Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit - Softcover

Paula Huston

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594712697 ISBN 13: 9781594712692

Publisher: Ave Maria Press, 2011

Synopsis

Simplifying the Soul was the January 2012 Book of the Month selection at Patheos.com. Award-winning author and Benedictine oblate Paula Huston invites readers to de-clutter their minds, hearts, relationships, and souls in a book of daily Lenten practices woven from the gospels, the Desert Fathers, and the author s own wealth of spiritual experience. ''What are you giving up for Lent this year?'' It s the expected question amongst Christian friends each spring. In Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, Huston asks her readers a deeper, alternative sort of question: ''How will you rid your life of excess this Lent?'' She encourages readers to see Lent as a time to seek out silence and free themselves of ''stuff'' and to acknowledge the connections between what they pray about and what they do. With honesty, vulnerability, and grace, Huston challenges readers to move outward and act, showing them how everyday actions like cleaning out a junk drawer, giving away something no longer used, or spending fifteen minutes in silence can be surprisingly powerful ways of experiencing a more meaningful Lent and a simpler life. Whether cutting up a credit card, visiting someone at the hospital, or forgiving someone with whom they are angry, readers experience, under Huston s gentle and expert care, how such practices lead to a more authentic Christian faith.

About this title

Review

''Encouraging reading for people struggling with big challenges or the smaller daily distractions that upset our peace of mind.'' --Nick Owchar, Deputy Books Editor, Los Angeles Times

''This is the most moving, most appealing, and, at the same time, most practical book I have ever seen on Lenten practices. A verbal retreat that invites both the soul and the body to a holy retooling'.' --Phyllis Tickle, Author of The Great Emergence

''Huston offers herself as a lively companion in a Lenten practice stripped of clichés. Join her it might be the simplest and liveliest Lent you have ever kept.'' --Eugene Peterson, Author of Pastor: A Memoir

About the Author

Paula Huston, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She taught writing and literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and served as a core faculty member of the California State University Consortium Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program for many years before leaving academia to write full time. Her first non-fiction project was titled Signatures of Grace, for which she served as coeditor and contributor, and it earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her book The Holy Way was a Catholic Press Association award-winner and Catholic Book Club major selection, earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a bronze medal from ForeWord Magazine for Book of the Year in Religion. Huston has also published By Way of Grace and Forgiveness: Following Jesus into Radical Loving. A Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, Huston is married, has four grown children, and lives in central California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1594712697
• ISBN 13: 9781594712692
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192