Jess, Delia, Anne, and Lindsay have returned to Fairhope, Alabama, filled with hope and inspiration. But the paths of life are rarely straight, and the insights they gained at the retreat in Seaside, Florida, will be tested. Within weeks of breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, Mitch, Jess catches the eye of a doctor who has the main quality Mitch lacked: a Christian faith. As she takes the tentative steps to get to know him, she questions if his faith will be enough to offset his past. Delia started a long distance relationship with Max, the South Carolina native she met at the retreat. As their romantic relationship grows, their commitment to follow a godly path risks a head-on collision with that powerful emotion called lust. Annes thirteen-year-old daughter, Kelsie, experiences her own rush of hormones threatening the recent peace between mother and daughter. Can Anne and her husband, Ted, teach Kelsie to build relationships based on godly principles? While love is in bloom for the others, Lindsay and Johns marriage strains under the increasing dominance of work over faith and family. Will their best intentions trump Gods right order? As new relationships are built and established ones begin to crack, the ladies will need to lean on God more than ever. Where will He lead them? How will they seek Him along the way? Their stories are our stories. Their journeys are our journeys. Come join them on The Paths We Walk.

Set in Fairhope, Alabama, and the beach resort area of Scenic Highway 30A in Floridas panhandle, four thirty-something ladies support each other through the triumphs and hard decisions of life. When their own ladies retreat is canceled by the sudden illness of its veteran coordinator, Deli, Jess, Anne, and Lindsay travel to Seaside, Florida, for a local churchs meeting on biblical reflection and meditation. The verses they study bring unexpected insights into their relationships with God, their families, and even themselves. Single ladies, Deli and Jess, gain greater insight into what it means to be a part of a godly relationship. Deli battles her abuse history and takes a step of faith toward a future she never imagined could be hers. Jess, on the other hand, struggles to come to terms with her failing three-year relationship with a man who has little interest in God and faith. Meanwhile, Anne and Lindsay confront issues of motherhood. Annes pre-teen daughter has begun a slow descent into silence and moodiness leading Anne to question her long-held beliefs about parenting. Lindsay has her own questions, but with two young daughters now both school-aged, hers is a battle of mothers guilt against a possible return to her first love: a career in law. Their questions are our questions. Their journeys are our journeys. Come join them as they discover their own answers and Gods plan for their lives on The Paths We Walk.

The Paths We Take is about three friends, Samantha, Jay, and Carli, who are planning a summer trip to Florida. They are also in the middle of school examinations and preparing for the school dance. The three friends plan to attend the dance together when Steve, a member of the schools football team, asks Carli to the dance. Samantha becomes anxious and uneasy with the thought of going with Jay alone until Jay admits he has loved her for a long time. Everything changes when its discovered that Samanthas parents are found buried at their abandoned house. Samantha is taken by the police and brought to a mental hospital. When she remembers the accident, she escapes the hospital only to get in an accident herself. Samantha is met by a guardian angel who tells her to choose a path. After making a selfless choice, all the nightmares she endured fades away.

Through reflections on the Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the medieval Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, writer Brian Pierce reveals the benefits of openness as a spiritual practice. By drawing analogies between Christian and Buddhist teachings, he identifies the common ground on which to grow in compassionate understanding and interfaith dialogue. Blending Christian tradition with the concrete spiritual practices of Buddhism, this work emphasizes the importance of seeing with a contemplative and compassionate vision. By sharing accounts of individuals who transcended their own suffering to embrace a more compassionate and understanding view of others, Pierce celebrates the moments of harmonious communion that draw us together. This beautifully written book is a model for respectful listening and a spiritual resource for prayerful meditation and scholarly study.

On August 10, 1901, two English ladies decided to visit the Palace of Versailles for what was anticipated to be an ordinary day of sightseeing. However, on that fateful day, a series of mysterious encounters occurred. When the ladies visited Queen Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon, both were later convinced they had stepped back in time to the eighteenth century. One of the ladies even believed she had witnessed the queen herself! Were the ladies encounters a case of mistaken identity and confusion, or did they unknowingly step back in time to walk along paths from a bygone era at Versailles?