Thursday, March 27, 2014

The Letters of Barsanuphius and John

Volume 1: 344 pp. paper $44.95Volume 2: 346 pp. paper $44.95

While an impressive corpus of ancient monastic writing has been translated or re-translated into English during the last thirty years, the Letters of Barsanuphius and John have been awaited longer than most. Two elderly monks, the “great old man” (Barsanuphius), and the “other old man” (John), lived near Gaza in the early sixth century. Rather than breaking their voluntary seclusion to give counsel to those who came to them with questions, they chose to carry on extensive written correspondence. As they became increasingly popular despite their inaccessibility, they were called on to dispense wisdom in both spiritual and practical matters. Eight hundred and fifty questions and answers, presented here in two volumes, shed light, not only on the spiritual tradition of the Desert Fathers and their complex historical and cultural milieu, but also on the timeless inner terrain of the human soul.

Barsanuphius:

"Those who sail at sea, even if they happen upon calm weather, yet while they are in the ocean, always expect storm, danger, and shipwreck. Therefore, they could never benefit from a short period of calm. Then, and only then, do they feel safe, when they actually enter the harbor. In the same way, a sinful person who is still in the world must always tremble at the thought of shipwreck."  

Friday, March 21, 2014

Rod Dreher Comes to Wichita

Help us welcome journalist and conservative cultural critic
Rod Dreher to Wichita, where he will speak at Friends University Monday, March 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the Riney Fine Art Center's Sebits Auditorium.

Author of the recent book (which we highly recommend), The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of the Good Life, Dreher will talk about his journey of faith in a presentation titled, "Why Community Matters: How You Can Go Home Again, and Maybe Ought To." Dreher will also speak to students Tuesday morning, March 25th at 9:30 a.m. in the Davis Administration building's Alumni Auditorium. Both events are open and free to the public.

AND, we will be selling books of course. So come to one or both events, stop by and say hi, pick up a book (or two or three). If you're outside of the Wichita area, click through to our site to order a copy of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. Below you'll find our review.


The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life — 271 pp. cloth $25.99 
Don't set this book aside too soon—that is, if you set it aside at all. While it begins pretty typically as a chatty family memoir, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming soon deepens into the story and life of a small-town Louisiana family. More than that, it rings true and lives up to the little way of St. Thérèse of Liseaux, after which it plainly takes its heart. 
Ruthie Leming—sister of the columnist and cultural critic, Rod Dreher—is an ebuullient, unabashedly small-town girl with an unrestrained love for neighbors and strangers alike. While Dreher can't wait to get out of his hometown of St. Francisville, LA, Ruthie marries her high school sweetheart and becomes a middle school teacher, raising three girls along the way. She is a beloved member of the community, an empathetic and loyal friend, a defender of the poor, and the sort of teacher that changes lives. 
At forty, Ruthie is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, and Dreher chronicles her astonishing response to her fatal diagnosis. Rather than reel from the grief and fear such news most often brings (which is not to say she isn't afraid), Ruthie refuses to be angry and instead embraces her suffering. She instructs her doctors only to tell her what she needs to do and puts her life in their hands, refusing to hear prognostications. Ruthie's denial raises troubling questions in Dreher's mind about accepting truth, but he moves past philosophy as he wrestles with the indifference of reality, keeping in mind Ruthie's active and self-sacrifical nature: "The truth—the whole truth, that is—would not set her free, but would make her captive to anxiety, and tempt her to despair." 
But The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is less about Ruthie than it is about her community. The world doesn't rest on Ruthie's shoulders because her family, friends, students, colleagues, and even mere acquaintances carry it with her, supporting her and her family at every turn. As he searches to understand his sister's "inner peace and happiness in community," Dreher comes to understand that if he wants what Ruthie has, he needs to "practice a rule of stability"—to "accept the limitations of a place, in humility." Only then will "the joys that can be found there...open themselves." 

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Books for Lent: The Final Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the last in our series.]

