The Return

Review: The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice Patton Dodd, Jana Riess, And David van Biema Convergent 2018 The title intrigued me, and I decided to look at this prayer wheel idea.   At first, I thought it was a gimmicky idea, but as it turns out it’s something more.   The wheel had been used long ago but forgotten until someone looked at the fly leaf of an old ceremonial type bible.   There was a copy of this wheel.   It’s related to an Augustinian guide from the 4 th or 5th century.   Think a remix of the original that a Benedictine order had designed.   Now it’s rediscovered and back in circulation.   The authors of The Prayer Wheel have written a devotional book that uses the prayer wheel.   If a person is willing to work through the devotional, a knowledge of using the prayer wheel would be one of the outcomes.   I found their brief daily offerings ...

Review: You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living Henri J.M. Nouwen Convergent 2017 If you aren’t familiar with the work of Henri Nouwen this compilation from his writings, talks, and letters, as the introduction tells us, will introduce you to him.   If you have read Nouwen before this will remind you over and again how sensitive and loving he was.   And how he demonstrated his ability to speak the truth in love.  I have browsed randomly through many of the entries and each one touched me in some way.   The readings are brief, but not without deep content.   A simple line or two from one of the readings says, “The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death…. But it does reveal to us that, in deed, love is stronger than death.”   (104).    I am glad to have discovered this book and intend to use regularly.   I recommend it to you as well.   It does contain a list...

Review: The Bad Habits of Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong Leonard Sweet Tyndale House Publishers 2016 Leonard Sweet can be counted on to give his readers a good read.   I think so anyway.   May not like what he has to say or what he says, but the book will be very readable.   He can pour on the academic stuff from time to time, but he generally leaves that for others to do.   He has a way of sneaking up on the reader with a story or something that brings his point home.   Sometimes the point is sharp enough to make you uncomfortable with yourself. The Bad Habits of Jesus he admits was written in record time, six weeks (ix), and some of it he gathered from a crowd-sourcing (x) event on his Facebook page. A new-fangled way of getting material for his book.   Yes, I do look at prefaces and acknowledgements.   Even introductions. As you might suspect Jesus’ bad habits are determined bad only but some tha...