During my 37 years of teaching philosophy to undergraduate students, most of whom had no prior exposure to it, my purpose was to promote self-examination of the sort practiced and encouraged by Socrates. Such self-examination is upsetting, unsettling. It leads one to insights and realizations one would prefer not to have. But by undermining oneâs assumptions, these insights break one open to a whole universe of which one had been oblivious. Breakdowns make possible breakthroughs. My students didnât realize that, just as I was trying to provoke this kind of spiritual transformation in them, their questions, criticisms, challenges, and insights provoked it in me.Â
I wrote
Sobering Wisdom: Philosophical Explorations of Twelve Step Spirituality
Though written 150 years ago, Tolstoyâs novella describes the life of an intensely goal-oriented person who is very much like many of our contemporariesâperhaps very much like us. Intent on marrying well, ascending to the top of social order, achieving wealth and power, he is marvelously successfulâuntil he begins to have a pain in his side that turns out to be world-shattering. This may seem to be too dark for a âbest book on spiritual breakthrough.â But perhaps such breakthroughs happen differently from how we imagine them.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. "Usually classed among the best examples of the novella", The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of the sufferings and death of a high-court judge from a terminal illness in 19th-century Russia.
Why include on this list the diaries of a secular Jewish woman who is in the grip of self-centered anxieties and an unusual, if not bizarre, relationship with her analyst? Because spiritual transformation begins and evolves in uncanny ways, leading one to find transcendence where one never would have expected it. Ettyâs diaries and letters allow us to follow the process by which she became so profoundly lucid and open-hearted that she was able to see the humanity even in the Nazis organizing extermination.
For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear together to give us the fullest possible portrait of this extraordinary woman in the midst of World War II.
In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.
The Parent's Guide to Birdnesting
by
Dr. Ann Gold Buscho,
Based on research about how divorce can affect children, you will learn how to best support your children's resilience, as well as your own. For parents who are separating and want to put their children first, birdnesting could be the interim or long-term shared parenting solution youâve been looking for.âŠ
Drawing upon stories from all the great spiritual traditions, Kurtz and Ketcham keep shocking us out of our assumptions about the spiritual life, and inviting us to abandonthe pursuit of perfection that many of us identify with it. They pull the rug out from under us, telling us what we donât expect to hear. Thereâs something comical about embracing imperfection. But if theyâre right, itâs the only real alternative to living tragically. I suggest watching Chaplinâs City Lightsand Laurel and Hardyâs The Music Box, as you make your way through the chapters of this book.
I Am Not Perfect is a simple statement of profound truth, the first step toward  understanding the human condition, for to deny your essential imperfection is to deny yourself and your own humanity. The spirituality of imperfection, steeped in the rich traditions of the Hebrew prophets and Greek thinkers, Buddhist sages and Christian disciples, is a message as timeless as it is  timely. This insightful work draws on the wisdom stories of the ages to provide an extraordinary wellspring of hope and inspiration to anyone thirsting for spiritual growth and guidance in these troubled times.
A cruise ship is, perhaps, the least likely of all possible venues for the beginning of a spiritual breakthrough. But this is where spiritual transformation starts for Avey Johnson, the 64-year-old African American woman who is the central character in this Marshall novel. Breakthroughs are often set in motion deep down inside us, below the surface of our ordinary awareness. In fact, a real breakthrough canât happen unless it goes all the way down in us. I know of no book that conveys this truth more effectively.
From the acclaimed author of Daughters and Brown Girl, Brownstones comes a "work of exceptional wisdom, maturity, and generosity, one in which the palpable humanity of its characters transcends any considerations of race or sex"(Washington Post Book World).
Avey Johnson-a black, middle-aged, middle-class widow given to hats, gloves, and pearls-has long since put behind her the Harlem of her childhood. Then on a cruise to the Caribbean with two friends, inspired by a troubling dream, she senses her life beginning to unravel-and in a panic packs her bag in the middle of the night and abandons her friends at theâŠ
If youâre intrigued by the psychology of relationships this is the novel for you.
Described as a modern-day Rebecca, this is a story of a bereaved manâs obsession with his deceased married lover, Michelle. Determined to find out all he can about Michelleâs life when she wasnât with him,âŠ
Because Lear is a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, his book has a more academic flavor than the others on my list. But because heâs a philosopher and psychoanalyst attentive to lived experience, his book draws us into the devastating loss suffered by the Crow Nation, and especially by Plenty Coups, their last great chief, when their culture was stripped from them. This was, of course, an irreparable trauma from which it was impossible to recover. But instead of trying to retrieve what was unrecoverable, Plenty Coups turned to the unknowable, unprecedented future with the âradical hopeâ that it could be charged with transcendent meaning for his people. Perhaps the spiritual life, especially in these crisis-ridden days, consists in learning how to practice such hope.
Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told his story-up to a certain point. "When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground," he said, "and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened." It is precisely this point-that of a people faced with the end of their way of life-that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear's view, Plenty Coups's story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one faceâŠ
It is now widely recognized that Twelve-Step spirituality, originally developed by alcoholics for alcoholics, offers all of us neurotic, tormented controllers a pathway out of our addictions. This book of essays will help you understand why and how they are able to do this. Some of the essays are intensely personal, some academically flavored. Each of them brings an appreciative philosophical eye to the Twelve Steps and helps to illuminate their logic and transformative power. The essays explore many of the key themes on which the Twelve Steps focus, including powerlessness, freedom, vulnerability, the meaning of a âhigher power,â gratitude, and fellowship. While they approach the Twelve Steps from many different philosophical perspectivesâexistentialism, Confucianism, Buddhism, atheism, pragmatismâthe contributors to the book agree that the Steps provide invaluable insights into the spiritual infrastructure of all religious and spiritual traditions.
Looking for a cozy Christian romance for Catholics? Here it is: At Home in Persimmon Hollow, the novel that launched the Persimmon Hollow series of historical romances.
Follow the story of pious schoolteacher Agnes, who flees to a small fictional town in frontier Florida for safety reasons. She quicklyâŠ
Separating the true stories from the myths, The Duty of Memory provides a deeper understanding of the diverse motivations that drove ordinary people to join an underground network of French Resistants despite terrible odds and horrifying consequences.
This book takes the reader inside the true story of men and womenâŠ