A list that recognizes ANY good reading as good Lenten practice.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

by Nicholas Carr
Reveals "what is at stake in the daily habits of our wired lives: the re-constitution of our minds" (Matthew Crawford). 

Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life

(email or call for availability) 
by Kathleen Norris
Norris restores this forgotten but important concept to the modern world's vernacular. 

A Prayer Journal
by Flannery O'Connor; edited by W.A. Sessions
A window into the spiritual formation of O'Connor as she struggles to work diligently, extend, charity, and write with integrity. 

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath (email or call for availability) 
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross
by Sigrid Undset; translated by Tiina Nunnally
A masterpiece of historical fiction set in medieval Norway, replete with some of the most unforgettable and full-blooded characters in literature. We (strongly) recommend reading the award-winning translation of Tiina Nunnally above all others. (Also available in a one-volume penguin edition. E
mail or call for availability.)


The Story of Jumping Mouse

by John Steptoe
Based on a Native American legend, Jumping Mouse is the Ladder of Divine Ascent for kids (which is just to say it's for everyone). Caldecott award winner.

The World of Silence 
(email or call for availability) 
by Max Picard
Picard’s great prose poem, like the silence it depicts, “does not fit into the world of profit and utility; it simply is. It seems to have no other purpose; it cannot be exploited.”

The End of Suffering 
(email or call for availability) 
by Scott Cairns
A surgically honest yet gentle portrayal of suffering's end (purpose, not cessation) and how the healing of our wounded cosmos begins with the repair of the person. 

The Idiot Psalms 
by Scott Cairns
In every poem, Cairns reveals his attachment to "the ten thousand things" and to their participation in the mysteries of ultimate Being. 

The Diary of a Country Priest
by Georges Bernanos
A deceptively anecdotal novel that skillfully analyzes the struggles, graces, fears and dreams of a young priest working out his vocation. 

The Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
What shines through this dusty landscape and its dusty souls is not theology, per se, but theoria, a glimpse beyond the scrim of this world that somehow survives all darkness. 

Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father: Being the Narratives Compiled 
by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father
translated by Vera Bouteneff
A narrative comprised of encounters with Father Arseny, a former art historian and priest imprisoned in the Gulag. An intimate testimony of what it means to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). 






Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Books for Lent: The Fourth Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the fourth in the series.]

As Tuesday's matins in the first week of Great Lent sings:

Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life:
Let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink,
Let us clothe the naked, let us welcome the stranger,
Let us visit those in prison and the sick...


On Repentance and Almsgiving (Fathers of the Church Series)
(email or call for availability) 
by St. John Chrysostom
The "Golden Mouth" lends substantial thought to the relationship between repentance and almsgiving.


On Social Justice (email or call for availability)  
by St. Basil the Great
Selections from St. Basil’s homilies on wealth and poverty.

On Wealth and Poverty (email or call for availability)  
by St. John Chrysostom
Addresses the questions of wealth and poverty with clarity, insight, compassion and judgment.

On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom

(email or call for availability) 
by St. John Chrysostom
A selection of excerpts from the eloquent saint on the discipline of simplicity.

Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: 

Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation
by Helen Rhee
Explores the issues of wealth and poverty and their relationship to Christian formation.

Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire
(email or call for availability)
by Peter Brown
Brown discusses the role of the Christian Church in revolutionizing the social imagination with the incarnational hope of social cohesion.

And You Welcomed Me: 

A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity
edited by Amy G. Oden
A collection of excerpts from early Christian documents toward a theology of hospitality.

The Rise of Christianity (email or call for availability)
by Rodney Stark
Stark shows how the moral precepts of the early Christians became “liberating and effective social organizations.”

The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire

(email or call for availability)
by Timothy S. Miller
A history of orphans and the systems that cared for them. Modern forms of welfare, take heed.

The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire 

(email or call for availability)
by Timothy S. Miller
An excellent synthesis of the way in which Hellenic culture, the Christian church, monasticism, Roman law, and the medical profession participated in the formation and development of Byzantine hospitals.


