Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

As the religious rhetoric of the culture wars escalates, New York Times bestselling author and eminent scholar Garry Wills explores the meaning of Jesus’s teachings In what are billed as "culture wars," people on the political right and the political left cite Jesus as endorsing their views. Garry Wills argues that Jesus subscribed to no political program. He was far more radical than that. In a... (more)

The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith

The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith

by Marcus J. Borg

World-renowned Jesus scholar Marcus J. Borg shows how we can live passionately as Christians in today's world by practicing the vital elements of Christian faith. For the millions of people who have turned away from many traditional beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible, but still long for a relevant, nourishing faith, Borg shows why the Christian life can remain a transforming relationship with God.... (more)

Christianity Rediscovered

by Vincent J. Donovan

This profound and thought-provoking book is one of the classics of modern missionary writing. Superficially just a good missionary story, about how one man brought a number of groups of Masai people in east Africa to Christian faith, it is something much more than that. For in what the author says about the method and content of evangelism; the meaning of the eucharist; and the nature of ministry, we are led back... (more)

In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed

In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed

by Carl Honore?

We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put... (more)

Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places

Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places

by Peter Nabokov

From the author of Native American Testimony comes a revelatory new look at the hallowed, diverse, and threatened landscapes of the American Indian For thousands of years Native Americans have told stories about the powers of revered landscapes and sought spiritual direction at mysterious locations in their homelands. In Where the Lightning Strikes , Peter Nabokov offers sixteen "biographies of... (more)

Voluntary Simplicity, Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich

Voluntary Simplicity, Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich

by Duane Elgin

When Voluntary Simplicity was first published in 1981, it quickly became recognized as a powerful and visionary work in the emerging dialogue over sustainable ways of living. Now, more than ten years later and with many of the planet's environmental stresses having become more urgent than ever, Duane Elgin has revised and updated his revolutionary book. Voluntary Simplicity is not a book about living in... (more)

The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation

The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Tuck The Long Road Turns to Joy in your pocket and turn your walk into a joyful meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches "walking just for walking." Learn to enjoy each step and each breath, to regain peace in difficult moments. Photographs of walking meditation from around the world are included.

Amazing Grace

by Kathleen Norris

From Kathleen Norris, the author who "writes about religion with the imagination of a poet" (Chicago Tribune), comes this unusual, accessible, and profound investigation of Christian faith. Taking as her starting point the "scary words" that can intimidate and distance us from our religious heritage--words like judgment, faith, dogma, salvation and sinner, Norris blends history, theology, storytelling, etymology... (more)

Why I Am a Catholic

by Garry Wills

In this provocative work, which could not be timelier, Garry Wills, one of our country's most noted writers and historians, offers a powerful statement of his Catholic faith. Beginning with a reflection on his early experience of that faith as a child and later as a Jesuit seminarian, Wills reveals the importance of Catholicism in his own life. He goes on to challenge, in clear and forceful terms, the claim that... (more)

This Year I Will...: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True

This Year I Will...: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True

by M. J. Ryan

Are you really ready to change? Take this quiz and find out. Every New Year’s Day, my list of resolutions is: Ambitious. I aim for everything from losing weight to saving more money for my retirement. Realistic. I just try to bump my good behavior up a notch--be a better friend, give more money to charity---without giving myself any strict deadlines or goals. Precise. I decide exactly how many men I will ask... (more)

Moment By Moment the Art and Practice of Mindfulness

Moment By Moment the Art and Practice of Mindfulness

by Jerry Braza

Based on the Jerry Braza's Mindfulness Training Program, this book provides simple exercises for developing greater awareness and emotional involvement in our daily lives. Braza offers practical guidance on managing stress, quieting the mind, transforming feelings, enhancing productivity, and completing unfinished emotional business.

Becoming the Kind Father: A Son's Journey

Becoming the Kind Father: A Son's Journey

by Calvin Sandborn

The macho society that held John Wayne as a role model has created an emotional wasteland where 80 percent of men are unable to accurately express their feelings, and that same percentage feel estranged from their fathers. The stifled male, disconnected and out of touch, fills the void with apathy or anger, and the toll is staggering: short, unhealthy lives, ruined relationships, and damaged children. This... (more)

A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith

A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith

by Nancy Mairs

Passionately nonconformist spiritual reflections from an acclaimed essayist When Nancy Mairs published her “spiritual autobiography” Ordinary Time, Kathleen Norris greeted it in the New York Times Book Review as “a remarkable accomplishment,” calling Mairs “a relentlessly physical writer, as fiercely committed to her art as to her spiritual development.” Mairs’s new book on spirituality describes the... (more)

To Bless the Space Between Us

A Book of Invocations and Blessings

by John O'Donohue

From the author of the bestselling Anam Cara comes a beautiful collection of blessings to help readers through both the everyday and the extraordinary events of their lives. John O’Donohue, Irish teacher and poet, has been widely praised for his gift of drawing on Celtic spiritual traditions to create words of inspiration and wisdom for today. In To Bless the Space Between Us, his compelling blend of elegant,... (more)

One Soldier's War

by Arkady Babchenko

One Soldier’s War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier’s experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as “right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr’s Dispatches ,” and the book won Russia’s inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who... (more)

Welcome to the Wisdom of the World: And Its Meaning for You

Welcome to the Wisdom of the World: And Its Meaning for You

by Joan Chittister

Chittister, a Benedictine abbess, popular lecturer and prolific spirituality writer ( Called to Question ; Transformed by Hope ; etc.), returns with a probingly helpful guide to life's most pressing questions. Spurred by letters from fans who often pour out their hearts and seek advice from her, each chapter tackles a separate existential question such as Where is God? or What does it mean to be a spiritual... (more)

Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion

Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion

by Ezra Bayda

There's a secret to spiritual practice, and it's surprisingly simple: learn to be present with attention. Do that, and the whole world becomes your teacher, you wake up to the sacredness of every aspect of existence, and compassion for others arises without even thinking about it. It's indeed just that simple, says Zen teacher Ezra Bayda, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy—especially when being present... (more)

Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

by Steven Waldman

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.” Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or Deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the land. None of these claims are true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in... (more)

A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do

A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do

by Thomas Moore

A job is never just a job. It is always connected to a deep and invisible process of finding meaning in life through work. In Thomas Moore’s groundbreaking book Care of the Soul , he wrote of “the great malady of the twentieth century…the loss of soul.” That bestselling work taught readers ways to cultivate depth, genuineness, and soulfulness in their everyday lives, and became a beloved classic. Now, in A... (more)

A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life

A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life

by Andrew Krivak

This gorgeously written memoir tells the story of one man’s search for his religious calling—a search that led him to the Dominican Republic and Central Europe, to Moscow and the South Bronx, and finally into married life with a woman whose search for God coincided with his own. In 1990 Andrew Krivak—poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics—entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: spirituality religion and learning life

by Garry Wills

by Marcus J. Borg

by Vincent J. Donovan

by Carl Honore?

by Peter Nabokov

by Duane Elgin

by Thich Nhat Hanh

by Kathleen Norris

by Garry Wills

by M. J. Ryan

by Jerry Braza

by Calvin Sandborn

by Nancy Mairs

A Book of Invocations and Blessings

by John O'Donohue

by Arkady Babchenko

by Joan Chittister

by Ezra Bayda

by Steven Waldman

by Thomas Moore

by Andrew Krivak