Browse by Category - Christianity 
The Art of Thomas Merton
In the last decade of his life, while living as a hermit-monk in dialogue with the world, Thomas Merton created a body of visual art that has remained largely unknown and little studied in the nearly forty years since his death. With this book, Merton's art at last moves out of the shadows to be appreciated for what it is: a revealing expression of his state of mind and heart in the 1960s, and a visual correlative to his mature works of spiritual writing such as New Seeds of Contemplation and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Roger Lipsey provides a fascinating analysis of the simple and striking images and their significance in Merton's journey. He find in them resonances with Asian calligraphy and American abstract expressionism, and relates them to the influence of Merton's wide circle of friends, which included such diverse figures as the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, the poet Czeslaw Milosz, the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, and the artist Ad Reinhardt—among many others. 
Meditations on the Soul's Ascent, from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplative
From the Early Church to the Present
From John Chrysostom in the fourth century to Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth to William Butler
Yeats in the twentieth, this wide-ranging collection is a treasury of writings on prayer from throughout the
history of Christianity. Lorraine Kisly has arranged the material according to the great general themes of
prayer—such as praise, thanksgiving, repentance, and purification—to make this anthology serve as a course in
Christian prayer for anyone, as well as a marvelous companion for the contemplative journey in general. "If this
book is read truly," says Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, in his introduction, "the reader will surely find the beginning
of prayer itself, and this is to open another book with no end at all." Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer 
A New Translation
This anonymous fourteenth-century text is the glory of English mysticism, and one of the most
practical and useful guides to finding union with God ever written. Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s new translation is the
first to bring the text into a modern English idiom—while remaining strictly faithful to the meaning of the
original Middle English. 
Talking about God in an Age of Fundamentalism
GOD. It’s such a small arrangement of letters to cause so much trouble. In the culture wars that rage around us today, few of the people who use that word as a weapon have any sense of its source, its nuances, or the ultimate elusiveness of its definition. The same can be said for a lot of other words from the vocabulary of faith, like religion, fundamentalism, or tradition. By decoding the hot-button words of religious language, Gary Eberle exposes their misuse as weapons of emotional rhetoric—while telling the fascinating real story of their history and shifting meanings. De-fanged and examined closely, the words he unpacks for us emerge as too complex and interesting to be used simply as verbal bullets. His entertaining analysis of “god-language” will open your eyes to the origins of some words you thought you knew. It also offers a hopeful new vision for genuine dialogue in the future. 
A Journey in the Wilderness with Saint Anthony
The spiritual exploits of Anthony the Great—the prototype of the Christian "Desert Father"—have been immortalized in stories and art since the fourth century. Here is the stunning account of a modern seeker's quest to get beneath the legends that surround Anthony and to determine whether his extreme way of life has something to offer people in today's world. James Cowan's quest takes him to Egypt, to the monastery that still exists near the site of Anthony's hermitage, where he meets the monk who becomes his guide and mentor on the journey. He comes to regard Anthony and the colorful men and women who shared his lifestyle in the fourth through seventh centuries with affection and awe—their departure to the desert a flight from the status quo of the newly Christian empire in order to preserve the radical path to liberation they saw in Christian teaching. Our modern efforts toward liberation may look different from theirs, he concludes, but the ultimate goal is no different, and Anthony remains a luminous model for anyone who passionately seeks to know God. 
Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing
When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life—including a very promising literary career. He sent his journals, a novel-in-progess, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe keeping, fully expecting to write little, if anything, ever again.It was a relatively short-lived resolution, for Merton almost immediately found himself being assigned writing tasks by his Abbot—one of which was the autobiographical essay that blossomed into his international best-seller The Seven Storey Mountain. That book made him famous overnight, and for a time he struggled with the notion that the vocation of the monk and the vocation of the writer were incompatible. Monasticism called for complete surrender to the absolute, whereas writing demanded a tactical withdrawal from experience in order to record it.He eventually came to accept his dual vocation as two sides of the same spiritual coin and used it as a source of creative tension the rest of his life.  The Essential Henri Nouwen
“We always have a choice to live the moment as a cause of resentment or as a cause for joy.”—Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) The insights of Henri Nouwen have shown millions of people how to choose joy in any moment—even moments full of pain and brokenness. Few spiritual writers have ever spoken so powerfully and directly to the heart as he did, in part because he compassionately bared his own soul and struggles to his readers, but also because he deeply understood that God can be discovered in every aspect of ourselves, even—almost especially—in the parts we find difficult to acknowledge. This anthology of Nouwen’s teaching covers all his major themes—God, love, life, death,
psychology, woundedness, healing, and social action—and is drawn from among his more than forty books. It’s the
perfect, compact introduction to this brilliant and humble Catholic priest whom Christianity
Todaycalled “one of the world’s great spiritual writers.” 
Revised and Expanded Edition
Gnosticism was a wide-ranging religious movement of the first millennium CE—with earlier antecedents and later flourishings—whose adherents sought salvation through knowledge and personal religious experience. Gnostic writings offer striking perspectives on both early Christian and non-Christian thought. For example, some gnostic texts suggest that god should be celebrated as both mother and father, and that self-knowledge is the supreme path to the divine. Only in the past fifty years has it become clear how far the gnostic influence spread in ancient and medieval religions—and what a marvelous body of scriptures it produced. The selections gathered here, in poetic, readable translation, represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar expressions of gnostic spirituality. Their regions of origin include Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, China, and France. Also included are introductions, notes, an extensive glossary, and a wealth of suggestions for further reading. 
And Other Tales of Mother Macrina
"You can't 'get' to heaven," says Mother Macrina, "you must become heaven," and the way
that happens is through prayer, repentance, and love. The wise and lively Mother Macrina—a fictional character born
from the imagination of author Irma Zaleski—is a modern-day "desert mother" who lives quietly, but not quite
silently, in a small apartment in a town perhaps like yours. Her surprising and often humorous answers to the
questions put to her by her visitors make up this charming collection of parables on God, love, and everyday life.
The disarmingly simple tales address the profoundest questions of faith with penetrating wisdom and a spirit of
joy.  In 1945, a Coptic document containing sayings attributed to Jesus was discovered deep within an
ancient Egyptian cave. This "lost gospel," the Gospel of Thomas, was written at the same time as the canonical
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and is now considered one of the greatest religious discoveries of the
twentieth century. It contains 150 sayings, approximately half of which are found in the New Testament—the other
half of which are found only here. These new sayings offer an original perspective on Jesus' message. Most notably,
they emphasize that the Kingdom of Heaven exists right before us in this present moment, and all that we have to do
is recognize it. This edition includes an extensive foreword by Andrew Harvey, as well as commentary that explains
biblical terms, philosophical concepts, and historic contexts. 
A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition
Inner Christianity is the first introduction to mystical and esoteric Christianity for the general reader. It speaks from a nonsectarian point of view, unearthing insights from the whole of the Christian tradition, orthodox and heretical, famous and obscure. The esoteric tradition has traditionally searched for meanings that would yield a deeper inner knowledge of the divine. While traditional Christianity draws a timeline from Adam's Fall to the Day of Judgment, the esoteric often sees time as folding in on itself, bringing every point to the here and now. While the Church fought bitterly over dogma, the esoteric borrowed freely from other traditions—Kabbalah, astrology, and alchemy—in their search for metaphors of inner truth. Rather than basing his book around exponents of esoteric doctrine, scholar Richard Smoley
concentrates on the questions that are of interest to every searching Christian. How can one attain direct
spiritual experience? What does "the Fall" really tell us about coming to terms with the world we live in? Can
we find salvation in everyday life? How can we ascend, spiritually, through the various levels of existence?
What was Christ's true message to humankind? From the Gospel of Thomas to A Course in Miracles, from the
Jesus Prayer to alchemy and Tarot, from Origen to Dante to Jung, Richard Smoley sheds the light of an
alternative Christianity on these issues and more. 
A New Translation
This collection of folk tales, legends, and narratives about the life of Francis of Assisi and
his followers appeared about seventy-five years after the saint’s death, in the early fourteenth century. The
writings have remained popular ever since due to their beauty and charm, and because they are the nearest thing to
a biography of Francis that exists. They are the source of many of the most famous stories about Francis—including
the accounts of his preaching to the birds and of his receiving of the stigmata—and they are based on stories that
circulated about him in the years after his death. Little Flowers of Francis of Assisi | ||
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