Finding God in the Verbs
Description
Do you long for deeper communion with God? Spiritual director Jennie Isbell and Quaker minister Brent Bill know how easy it is to lapse into repetitious refrains of prayer:"Our hearts told us that we had lapsed into easy God speak. We weren't reaching deep into our spirits and drawing out living words of praise, confession, concern, intercession and longing. We were tired of speaking in clipped shorthand to God. We wanted to pray in such a way that we showed up with our whole selves."If you have experienced a similar longing, come join the authors on this prayer journey into the deep waters of the Spirit. This book offers companionship and guidance as you begin to notice, consider and deepen your prayer experiences, with refreshing exercises sprinkled through every chapter to offer you a fresh language for prayer. Find God here-in the nouns and the verbs of your conversation.
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Person
Jennifer Leigh Isbell (MDiv, Earlham School of Religion) is an experienced spiritual director. In addition to her training in spiritual care, Jennifer cares deeply about the intersection of the spirit and the body, working extensively as a practitioner and teacher in yoga, Integrative Yoga Therapy, Reiki, Thai bodywork and massage. She is the author of Leading Quakers, an eight-part curriculum for training worship communities and she lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts with her husband.
Brent Bill is a writer, retreat leader and Quaker minister. He's the author and coauthor of many books, including Awaken Your Senses, Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes, Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with Mission and Message, and Imagination and Spirit: A Contemporary Quaker Reader. In addition, he is the author of more than one hundred short stories, nonfiction articles and the popular blog Holy Ordinary.Bill is a graduate of Wilmington College and the Earlham School of Religion. He has been a local church pastor, denominational executive, seminary faculty member andgo-cart track operator. He lives with his wife on Ploughshares Farm, fifty acres of Indiana farmland that is being reclaimed for native hardwood forests and warm season prairie grasses.
Content
1. A New Way to Pray 2. What Lies Beneath the Words 3. God in Action: Finding our Verbs 4. Images of an Active Tense God: Nouns that fit the Verbs 5. Hope, Beauty and Depth: Adjectives and Adverbs 6. Unpacking Meaning: Shared Language and Authentic Prayer 7. Jesus, the Word of God, and Our Words 8. Beyond Words: Other Ways of Communicating-Or Not 9. Gospel Means Good News: And News Is New, by Definition Appendix 1: Exercises for Building Prayer as a Spiritual Practice Appendix 2: Prayer Exercises Appendix 3: Resources Acknowledgments Notes Finding God in the Verbs-the Workshop About Brent About Jennie