Wealth and Poverty in the Teachings of the Church Fathers

(email or call for availability) 
by James Thornton
A study of almsgiving in Byzantium—its failures and triumphs.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Books for Lent: The Third Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the third in the series.]

If the primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence on God and to enable us—as the Lenten Triodian puts it—to "draw near to the mountain of prayer," the following books are hammers, saws and levels for the task.

When You Fast
by Kallistos Ware
Maybe the all-time best use of a dollar (fifty)—it’s actually an excerpt from the introduction to The Lenten Triodion.

Celebration of Discipline (email or call for availability) 
by Richard Foster
Foster’s chapter on fasting is excellent, like nearly everything he writes regarding spiritual discipline.

The Spirit of Food: 

Thirty-four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God
edited by Leslie Leyland Fields

A poetic rendering of spirituality's physicality and the ways attentive living can be an act of prayer. 

Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Like Foster, Funk’s thoughts on fasting are not to be missed. The teachings of John Cassian and other desert masters are palpable throughout.

Great Lent: Journey to Pascha

by Alexander Schmemann
Especially helpful is the section titled “The Two Meanings of Fasting.” 



Friday, March 14, 2014

Books for Lent: The Second Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the second in the series.]

The inner significance of Lent is best summed up in the triad of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To quote Bishop Kallistos Ware, "Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, put to pride, inward tension and irritability."

That said, here are our picks (among the myriad available) on prayer...

Beginning to Pray
by Anthony Bloom
"The day when God is absent, when He is silent—that is the beginning of prayer."


Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way (email or call for availability) 
by Matthew the Poor
A contemporary Egyptian monastic points the way to those who desire, and are willing to sacrifice for, an existence formed by the practice of unceasing prayer.

Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition
by Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
Written by a Benedictine monk and patristic scholar, this book belongs in the hands of anyone who seriously desires a life of prayer.

Prayer for Beginners (email or call for availability)
by Peter Kreeft
A clear and eminently reasonable approach to prayer for people not very good at praying.

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer
by Emilie Griffin

A simple, elegantly written, and warmly felt invitation to prayer.

First Fruits of Prayer 
(email or call for availability)  
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
A fine exposition of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.

Prayer: Living With God
by Simon Tugwell
Focuses on our relationship with God and ways we can learn to enjoy and appreciate that relationship through prayer.

Prayer in Practice
by Simon Tugwell
An unblinkingly honest and even humorous treatise on different forms of prayer.

Three Prayers
by Olivier Clement
A meditation on three of the most essential prayers of the Christian tradition.

The Art of Prayer

compiled by Igumen Chariton
A privileged glimpse into a sort of working journal of a monk intent on achieving unceasing prayer.

On the Prayer of Jesus (email or call for availability)  
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
Blunt and trustworthy advice about the right and wrong ways to approach the practice of the Jesus Prayer.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Books for Lent: The First Part

[In our previous post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the first in the series.]

These books stir up the Lenten spirit, entreating us to consider "the grace of the Fast" and the firm resolve necessary on our part to make, and continue making, a good beginning. Click on the titles or authors to link through to the Eighth Day website.

Great Lent by Alexander Schmemann
An exploration and explanation of the liturgical services, fasts, symbols, and prayers of the Lenten season.

The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
translated by Benedicta Ward
Always relevant, the desert fathers speak directly to the human condition and also the human desire to seek after God.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

by John Climacus
A seventh century ascetical handbook read every year during Lent in Orthodox monasteries.

The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life

by Paula Huston
Practical guidance on the pursuit of spiritual simplicity, drawn from the powerful histories of the saints and personal experience. 

By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness

by Paula Huston
Traces the ancient process of Christian transformation through the eight virtues, pairing each with a contemplative saint.

The Year of Grace of the Lord 
Monk of the Eastern Church
A devotional look at the seasons of the church.

The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring

by Ken Bazyn
A reader’s meditation on the seven deadly sins.

Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness (email or call for availability)
by Jim Forest
An Orthodox Christain examines the communal nature of sin and forgiveness.

Ladder of the Beatitudes 
by Jim Forest
An anecdotal exploration of the extraordinary dimensions of the Kingdom.

The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Tradition
by Simon Tugwell
A Biblical and devotional stirring of the moral imagination.

The Return of the Prodigal Son
by Henri Nouwen
A luminous meditation on the parable in regard to Rembrandt’s painting.

Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life 

(email or call for availability)
by Henri Nouwen

Summarizes the Christian way as transforming loneliness into solitude, hostility to hospitality, and illusion to prayer.

The Arena
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
A manual on the inner life and outward conduct of the monk.

Humility Matters: Toward Purity of Heart

Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life
Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Notable manuals for keeping us awake to that ‘’still, small voice.’’

Back to Virtue 
(email or call for availability)
by Peter Kreeft
Ethics without virtue is illusion.

Unseen Warfare 
(email or call for availability)  
by St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain / St. Theophan the Recluse
One of the most useful and trusted manuals in the literature of Orthodox teaching on the spiritual life.

The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It
by St. Theophan the Recluse
Letters of direction written to a young woman serious about seeking God.

Cyril of Jerusalem: Works, Volume 1 (Fathers of the Church Series) 

(email or call for availability) 
Cyril of Jerusalem: Works, Volume 2 (Fathers of the Church Series)
by St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Includes the Catechetical Lectures, one of the earliest known catechisms of the Christian Church.
 

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The gift of the fast

"Let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast," said Theodore the Studite in his homily at the start of Lent.

Though we may approach this season of repentance and fasting with at least some sense of dread, Bishop Kallistos Ware writes in The Lenten Triodian that abstinence leads not only to weariness and hunger, "but also to a sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and joy." 

Love is (or ought to be) the heart of our intention. In his classic ascetic treatise, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus colorfully and skillfully paints "an icon of man's progression to perfection---or completeness---in the spiritual life which, in its fulness, is nothing less than union with and participation in the divine nature of the one true God, the Holy Trinity. But St. John warns us that there is only one proper motive for setting out on this path and that is love for God" (from the introduction to Remember Thy First Love).

And because we believe that love for God can be nurtured through the reading of good books, we (as a matter of course) have a list of suggestions. You may have seen these lists before, but books have been added or subtracted due to availability. As one book tends to lead to another, who knows what you might find next. 

We will post a list a day for the next few days, so as not to overwhelm. Please also browse our website or call the store if you have any questions. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[A bit more from Theodore the Studite's homily on Great Lent, Catechesis 53]

And so I ask, let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast, not making ourselves miserable, as we are taught, but let us advance with cheerfulness of heart, innocent, not slandering, not angry, not evil, not envying; rather peaceable towards each other, and loving, fair, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits; breathing in seasonable stillness, since hubbub is damaging in a community; speaking suitable words, since too unreasonable stillness is profitless; yet above all unsleepingly keeping watch over our thoughts, not opening the door to the passions, not giving place to the devil. If the spirit of the powerful one, it says, rise up against you, do not let it find your place. So that the enemy has power to suggest, but in no way to enter. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Despondency


Despondency: The Spiritual Teachings of Evagrius of Ponticus on Acedia
by Gabriel Bunge; translated by Anthony P. Gythiel---154 pp. paper $18.00

Acedia, listlessness, despair—whatever the name, this most painful affliction of modern times was well known among the Desert Fathers. In the first half of Despondency, Fr. Gabriel Bunge explores how the fifth-century monk Evagrius diagnoses this complex condition, emphasizing the “working mechanisms of the passions and of their accomplices, the demons.” Evagrius never underestimates his foe (he labels despondency a “conglomerate of all imaginable vices”), yet he is ultimately optimistic about its cure. “Indeed, the medication he prescribes is surprisingly simple…Since despondency is an illness of both the irrational powers of the soul—desire and anger—it is essential to heal both at the root.” Here is cogent, practical advice from a skilled therapist of troubled souls; Bunge provides expert guidance through a welter of patristic terminology, polishing the psychological gems along the way.