Kirjahaku

In Simple Ways acclaimed spiritual writer and teacher Gunilla Norris has distilled a lifetime of seeking and reflecting into a beautifully worded, lucid, and practical primer for prayer, meditation, and mindful living. Divided into four illuminating sections, she offers us a wide range of accessible ways towards the Holy in our daily lives: Towards the Sacred with Our Bodies; Towards the Sacred in Our Dwellings; Towards the Sacred with Our Everyday Things; and Towards the Sacred in Our Gratitude. No matter what our spiritual background, these ways are completely available to any of us, as long as we make conscious choices in our daily routines to embrace them. A profound and poetic celebration of our search for the Sacred, Simple Ways invites us to discover that the meaning of our lives can be found and experienced exactly where we are.

The basic principles of meditation and mindful living are explained in this guide for everyday living. The deep and abiding qualities of silence and the foundation of true spiritual experience are explored, and the need to make conscious choices in daily life to ready oneself for meditation is illuminated. This book also provides individuals with all the particulars of good meditation practice and explains the challenges and rewards of group meditation. Ideal for individuals and spiritual friends to use alone or with one another, this text is a thoughtful primer on finding silence and a practical manual on meditation for seekers of every persuasion.

Just as Gunilla Norris' previous book, Being Home, garnered accolades from such spiritual writers as Bishop Desmond M. Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Madeline L'Engle, M. Scott Peck, and a host of others, so too will readers find in this companion book the insights that they seek in living each day as a prayer. In these powerful poems, designed around the place, process, and seasons of making and eating bread, the transformative power of love, in all its many faces, resides. In such meditations as Beginning, Place, Willingness, Gifts, Living, Discipline, Pain, Sharing, Savoring, and then into Beginning Again, the author leads us through a process of alchemy: we become the bread and we become the love transformed. Helpful and hopeful, lyrical and resonant, Becoming Bread will be embraced by mature women and men of all faiths, including: · retreatants and spiritual seekers. · lovers of exquisite poetry. · those who have suffered loss and want to find a way to understand. · those who embrace the holy in the daily. · those who use daily prayer and stillness as renewal. †

In Embracing the Seasons Gunilla Norris shares her soulful and thought-provoking observations of a year lived in the countryside and reflects on the abundance and meaning of nature and its cycles of renewal. This journey through the seasons has been shaped by being home in an old farmhouse with its large garden of flowers, vegetables, brook and pond, surrounded by a country landscape of stone walls, woodlots, and living creatures. The book begins in the spring, with the birds singing in the darkness of dawn and the buds knobbing up on the trees and bushes, and then circles through the warmth and richness of summer, the golden bounty of fall, and the dark serenity of winter. Until it is spring once more. Embracing the Seasons opens our eyes to ordinary wonders and not so ordinary meanings in the small events and encounters of the everyday. By illuminating the joy and beauty of daily life, it is an invitation to find and honor the sacred in the place we call home.

Embracing the Seasons is a soulful journey through the seasons of a year in a country garden. Gunilla Norris shares her observations of this garden and the surrounding land with its trees and shrubs, its flowers and vegetables, its various living beings, its brook and pond and stone walls—and she reflects on the abundance and meaning of nature and its cycles of renewal. The year begins with the arrival of spring, with the birds singing in the darkness of dawn and the buds knobbing up on tree branches and bushes, and moves through the warmth and richness of summer, the transitions and changes of fall, and the clarity and quietude of winter. Until it is spring once more. Along the way we encounter a pair of finches building a nest; an old quince tree in bloom and the peonies in glory; the pond with its dragonfly and snapping turtle, water lilies and frogs. We see the splendor of daylilies and the sturdiness of hostas, hear the buzz of bees and the chorus of cicadas, sense the abundance of honeysuckle and wild grape. There is the planting of dahlias, cucumbers, basil, and impatiens in the spring, and the raking of leaves and stacking of firewood in the fall; the harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and raspberries in late summer, and fresh snow and rabbit tracks in the winter woods. Embracing the Seasons opens our eyes to ordinary wonders and not-so-ordinary meanings in the small events and encounters of the everyday and invites us to remember, to care for, and to venerate the life around us.

'People often contact me because they have lost some kind of meaning thread in their lives. Without a sense of meaning our lives lose their lustre. We endure our days rather than embrace the living of them. To enter the realm of meaning requires attention and dedication. It requires an interior, reflective life. It requires the calming of our usual chattering minds.'In the noise and rush of life today we often yearn to find the natural stillness which is our birthright. This thoughtful and poetic guide explains the universal principles of meditation practice and mindful living. It is divided into four sections:--Beginning Silence which reflects on the understanding that longing and discontent is a wake-up call, an invitation to begin.--Growing Silence which dwells on yearning itself as a path, with acceptance of the ambivalence which accompanies any deep change.--Practising Silence which describes the practise of meditation.--Sharing Silence encourages the idea of formal practice with others to deepen and sustain the experience of cultivating a peaceful heart.

A Mystic Garden is a lyrical primer on the spirituality of gardening, affirming the garden as a soulful space where people can take root and experience the changing seasons and the enduring cycle of renewal. Gunilla Norris shares with us a year's time in her New England garden, and shows that all she observes there illuminates the sacredness of the everyday.