Brother David Steindl-Rast

In times of uncertainty and suffering, finding joy and gratefulness in daily life is challenging. Wake Up Grateful provides a practical and inspiring roadmap to making grateful living a daily practice, with guiding principles, reflective questions, affirmations, and exercises. Drawing from her own cancer experience along with her life work with The Network for Grateful Living, Kristi Nelson explores how to develop gratefulness as a way of being. She examines ten core areas where many people need support and guides readers in finding presence and perspective in these aspects of life, opening to greater possibilities, and uncovering the abundance and love that's possible in every moment.

Take a journey by map through your inner landscape to discover a life of awe, enchantment, and radical aliveness • Explains how experiencing awe and wonder can transform our lives, leading us to feel more satisfied, peaceful, and open to others • Offers contemporary and time-honored practices--from mindfulness to dreamwork and working with plants--that help you reconnect with Nature and your imagination, open your heart, and find vitality and enchantment • Explores ways of examining and embracing our shadow, deepening our relationships, and creating meaningful personal ritualsWhere Wonder Lives invites you on a journey, an expedition through your own inner landscape to reawaken to the mystery of life. The travels are by way of an imaginary map through 9 distinct territories. In each, you explore the terrain, then are led to a rich set of contemporary and time-honored practices--from mindfulness to dreamwork, cloudscapes, and working with plants--that help you rebuild a life of vitality, connection, and enchantment. There is no prescribed order in which to explore the map. Rather, the invitation is to begin at the territory that calls to you, or perhaps that which is most challenging. Each territory reflects and amplifies the others, and you will instinctively arrive at the practices that you need most. The Jungle delves into our original deep kinship with Nature and helps you rekindle your inner wildness. The Garden takes you on a journey through your senses, and the River unfurls your imagination. The Mountaintop presents a bird’s-eye view of your life, while the Swamp delves into your inner shadow and delivers gold. The Village helps us deepen our bonds and relationships, the Lighthouse teaches us to quiet our minds, and the Fire inspires us to create meaningful ceremonies and personal rituals. The Ocean looks into the topography of the heart and offers practices to awaken the heart’s most powerful emotions: awe, joy, compassion, gratitude, and love, the mother of them all. Throughout the journey you are immersed in a world of wonder and awe, discovering new possibilities for learning and expansion in ordinary life. Face to face with the mystery of life, Where Wonder Lives makes you feel at once both infinitely small and part of a vast, unfathomable universe--all while helping you to see the world anew.

“Hugely inspiring and helpful.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn Is it possible to be grateful in challenging times? Our wellbeing depends on it, but how do we achieve it? In Wake Up Grateful, Kristi Nelson, executive director of A Network for Grateful Living, unlocks the path to recognizing abundance in every moment, no matter the moment. With questions for reflection, daily exercises, and perspective prompts, Nelson introduces readers to the benefits of a daily gratitude practice. Using the story of her own cancer experience as a touchstone, Nelson provides deep insight and help in finding resilience and wellbeing in the face of life’s uncertainties and offers the promise of profound personal change.

Happiness is rooted in gratitude. In this beautiful collection, you'll find inspiring quotes and thoughts from well-known minds such as Maya Angelou, Confucius, and Anne Frank combined with original reflections and practices to help you recognize the abundance of opportunities for gratitude and joy – all around you, every day. Hand-lettered art makes this a stunning gift to treasure, whether you keep it for yourself or give it to a loved one.

Hermit, Zen Christian, spiritual globetrotter: in time for his 90th birthday in July of 2016, “Brother David” tells his incomparably rich life story. Beginning with his childhood in Vienna, he describes his time in World War II and his years as a student after the war, his family’s emigration to the US and his entry into the then newly founded Benedictine monastery in the state of New York. There, he soon began looking for what were then still untrodden spiritual paths with undiscovered entryways to non-Christian religions. He became particularly involved in the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, founding the “Center for Spiritual Studies” in 1968, together with Rabbis, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. His work encouraging dialogue between religions earned him the 1975 Martin Buber Award. Still traveling on occasion to teach or write, Brother David is now living in a Benedictine monastery in Europe. Mysticism is his mission—but not a mysticism devoid of connection to the world. His is a mysticism of the everyday, of life immediate in the now, of experiencing fully. He is convinced that God’s spirit speaks in and to us all. Unparalleled: unique biography of one of the most significant spiritual teachers and global guest speakers, †

In this book, Brother David Steindl-Rast, who has been a monk for more than 50 years, argues that every sensual experience—whether the joy of walking barefoot or the fragrance of the season—should be recognized as a spiritual one.

Brother David Steindl-Rast takes us on a journey to discover the wisdom preserved in common sense sayings that have been passed down through generations. These timeless words reflect the shared values cherished by people all over the world."When you drink from a stream,” says one Chinese proverb, “remember the spring." From these simple words we are reminded to be grateful for even the smallest graces that we receive. Another homespun phrase tells us that "a contented heart is a continual feast," reminding us to look within, rather than without, for the source of our happiness.Words of Common Sense reveals the thread of human experience expressed in the world’s proverbs and sayings. It helps us connect with cultures other than our own and recognize our shared humanity. These words resonate around the world because they are timeless reflections on how to cultivate a life of love, gratitude, and meaning.

Music of Silence shows how to incorporate the sacred meaning of monastic living into everyday life by following the natural rhythm of the hours of the day. The book tells how mindfulness and prayer can reconnect us with the sources of joy. "An invitation to join in quiet ecstasy, to rediscover sacred rhythms." - Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart