Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life

In her previous book, Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life, Sister Mary Margaret Funk dealt with the eight classic thoughts that distract us from the presence of God. In her new book, casting her net more widely, she treats more than two dozen tools or practices of the spiritual life. Many of these (fasting, vigils, ceaseless prayer, and manual labour) derive from the desert mothers and fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, but just as many come from later times: the practices of of recollection (Teresa of Avila), of self-abandonment (J.P. de Caussade), of the presence of God (Brother Lawrence), and of the Little Way of Therese of Lisieux. The book concludes with a chapter on discernment, spiritual direction, and the limitations of each tool. Tools, says Funk, are means, not ends.… (more)