of Jean Leclerq and Thomas Merton.

by Patrick Hart, OCSO
Forward by Rembert G. Weakland, OSB
Afterward by Michael Casey, OCSO.
Detailed chronology of Jean Leclercq and Thomas Merton
Monastic Wisdom Series: Number XVII
Liturgical Press 2008
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-87907-017-5
$21.95 (pbk)

From the back cover:

Their correspondence over twenty years is a fascinating record of the common yearnings of these two monks.

“What is a monk?” is the question at the center of their exchange, and in these letters they answer it with great aplomb, touching on the role of ancient texts and modern conveniences; the advantages of hermit life and community life; the fierce Catholicism of the monastic past and the new openness to approaches of other traditions; the monastery’s impulse toward survival and the monk’s calling to prophecy.