Into The Silent Land

Title: Into The Silent Land
Author: Martin Laird
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd
ISBN: 9780232526400

From the publisher: An instant classic of contemporary spirituality, bringing together an engaging introduction to the Christian contemplative tradition for people inside or on the margins of the churches who feel drawn to the world of silent prayer.

Martin Laird shows how silence and meditation can offer a remedy to many contemporary dilemmas and emotional struggles. Writing with great clarity, depth and authority, Laird examines the meditative methods and traditions found within contemplative prayer. He also explores the role of breath and awareness in the spiritual life, which, while usually associated with Buddhism, is also an ancient concern of Christian thinkers.

Into the Silent Land brings together scholarship, pastoral practice and the author's own personal experience. It offers new insights for the student but is especially intended for the non-specialist reader who feels drawn to the world of silent prayer and is looking to the Christian contemplative tradition for inspiration and guidance.

Grandad's Prayers Of The Earth

Title: Grandad's Prayers Of The Earth
Author: Douglas Wood
Illustrator: P.J. Lynch
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 9780763646752

From the publisher: Grandad is the boy’s best friend. Being with him always makes the world seem right. And how vast that world is: a world of tall trees that reach for the clouds and sun and moon and stars - and what else is reaching for heaven but a prayer? Each time he and Grandad walk in the woods, the boy listens for the prayers of the earth. And finally the boy asks: "Are our prayers answered?" One day, long after Grandad is gone, long after the boy is grown, he understands Grandad’s reply: "If we listen very closely, a prayer is often its own answer."

Lectio Divina

Title: Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures
Author: M. Basil Pennington
Publisher: Crossroad Publishing
ISBN: 9780824517366

From the publisher: Lectio divina is "letting our Divine Friend speak to us through his inspired and inspiring Word," according to M. Basil Pennington, the late priest, retreat master, and prominent lecturer in the Centering Prayer movement. This ancient Christian practice requires faith, humility, openness, and fidelity. Father Pennington sets the process of praying the Scriptures in the context of meditation, contemplation, compassion, and action. He calls it "a way of friendship" wherein we pay attention to "the love letters from the Lord."

Contemplative Prayer

Title: Contemplative Prayer
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-0-385-09219-7

From the publisher: In this classic text, Thomas Merton offers valuable guidance for prayer. He brings together a wealth of meditative and mystical influences–from John of the Cross to Eastern desert monasticism–to create a spiritual path for today. Most important, he shows how the peace contacted through meditation should not be sought in order to evade the problems of contemporary life, but can instead be directed back out into the world to affect positive change.

Contemplative Prayer is one of the most well-known works of spirituality of the last one hundred years, and it is a must-read for all seeking to live a life of purpose in today’s world.

In a moving and profound introduction, Thich Nhat Hanh offers his personal recollections of Merton and compares the contemplative traditions of East and West.

The Genesee Diary

Title: The Genesee Diary
Author: Henri J.M. Nouwen
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd
ISBN: 9780232527292

From the publisher: This touching observation is central to the probing spiritual journal of Henri Nouwen recorded during his seven-month stay in a Trappist monastery. During this period he had a unique opportunity to explore crucial issues of the spiritual life and discover ‘a quiet stream underneath the fluctuating affirmations and rejections of our little world’.

Henri Nouwen participated fully in the daily life and routine of the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate New York - in work and in prayer. He relates here the typical human experiences and questions that had somehow prevented Christ from being the centre of his existence. From the early weeks in the abbey - dominated by conflicting desires and concerns - to the final days of Advent, when he has found a new sense of calm expectation, Henri Nouwen never loses his critical honesty.

Insightful, compassionate, often humorous, always realistic, The Genesee Diary is both an inspiration and a challenge to those who are in search of themselves.

The Book of Mystical Chapters

Title: The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent, from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives
Author: John Anthony McGuckin
Publisher: Shambhala
ISBN: 978-1-59030-007-7

From the publisher: The early Christian monks of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine were the spiritual heroes of their age—fleeing the security of civilization for the desert, where they sought God in lives of prayer, contemplation, and radical simplicity. This book is a portable collection of their teachings, and those of their contemplative contemporaries, ranging from the fourth through the eleventh centuries. It is arranged to the traditional model of three ascending "books": Praktikos (practice), Theoretikos (theory), and Gnosis (knowledge). Each book consists of 100 "sentences"—aphorisms or thoughts. Each sentence is intended to be read and meditated upon for an entire day—just as the monks themselves might have done as they went about their work.

The Wisdom To Know The Difference

Title: The Wisdom To Know The Difference
Author: Eileen Flanagan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585428298

From the publisher:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can change; and wisdom to know the difference.

Millions of people have been moved by these famous last lines from the Serenity Prayer to make important and lasting changes in their lives. But how exactly can we know the difference? How can we acknowledge the real limits that we face without negating the possibility for dramatic change? In this wise book, Eileen Flanagan guides readers in determining what they can - or perhaps should - change in their lives, accepting what they cannot, and discovering the "wisdom to know the difference."

Drawing on her own Quaker faith as well as a range of other religious and spiritual traditions, Flanagan shows readers how such practices as sifting through culturally preconceived notions and listening to our own inner voice can help us determine when a change is needed in our lives or when instead acceptance is the answer.