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Featured This Month
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The Gift of Years
Joan Chittister
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Falling Upward
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Walking the Sacred Path
Dan Schutte
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 Sr. Joan Chitister, one of the most celebrated, contemporary spiritual writers, invites us to embrace older age as a natural part of life that is both productive and reflective, and deeply rewarding. She encourages us to cherish the blessings of aging and to find new life in its challenges. There is so much spiritual wisdom in this book which is primarily a series of prayerful reflections
The Gift of Years - Growing Older Gracefully looks at many dimensions of aging, the purposes and concerns, struggles and surprise. She touches on a host of important topics such as regret, accomplishment, letting go, sadness, dreams, limitations, memories, loneliness, and many other pertinent areas of interest.
It deals with the sense of rejection that comes from feeling out of sync with the world. It reflects on the temptation to isolate oneself from the changes taking place around us and within us, and the need to stay involved. It discusses issues of health and well-being and the need to put ones affairs in order. It describes what happens as old relationships end and shift, change and disappear in favor of new people that come to take their place.
But rather than seeing these years as the end of a story, she approaches them as a time in which a whole new life is in the making. For the many of us "baby boomers" who are wading into these waters, this is one of those books not to be missed.
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 This is the sort of book that you want to give to all of your family members who have reached the age of 45.
Our obsession on the first half of life is growing stronger -- we care about courtship, career choice, finding a mate, establishing ourselves, and this is the subject that too many 60 year old people worry at, fantasize over, concentrate on, well past the day that they should let this half of their lives go... and think about the second half. In this second half, people know that this part of life can be about suffering and diminution. This author outlines how this half of life can be about joy, about falling upward in a spiritual sense, about the second half of life being about opening yourself.
There is God in this book, and the book is frank about being a guidebook, a road map, towards salvation. That is inherent in the entire theme, the idea that a second half of life, with travails, can open to something more.
So many people I know are concerned with retirement, but not what to do in retirement, about a lake home, but not a better self... There is a sense that an obsession with retirement, in this second half, will then relegate health problems, money problems, pain, the death of friends.. into painful shocks. This book tells you that these painful days can be something more, a new journey.
Well written, with a gentle, funny, and open style, this is a book that actually can change your life.
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 Those familiar with the music of Dan Schutte are in for a great treat here. As in his music, he deals with themes of longing and desire for God, the hungers of the human heart, unfulfilled hopes and dreams, and the profound happiness of finding one’s home in God. The “exercises” here are loosely based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and the goal is the same for both: to draw readers into a personal, living, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
The language is simple and prayerful and invites one to experience God in a new way, at the level of simple contemplation. This kind of prayer fully involves both the mind and the heart, and it draws upon the power of imagination and our human feelings to fully experience the message of the gospel stories. Each of these thirty exercises provides preparation for prayer, a brief reflection guidelines for entering the Scripture passage, and a beautiful closing prayer. Topics include being more generous with God, beauty as a door to God, walking in God’s presence, seeing Jesus more clearly, becoming whole, and responding to our gospel call.
These beautiful prayers can be used throughout the liturgical year with parish staff, RCIA teams, catechists and teachers, inter-generational prayer groups, and by individuals seeking a deeper prayer life.
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