Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
Wallingford PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2019.
Description
Helen Horn lays out a view of how to balance the internal refreshment of a light heart with the work needed to address suffering, hunger, and injustice in the world. She offers an invitation into living the paradox, describing her personal journey of learning how to bring practices of lightheartedness to her work, activism, and life. Calling on the Bible, poetry, and creativity, her deep love of music, her Quaker community, her family, and her experience with cancer, she shares stories of brokenness and hope. The text has been adapted from the manuscript of a speech written in the 1990s. With an introduction by Rebecca Kratz Mays. Discussion questions included. -- Publisher's description.
User reviews
LibraryThing member QuakerReviews
Steere addresses a paradox of the spiritual life, painful and confusing for so many of us as it pulls us back and forth. We experience grief and anger at injustice and violence in the world, and also joy, peace, and hope from communion with the Spirit and from the compassion, gentleness, and
Horn recognizes the dilemma as a spiritual challenge, to both care and be carefree, to encounter and respond authentically to both the Ocean of Darkness and the Ocean of Light. But how do we hold both experiences in some balance in our lives, neither denying the joy and giving in to despair or numbness, nor turning away from the grief and becoming apathetic or uncaring about the world?
Horn poses the challenge to us; her response seems to imply that we Friends, at least we modern Friends, find it harder to bring the rejoicing in the Ocean of Light into our personal balances. She offers us spiritual practices specifically for a lighthearted spirituality that is possible even in our needy world. She describes eleven spiritual practices and awarenesses that she learned over time, helpful wisdom that is a fruit of the Spirit. They are not mysterious, but this pamphlet puts them together, and in this context, which is very helpful.
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healing generosity that are also in the world. How do we live with these dichotomous experiences? We so often feel this as a dilemma, that we must choose one of these realities in order not to be in denial of the other. Horn recognizes the dilemma as a spiritual challenge, to both care and be carefree, to encounter and respond authentically to both the Ocean of Darkness and the Ocean of Light. But how do we hold both experiences in some balance in our lives, neither denying the joy and giving in to despair or numbness, nor turning away from the grief and becoming apathetic or uncaring about the world?
Horn poses the challenge to us; her response seems to imply that we Friends, at least we modern Friends, find it harder to bring the rejoicing in the Ocean of Light into our personal balances. She offers us spiritual practices specifically for a lighthearted spirituality that is possible even in our needy world. She describes eleven spiritual practices and awarenesses that she learned over time, helpful wisdom that is a fruit of the Spirit. They are not mysterious, but this pamphlet puts them together, and in this context, which is very helpful.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kaulsu
Helen Steere Horn (daughter of Douglas & Dorothy Steere) gave this message at "a Quaker gathering in the 1990s," the wording of which brings to mind the FGC gathering, but whose name is not recorded.
The spirituality of lightheartedness is composed of many things.
1. Seeking leadings
2. Earnestness
3. Welcome the gifts that come with giving
4. Accept living and love yourself
5. Seek clearness and take time to reflect
6. Be childlike
7. Take nature as a model
8. Create
9. Brokenness and healing
10. Embrace paradox
11. Trust life
The spirituality of lightheartedness is composed of many things.
1. Seeking leadings
2. Earnestness
Show More
as bedevilment3. Welcome the gifts that come with giving
4. Accept living and love yourself
5. Seek clearness and take time to reflect
6. Be childlike
7. Take nature as a model
8. Create
9. Brokenness and healing
10. Embrace paradox
11. Trust life
Show Less
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Call number
CP 456