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Spirituality and Religion May 2024
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| Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine ColdstreamIn this candid and thought-provoking memoir, former nun Catherine Colstream reflects on her time as a Carmelite at Akenside Priory in northern England, the circumstances that motivated her to join the order, and the internal conflicts that eventually led to her departure. |
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Have a beautiful, terrible day! / : Daily Meditations for the Ups, Downs & In-betweens
by Kate Bowler
"Tender and powerful spiritual reflections and blessings that invite readers to honestly and joyfully walk through their everyday, wonderful, messy humanity, from the New York Times bestselling author of Good Enough. Kate Bowler, author of the instant New York Times bestseller Good Enough and national bestseller The Lives We Actually Have, wants to encourage people to develop their capacity to feel the breadth of their experiences. The better we are at identifying our spiritual highs and lows, the more resilient we become. In Bowler's previous books, she offered a singular way to view the everyday in all of its heartache and glory. Now in Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, Bowler is inviting readers for the first time to fully embrace the terrible along with the beautiful by offering readers honest, heartfelt daily devotionals followed by blessings and action steps that lead readers to feel seen, heard and understood no matter what their day may bring. In addition, Bowler has written Advent and Lenten sections to round out the book that offer readers a rich, meaningful way to enter into these seasons of expectation and contemplation. Along the way, Bowler shares funny and poignant moments in her own life while enduring a dark season of pain. As she says, "What I want more than anything is to bless you and me right now, and feel the truth of our realities without letting reality itself overwhelm us...So here's to us having beautiful, terrible days.""
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Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere
by Savannah Guthrie
Beginning with her Baptist upbringing, Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie reflects on the role faith has played in her life and how her relationship with religion has evolved over time. From there, she takes readers through her existing understanding of God as love and the importance of making space for imperfection in her spiritual life.
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| The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy by Mohamad JebaraRichly detailed yet approachable, this sweeping chronicle of the Qur'an explores its history as both holy scripture and transmitted text, across the historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts through which it traveled as it spread across the world. |
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| Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne LamottReligious memoir mainstay Anne Lamott brings her well-established candor and thoughtfulness to this examination of love in its many forms, from the parental to sacred to the love of one's community. Who it's for: established fans of Lamott's work. Newer readers might want to start with her other titles like Help Thanks Wow or Traveling Mercies. |
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| The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammonNPR correspondent Sarah McCammon examines the recent, relatively sharp decline in membership in evangelical churches, drawing interviews with others who left their churches and on her own experience being raised in a strict religious environment. Don't miss: the exploration of how responding to large cultural shifts has shaped evangelical churches since the 1970s. |
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This here flesh / : Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
by Cole Arthur Riley
"In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the "necessary rituals" that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation. "From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning." So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself. Writing memorably of her own childhood and coming to self, Arthur Riley boldly explores some of the most urgent questions of life and faith: How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit? How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest? In this indelible work of contemplative storytelling, Arthur Riley invites us to descend into our own stories, examine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it. At once a compelling spiritual meditation, a powerful intergenerational account, and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us"
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| Reading Genesis by Marilynne RobinsonJust as she does in her fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson pairs her love of literature with her interest in theology in this thought-provoking close reading of the book of Genesis. Topics include: the "show, don't tell" storytelling rule of thumb, character archetypes as applied to biblical figures, and concepts like grace and justice. |
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Sharing too much : lessons from an unlikely life
by Richard Paul Evans
In this intimate and heartfelt collection of personal essays, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of more than 40 novels recounts his moving journey from childhood to beloved writer, sharing the lessons he's learned and hard-won advice about everything from marriage to parenthood.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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