For people drawn to a life of contemplation, the dawning of luminous awareness in a mind full of clutter is deeply liberating. In the third of his best-selling books on Christian contemplative life, Martin Laird turns his attention to those who are well settled in their contemplative practice. An Ocean of Light speaks both to those just entering the contemplative path and to those with a maturing practice of contemplation. Gradually, the practice of contemplation lifts the soul, freeing it from the blockages that introduce confusion into our identity and thus confusion about the mystery we call God. In the course of a lifetime of inner silencing, the flower of awareness emerges: a living realization that we have never been separate from God or from the rest of humanity while we each fully become what each of us is created to be. In contemplation we become so silent before God that the "before" drops away. Those whose lives have led them deeply into the silent land realize this, but not in the way that we realize that the square root of 144 is 12. Laird draws from a wide and diverse range of writers--from St. Augustine, Evagrius Ponticus, and St. Teresa of Avila to David Foster Wallace, Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Wright--to ground his insight in an ancient practice and give it a voice in contemporary language. With his characteristic lyricism and gentleness, Laird guides readers through new challenges of contemplative life, such as making ourselves the focus of our own contemplative project; dealing with old pain; transforming the isolation of loneliness and depression into a liberating solidarity with all who suffer; and the danger of using a spiritual practice as a strategy to acquire and control.
After just a year or so, my father saw several lots for sale in the small village of Timberlake, Ohio, just thirty minutes from Cleveland.
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... Gregory Pritchard, Robert Clarke and Donald Wester of philosophy; from the religion faculty, James Timberlake, Rowena Strickland, Dan Holcomb, ...
walked over the frost-brittled grass, my long skirt swishing it dryly. I'd come to weep below the willows, to let the sound of the stream carry my lament ...
Frost, Gavin, and Yvonne Frost. The Good Witch's Bible. 7th ed. ... Gordon, Lynn D., ed. Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era.
Kenneth S. Todd. Reasons. to. Obey. God. Let's discuss four reasons why we should obey God. The first two deal with how we personally deal with God.
God's word is clear about the importance of godly friendships. This edition shows men how valuable those friendships are to spiritual growth.
In 2011, Thom S. Rainer published some research project results in a volume ... projecting the top challenging issue they deal with in bicultural settings ...
" Based on Pearson's 48-hour Management Buckets Workshop Experience, Mastering the Management Buckets offers detailed implementation tools, including 99 practical takeaways that a leader could implement immediately, plus nine management ...
" Based on Pearson's 48-hour Management Buckets Workshop Experience, Mastering the Management Buckets offers detailed implementation tools, including 99 practical takeaways that a leader could implement immediately, plus nine management ...