Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements

by Christine Valters Paintner

Paperback, 2010

Status

Available

Collection

SPIRITUAL FORMATION

Description

Organized around "The Canticle of the Creatures" by St. Francis of Assisi, Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire is the first book to consider the ways in which praying with the natural elements can enliven Christian spiritual life.Paintner offers concrete suggestions and guided contemplative exercises; for instance, she suggests that readers take time to "watch the sunrise or sunset and breathe in the beauty of the fiery sky. Contemplate what those beginnings and endings have to say in your own life."Readers benefit from Paintner's extensive training in theology and Benedictine spirituality, as well as her unique work in bringing the expressive arts to spiritual direction.

Publication

Sorin Books (2010), Edition: 40501st, 160 pages

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Genres

Rating

(5 ratings; 3.3)

User reviews

LibraryThing member FHC
having won the Autumn Blessings poetry party from Abbey of the Arts, today i received Christine's autographed prize gift of her new book *Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements*.

i'm already more than pleased in the reading. how about sharing an appetizer
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 with you?

*The element of wind invites us to "open our souls to Being," which means opening ourselves to a God who flows in directions we cannot predict. This element invites us to a radical posture of surrender in releasing our hold on our own plans and making room for God to blow us in the most life-giving direction. As a metaphor for God, wind reminds us that God's ways are not our ways. The invitation of wind requires of us a detachment from our own longing to control the direction of our lives and a simultaneous surrender to Spirit to allow ourselves to be carried to places of growth and newness.*

hungry? i know i am. looking forward to much more...
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