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| Healing Prayer |
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Answer me, O Lord, for your
steadfast love is good; according to your abundant
mercy, turn to me. Do not hide your face from your
servant, for I am in distress—make haste to
answer me. Draw near to me, redeem me, set me
free. —Psalm 69
Read
or listen to more
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| Questions of Faith and Doubt |
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How could
depression lead to a richer spiritual life?
…the experience of emerging from a living hell
makes the rest of one's life more precious, no matter
how "ordinary" it may be.
Read
more
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| NEW this week... |
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Springsteen the Minor Prophet?
On his latest album, Magic, Springsteen takes
up the harsh tones of rebuke and lament, but delivers
them in a more populist manner. Eschewing the
spare folk and old-time revival structures of his last
few albums, he instead unleashes what may be his
most accessible offering of tunes since his smash
1984 album Born in the USA.
Read
more of Christopher Stratton's review of Magic
Buy
Magic from amazon.com
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| Support explorefaith when you purchase books, music & more |
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All of this week's featured books and music can be
purchased at amazon.com. As a participant in
amazon's Associates program, explorefaith provides
links to these titles as a service to our visitors and
registered users.
By following a link from explorefaith.org to
amazon.com, any and all purchases made during
that amazon visit result in a contribution from amazon
to explorefaith.org at no additional cost to
you.
Simply click on the pictures above to go to
amazon.com and make your purchase to support us
today!
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God's Healing Spirit |
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Each person, each illness is a particular
story—a story told through a particular
person
in his own context, in her own time and
place. Each
story is full of sacred meaning. Discerning the
meaning, listening for intimations of divine
presence
in the midst of confusion, disorientation and
pain
requires what the Benedictine tradition calls
"listening with the ear of the
heart."
Living with illness raises the most basic
questions of
the faith journey: Who am I? Who is God? How
is my
identity changed by these limitations and
sufferings?
Is there any meaning to be found in the midst of
pain? The process of lectio divina
—regular practice of reflecting on the
illness, meditating on moments in that ongoing
experience of living with illness, and
creating prayer
from our meditation—allows us to be in
conversation with God about our bodies, our
deepest
feelings, our fears and our hopes.
It allows us to bring all of our embodied
life in illness
to the merciful and gentle presence of God.
from
Is God Present in Illness?
by Mary C. Earle
Restored to Faith
Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again;
and he
looked intently and his sight was
restored.
-Mark 8: 22a, c, 24, 25
Though we may never reach a place of full
knowing,
we can certainly enjoy adequate or sufficient
knowledge for living faithfully. I don't know
everything, but I know enough to trust. I
know that
God is good, that love is the strongest thing
in the
universe, that Jesus reflects in human life
the loving
character of God, that life comes out of
death. That's
enough for authentic life.
from Signposts
for October 24
Books of Hope and Healing after
Miscarriage
 Losing You Too Soon chronicles how the author clung to Christian
hope while trying to reconfigure her own expectations of
what her life should be. Her faith, once so easy, was sorely
tested as she began questioning nearly everything she had
previously believed about God.
 Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope
At a
time when infertility appears to be at the
highest rate
ever in Western culture, the relative silence of
devotional literature about it is
bewildering. Rabbi
Cardin's book fills an enormous void and
should be
welcomed by readers who need its wisdom and
comfort, whether or not they are Jewish.
from a Bookshelf
review
by Jana Riess
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