Richard Peace teaches the art of telling the story of one's personal spiritual journey as a Christian discipline. The Spiritual Disiplines Series explores and explains how use of spiritual disciplines can deepen both our walk with God and our community with other believers. The Series is designed for group involvement.

In Storycraft: The Art of Spiritual Narrative, celebrated author Walter Wangerin Jr. illustrates the power of well-told stories and shows how important embracing story is as an essential tool for preaching and teaching the gospel. The book offers a theology of story that is profoundly incarnational as the Word takes on flesh in practiced speech.

A beloved author and storyteller shows how ordinary people can preserve and pass on their wisdom, values, and spiritual legacy to loved ones.

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.

How religious caregivers can find spiritual renewal in their own story Recalling Our Own Stories, which author Edward P. Wimberly describes as "a spiritual retreat in book form," is designed to help clergy and religious caregivers face the challenges of ministry. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners who assist these clergy and caregivers in meeting the challenges of their work. Wimberly enables caregivers to map out and come to grips with cultural expectations of their profession. He also helps readers explore and edit the mythologies that make up their self-image, attitudes toward others, expectations about their performance and role, and convictions about ministry. Finally, he provides a model for spiritual and emotional review grounded in narrative psychology and spiritual approaches. As Wimberly explains, this book offers a way to renew our motivation for ministry by reconnecting to our original call, visualizing again how God has acted and remains intricately involved in our lives. Wimberly demonstrates how religious caregivers, often facing burnout, can tap the sources of renewal that reside in the faith community.

A great master once said, “The shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.” In Experiencing Spirituality, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham take readers on a journey through storytelling as a means of self-discovery. Recounting and interpreting great wisdom stories from all ages and all cultures, as well as telling many of their own, the authors shed light on such experiences as awe, wonder, humor, confusion, and forgiveness. In story after story, seekers look to those whose lives reveal a special quality—sometimes called spirituality—and ask the masters what they must do to attain that same quality. The answer is simple: “Come, follow me, and see how I live.” Experiencing Spirituality teaches through the example of human experience.

Re-Storying Your Faith has caught our culture’s imagination from nouveau experiences of spirituality through channeling and meditation to traditional spiritual practices of personal devotions, scripture reading, and prayer. Building on Christian spirituality, this spiritual practice of re-storying our faith offers people an everyday experience of discovering multiple faith stories to give meaning to their spiritual journey. Built into this process is a way of discovering individual uniqueness as well as sharing discovered stories in faith communities, whether it is a Sunday school class or a group of like-minded friends. ,

Two ministers share their own stories about struggling to live out their faith. It’s the sort of experience familiar to many: Somewhere between illness and divorce, abusive relationships and brushes with death, faith failed to provide answers . . . or we failed to live as though we believed faith held answers. But surely, it’s different for clergy, the ones who preach and practice faith? But faith requires more, and authors Martha Spong and Rachel G. Hackenberg, who grew up in the church and became ordained ministers, know first-hand about coming to terms with God and life, the need to search for answers . . . or at least assurance we are not alone in struggling for renewed hope. Denial is My Spiritual Practice is a companion for the wondering and struggling. The authors offer their own stories as evidence that God remains, both when faith fails and when faith finds new understanding. They combine stark life experiences, offbeat spiritual perspectives, and Scripture to offer comfort, grace, laughter, and a few tears along the way.

Nancy Tatom Ammerman examines the stories Americans tell of their everyday lives, from dinner table to office and shopping mall to doctor's office, about the things that matter most to them and the routines they take for granted, and the times and places where the everyday and ordinary meet the spiritual. In addition to interviews and observation, Ammerman bases her findings on a photo elicitation exercise and oral diaries, offering a window into the presence and absence of religion and spirituality in ordinary lives and in ordinary physical and social spaces. The stories come from a diverse array of ninety-five Americans — both conservative and liberal Protestants, African American Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Wiccans, and people who claim no religious or spiritual proclivities — across a range that stretches from committed religious believers to the spiritually neutral. Ammerman surveys how these people talk about what spirituality is, how they seek and find experiences they deem spiritual, and whether and how religious traditions and institutions are part of their spiritual lives.