Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the Interior Life - Softcover

Kisly, Lorraine

3.69

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780609806180: Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the Interior Life

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609806181 ISBN 13: 9780609806180

Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower, 2001

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The fruit of two thousand years of inner experience and insight from Christians of all denominations, Ordinary Graces embodies the great themes of Christ’s teachings: will, presence, the neighbor, struggle, grace, and awakening. While each passage stands alone, the different voices call to one another across the centuries and over vast geographical and cultural divides. Some of the names will be familiar, but many of them will be new to readers. Lorraine Kisly has sought out not only unfamiliar passages by famous Christians, but also writers we may have overlooked. As each voice joins the chorus, our understanding of Christianity’s inner tradition deepens, and we can see more clearly ways of incorporating its truths into our daily lives.

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Review:

"I wanted to find the living core of [the Christian] tradition," the editor of this collection has said. As publisher of the excellent Buddhist periodical Tricycle, and as editor and publisher of Parabola magazine, Kisly has had her hand in shaping two of the most informative (and formative) spiritual journals of recent times, which should make her well qualified for the journey. And here she has indeed assembled a rich and challenging collection of Christian texts, with a particularly strong representation from Eastern Orthodoxy. We get not only the expected writers (Merton, Augustine, Wesley, Newman, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Julian of Norwich), but also Paul Evdokimov, Anthony Bloom, Nicholas Berdyaev, and Theophan the Recluse, along with passages from the great medieval mystics of the Western church: Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Theophan the Recluse, and Catherine of Siena, among many others.

Arranged in 10 "cycles," the brief selections (ranging from a paragraph to a few pages) move from an emphasis on the natural world through discussions of loving one's neighbor and the nature of sin to concluding cycles on "Holy Fire"--the dwelling of divine in us--and the paradox of "Having Nothing, Possessing All Things." What we discover throughout is that the "ordinary graces" of the title are in fact available to all, and are indeed ordinary, even though they demand everything from us. Surrender is the book's underlying message, not a new one for a Christian audience, but one rarely expressed with such passion and depth as in the writings represented here. Readers already familiar with Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk and the anthologies of Stephen Mitchell, such as The Enlightened Heart, will find rich--if challenging--rewards here as well. --Doug Thorpe

From the Publisher:

Being an editor has its pluses and minuses. One of the pluses is that people occasionally send me the most glorious manuscripts to read. One of the minuses is that I rarely have time to read them slowly. When Lorraine Kisly delivered the final selection of passages for her book, I was overwhelmed at the breadth and depth of each one but I had to get on with the production. Now that it exists as a real book, I will be able to do what the rest of the world has a chance to do: immerse myself in it, savor each sentence, contemplate each idea, and dwell therein. My hope is that I will be able to listen to each of the voices in her extraordinary book and live its teaching one day at a time. This may last me (and you) a lifetime. -- Toinette Lippe, editorial director of Bell Tower

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