Christianity Today Book Award Winner Friendship is a relationship like no other. Unlike the relationships we are born into, we choose our friends. It is also tenuous--we can end a friendship at any time. But should friendship be so free and unconstrained? Although our culture tends to pay more attention to romantic love, marriage, family, and other forms of community, friendship is a genuine love in its own right. This eloquent book reminds us that Scripture and tradition have a high view of friendship. Single Christians, particularly those who are gay and celibate, may find it is a form of love to which they are especially called. Writing with deep empathy and with fidelity to historic Christian teaching, Wesley Hill retrieves a rich understanding of friendship as a spiritual vocation and explains how the church can foster friendship as a basic component of Christian discipleship. He helps us reimagine friendship as a robust form of love that is worthy of honor and attention in communities of faith. This book sets forth a positive calling for celibate gay Christians and suggests practical ways for all Christians to cultivate stronger friendships.

Spiritual Friends provides a biblically relevant training manual and relationally practical workbook for relating God's truth to human relationships. Spiritual Friends is for the layperson, pastor, or professional Christian counselor. It will equip the reader to master the personal ministry of the Word and spiritual friendships with thousands of illustrative interactions and hundreds of skill-building exercises.

"A NavPress resource published in alliance with Tyndale House Publishers, Inc."

A collection of the favorite guided meditations of senior monks and nuns of the International Mahayana Institute of the FPMT. A collection of the favorite guided meditations of senior monks and nuns of the International Mahayana Institute of the FPMT. These meditations center on different Buddhist themes and provide a good resource for the practicing meditator. The book also includes brief spiritual autobiographies that allow the reader to trace each contributors' entry into and study of Tibetan Buddhism. Our true spiritual friends are the positive potentials in our minds, which will never never disappoint us and never desert us. Similarly, the generous and personal meditations offered in this book help us develop these potentials and thus are true friends to whom we can always turn. Likewise, the Sangha, as the ordained followers of the Buddha upon whom the continuity of the Buddha's teachings depend, are spiritual friends who encourage us and inspire us to transform our minds. This unique book—the first from the International Mahayana Institute—contains meditations written by eighteen nuns and monks of the IMI Sangha as well as an autobiographical essay from each in which these nuns and monks share how they came to the ordained life.

Discover your identity as a carrier of Gods presence, glory and power!Do you sometimes wonder how God can consider you a friend in light of your failures and defeats? Does your own insufficiency cause you to wonder whether the Holy Spirit truly dwells within you? Do you wonder why your own faith experience is so different from that of the heroes in the Bible? Scripture makes it clear that communion with the Holy Spirit is the key to living the kind of empowered and authentic Christian life we see modeled in Scripture. The Holy Spirit works within us to form hearts that truly worship, minds that understand of the depths of Gods Word, and hands that accomplish the miraculous. This book will acquaint you with the mysterious third Person of the Trinity, helping you to draw closer to Him so that you may become a carrier of Gods Spirita chosen friend of God. This book provides answers to some popular questions about the Holy Spirit What is the Holy Spirits purpose and nature? What is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and why is it an unpardonable sin? What does the Bible really teach about spiritual gifts? What does it mean to be friends with God? If you desire to know God in a deeper and more intimate way, if you want your soul to be set ablaze with a passionate love for Him, if you want to walk in the fullness of all that He has created you for, then this book is for you!Draw close to His glory.

In Walking Together: Discovering the Catholic Tradition of Spiritual Friendship, author, journalist, and speaker Mary DeTurris Poust examines rich and nurturing examples of spiritual friendship from well-known saints, writers, and spiritual Catholic leaders who serve as exemplars for cultivating meaningful Catholic friendship in a world of Twitter and Facebook. Addressing a growing modern hunger for deep soul friendships, popular Catholic New York columnist and Our Sunday Visitor blogger Mary DeTurris Poust looks honestly but hopefully at today's culture, where people feel increasingly isolated despite the advent of myriad gadgets designed to keep them “connected.” In ten practical chapters, Poust explores issues such as commitment and acceptance, the virtues that make for a lasting friendship, the importance of listening, open communication, and praying together. Readers will find here the guidance and encouragement to take the next step in developing spiritual friendships in their lives, one of the basic necessities of spiritual life. Poust profiles inspiring spiritual friendships from the past such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, and St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. She also examines famous contemporary friendships, like those between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien or Thomas Merton and famous Zen master D. T. Suzuki. Each chapter concludes with “Food for Thought” reflection questions and a prayerful meditation.

Friends on the Path presents some of Thich Nhat Hanh's most precious offerings on the necessity of practicing with a Sangha (spiritual community) in order to receive support and encouragement along the way. This anthology also includes contributions from Dharma teachers and Sangha leaders from around the world based on many years of experience and gives sage advice from these teachers on how to build and sustain a Sangha.

Many of us go through our busy lives with many acquaintances but few true close friends. Most of our daily conversations focus on the mundane, or we barely scratch the surface of what's going on in our friends' lives as we try to catch up on the run. We weren't meant to travel alone. Yet many of us are afraid to reveal our innermost thoughts, of being too nosy or not "religious enough" to commit to spiritual kinships. Using the story of Ruth and Naomi as an example, Stephanie Ford describes how to overcome the risk and fear of sharing and explains how to be a faithful listener. She offers new insights that will empower you to build and nurture soul friendships. Through this book you will discover what spiritual friendship is and how it differs from other forms find practical ways to develop and nurture spiritual friendships meet spiritual companions from biblical and Christian history explore the most profound friendship of all — friendship with God — and learn how it can transform your life Kindred Souls is for individuals, prayer partners, or small groups who want to deepen the friendships they already have and open themselves to new possibilities God offers. Let this book guide you as you seek kindred companions to encourage and challenge you on the spiritual journey.

When Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith met in a creative writing class in graduate school, they both confessed to writing about God. They bonded one night while reading the Book of Ruth and came to truly understand the unlikely friendship of Ruth and Naomi. In these two Old Testament women, they witnessed a beautiful spiritual friendship and a way of walking with one another toward God. But how could they travel this path together when they would be separated by distance and time and leading busy lives as they established marriages and careers? They decided to write letters to each other—at first, for each day of Lent, but those days extended into years. Their letters became a memoir in real time and reveal deeply personal and profound accounts of conversion, motherhood, and crushing tragedy; through it all, their faith and friendship sustained them. Told through the timeless medium of letters—in prose that is raw and intimate, humorous and poetic—Love & Salt is at its core the emotional struggle of how one spiritual friendship is formed and tested in tragedy, tempered and proven in hope.