Spiritual practices have always been central to the Catholic identity and they should still be, keeping our eyes set on what is central to our faith – and living it. –Colleen Griffith and Thomas Groome This month at the Patheos Book Club, we’re featuring a lovely new book edited by renowned scholars Colleen M. Griffith and Thomas H. Groome called Catholic Spiritual Practices: A Treasury of Old and New. This collection by today’s most respected Catholic writers offers a compendium of spiritual... Read more

Are Christians returning back to a Jewish notion of Heaven? That’s one of the many questions Josh Graves, the lead minister for Otter Creek Church in Nashville, TN, discussed with me in our recent Skype interview about his new book Heaven on Earth: Realizing the Good Life Now. Graves contends that Jesus had “a very Jewish belief of Heaven, as in a realm in which all of God’s activity, dreams and longings are true.” And Jesus came into the world to... Read more

By Paula Huston, author of A Season of Mystery Years ago, when our blended family of four little blondes between the ages of three and eight was still so new that Mike and I were making at least one significant parental mistake a day, our first Christmas together came roaring in like a freight train, dramatically compounding the stress. Not only were there the other sets of parents to deal with, not to mention four grumpy kids who did not... Read more

By Rabbi Brad Hirschfield Don’t you love it when great minds think alike?  I am not referring to the five contributors to Do Jews, Christians, & Muslims Worship The Same God?, though they are great minds, and in some regards they do think alike. I refer to Robert Hunt and to myself, in that we were both struck by a particular claim made in the book by Professor Jacob Neusner. Yes, I realize that I am complimenting myself by jumping... Read more

[This is the third in a series of posts on the real Santa Claus by Adam English, author of the new book The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, now featured at the Patheos Book Club.] From March to April 2002, Israeli military forces carried out “Operation Defensive Shield” in the West Bank, performing a systematic sweep in search of terrorist suspects, anti-Israeli agitators, and guns. As a part of this large-scale operation to root out militants and “stop the terror,” Bethlehem was invaded on April 1,... Read more

You can have heaven on earth. You can live the good life now. So write Chris Seidman and Joshua Graves in their new book, Heaven on Earth: Realizing the Good Life Now. The good life they imagine is not the result of self-interest or lifestyles of the rich and famous but living in accordance with the way of Christ described in the Sermon on the Mount and in the particular the Beatitudes. (Matthew 5:3-12) The key element of the Beatitudes... Read more

How do we learn to gracefully embrace aging? That is the question spiritual director and author Paula Huston contemplates in her new book, A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life.  Huston, a 60-year-old grandmother and caretaker for her mother and in-laws, shares the wisdom gleaned from her own experience of wrestling with the challenges and disappointments, as well as openings for growing closer to God, in this particular season. We invited Paula... Read more

This month at the Patheos Book Club, we’re featuring a lovely new book called Catholic Spiritual Practices: A Treasury of Old & New, edited by Colleen M. Griffith and Thomas H. Groome. At 157 pages, this accessible and practical guide for living our faith today makes for a wonderful Christmas gift or stocking stuffer for the devout Christian and seeker alike. Broken into three sections — Practices of Prayer, Practices of Care and Practices of Spiritual Growth — the book features short articles and... Read more

Heaven… I’m in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek. The first lines of this popular Fred Astaire song playfully capture the desire we all have to experience the sublime joy of Heaven in this world. Wouldn’t that be grand? But what is Heaven, really? What would it look like to live in Heaven, now? A new book by Chris... Read more