If you’ve ever wondered about the mystical writers, but found their writing inaccessible, then Why the Mystics Matter Now is for you. This inviting guidebook for contemporary readers serves as a primer to a body of wisdom that is often viewed as unapproachable, but, in fact, is still relevant to the problems we face today. Frederick Bauerschmidt starts where we are: in a disenchanted world. Then, drawing words from those particular mystics whose struggles and questions closely parallel our own, he reveals the meaning of their words in clear, practical ways. With an unconventional, engaging, and often playful style, Bauerschmidt strips away the barriers, making the mystics less intimidating and more accessible. Featuring: THOMAS MERTON THÉRÉSE OF LISIEUX HILDEGARD OF BINGEN JULIAN OF NORWICH MEISTER ECKHART IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA CATHERINE OF SIENA

If you’ve ever wondered about the mystical writers, but found their writing inaccessible, then Why the Mystics Matter Now is for you. This inviting guidebook for contemporary readers serves as a primer to a body of wisdom that is often viewed as unapproachable, but, in fact, is still relevant to the problems we face today. Frederick Bauerschmidt starts where we are: in a disenchanted world. Then, drawing words from those particular mystics whose struggles and questions closely parallel our own, he reveals the meaning of their words in clear, practical ways. With an unconventional, engaging, and often playful style, Bauerschmidt strips away the barriers, making the mystics less intimidating and more accessible. Featuring: THOMAS MERTON THÉRÉSE OF LISIEUX HILDEGARD OF BINGEN JULIAN OF NORWICH MEISTER ECKHART IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA CATHERINE OF SIENA

In The Road to Joy, Kevin McClone invites us to join him in a personal and professional journey exploring eight core psychospiritual pathways that lay the foundation for more joyful living. Inspired by the death of his beloved wife, Grace Chen-McClone, this book seeks to integrate core pathways of psychospiritual transformation. Each chapter explores one pathway in depth, utilizing psychological and spiritual sources, and ends with concrete practical action plans. McClone draws heavily from psychology research and spirituality embedded in various spiritual and mystical traditions including the wisdom rooted in the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This volume provides an account of the surprising ‘in-breaking’ of spiritual life that persists in our culture, despite the best efforts of atheist spokespersons and secular theorists. Spirituality in its varying forms is irrepressible, resisting our attempts to exclude it by continuing to seep through the cracks and leak through the gaps. When it is allowed to manifest itself through the Christian faith-tradition, it has the power to surprise, transform and renew everything it touches. This volume contains a series of case studies, each of which describes the inner-functionings and out-workings of the spiritual life as a transformative point of contact between God, world, society and self. Each chapter contains high-level inquiry, drawing on best-practice scholarship that is deeply aware of the needs and opportunities that confront 21st-century society.

Oliver Keenan brings the medieval philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to life. Thomas Aquinas is more than a medieval curiosity. He was a reluctant revolutionary, a scholar, poet and saint whose work unleashed an epoch-defining explosion of philosophical creativity in the thirteenth century. Writing at a time of war, injustice, poverty and alienation, Aquinas' thought reaches across the ages and speaks to us today. As Oliver Keenan argues, Aquinas matters now not because he was right about everything but because he can teach us a new way of looking at the world. A powerful voice for community, justice, friendship and peace, Aquinas' profoundly non-violent philosophy shows us how to be human in a deeply dehumanizing world. The era that he knew was defined by conflict and divisive politics, much like our own – his unfailing belief in the power of communication to overcome alienation and despair is an important lesson for us all. This book brings Aquinas' challenging but deeply rewarding philosophy to life for readers new to his work, as well as those already familiar. Oliver Keenan has spent his working life researching and engaging with Thomas Aquinas, culminating in this moving and original account of why he matters now – perhaps more than ever.

"The Young Adult Playbook is written by two college humanities professors with decades of experience advising young adults (from high school through late-twenties) on how to find meaningful work, leisure (free time), and love. In each of these three areas, they offer a change in perspective and vocabulary in the first chapter, and practical steps in the second chapter. The discussion is built around the stories of composite characters--Brooke, Sofia, Olivia, Jonah, Cole, and others--who are based on their own students and other young adults. It includes selections of social science data to give an accurate picture of young adulthood today. It also includes journal exercises for the reader to complete and lined pages at the back should the reader wish to do so in the book itself"--

A comprehensive exploration of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism. This work is a comprehensive study of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism. Mystics claim to experience reality in a way not available in normal life, a claim which makes this phenomenon interesting from a philosophical perspective. Richard H. Jones’s inquiry focuses on the skeleton of beliefs and values of mysticism: knowledge claims made about the nature of reality and of human beings; value claims about what is significant and what is ethical; and mystical goals and ways of life. Jones engages language, epistemology, metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of mind. Methodological issues in the study of mysticism are also addressed. Examples of mystical experience are drawn chiefly from Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, but also from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Daoism. “This is a significant extension of the seminal work by Walter Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy. That work has stimulated much literature, all of which Jones manages to review here. He critically extends Stace’s universal core and embeds it in a sophisticated discussion of the extent, range, and metaphysical implications of mysticism.” — Ralph W. Hood, Jr., coauthor of The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach