Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life. Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

Mary Oliver is one of America's best-loved poets, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her luminous poetry celebrates nature and beauty, love and the spirit, silence and wonder, extending the visionary American tradition of Whitman, Emerson, Frost and Emily Dickinson. Her extraordinary poetry is nourished by her intimate knowledge and minute daily observation of the New England coast, its woods and ponds, its birds and animals, plants and trees.

What is the nature of music and what is its meaning in our lives? How is it created? How can it be more fully understood and appreciated? These questions are explored here by a composer who has written music for Itzhak Perlman, the Beaux Arts Trio and the National Symphony Orchestra. With disciplined lyricism and entirely devoid of technical jargon, Bruce Adolphe's book probes into the heart of such matters as the role of memory and imagination in creative expression, the meaning of inspiration, spirituality in music, the challenge of arts education and how music communicates. The author, acclaimed for his pre-concert lectures for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1992, also considers the work of composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Ravel in a way that is both poetic and accessible, designed to get directly to the essence of their art.

The Hum of the World is an invitation to contemplate what would happen if we heard the world as attentively as we see it. Balancing big ideas, playful wit and lyrical prose, this imaginative volume identifies the role of sound in Western experience as the primary medium in which the presence and persistence of life acquires tangible form. The positive experience of aliveness is not merely in accord with sound, but inaccessible, even inconceivable, without it. Lawrence Kramer’s poetic book roves freely over music, media, language, philosophy, and science from the ancient world to the present, along the way revealing how life is apprehended through sounds ranging from pandemonium to the faint background hum of the world. This warm meditation on auditory culture uncovers the knowledge and pleasure waiting when we learn that the world is alive with sound.

A comprehensive look at the 'lost art of listening' Shows how Christians can be a source of help and healing for others and themselves by learning to listen-to others, to God, to ourselves, to the world Combines accessible theological reflection with an unfolding story, illustrating the point of each chapter Established author with many years of experience in this area of ministry Foreword by Russ Parker