In our hectic lives, it's easy to forget that prayer is more about a conversation and experience with God than it is a request line. This book is an invitation to meaningful prayer. Through stories, images, contemplative exercises, poetry, classical prayers, and creative meditations on prayer, you'll explore ten human experiences where prayer originates: love, desire, fear, suffering, compassion, brokenness, rest, reflection, wonder, and gratitude.

Every heart feels wonder. Every heart knows fear. Every heart aches with longing. Awed, we whisper, “Thank you.” Frightened, we cry, “Mercy.” Yearning we plead, “Show me the way.” Because the truth is, no matter who you are, every heart needs prayer.This is a prayer book. A book to seduce, cajole, entice, and encourage your heart into prayer. More than a book to be read, this is a book to be explored. It is a book of stories, divine poetry, holy verses, mystical inspirations, prayerful imaginings, meditative practices, and spiritual exercises that seek to uncover the hidden communication between you and God. As you read and explore more about love, longing, fear, suffering, compassion, rest, reflection, passion, wonder, and gratitude you’ll be invited to discover prayer within the various moods, attitudes, and experiences that we human beings often find ourselves in. It’s a book to be used, flipped through, tested, experimented with, and then set aside. It is a book that asks you time after time to stop and listen, turn and welcome the silent love of God. The hope of this book isn’t to teach you anything. The point of this book is to encourage you to give yourself to God—your anger, your fear, your gratitude, your curiosity—your real self to the real God, because then (and only then) will your heart find peace (even in the midst of wonder, fear, and longing). Because every heart needs prayer.

Society teaches us to have everything under control, and we tend to think that this can be true even of our spiritual lives. Master storyteller and spiritual director Mark Yaconelli offers a narrative journey through ways in which disappointments have turned into gifts. In these pages are a wealth of spiritual practices that will help us find grace in unexpected places.

The Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project was formed in 1997 to participate in the renewal of youth ministry in the Christian church. Its mission is to foster Christian communities that are attentive to God’s presence, discerning of the Spirit and who accompany young people into the way of Jesus. Our mission is founded on the biblical vision of the human person who is created in the image and likeness of God and whose deepest longing is for communion with God and others in love. In response to Christ’s invitation to abide in him (John 15:4), we believe that the central purpose of youth ministry is to open the minds and hearts of young persons to an intimate relationship with God in Christ through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. We seek to fulfill our mission through retreats, workshops, training events, written materials, and relationships that promote a contemplative approach to youth discipleship. The contemplative approach to youth ministry is based on a Christian community’s commitment to cultivate attentiveness to God’s Presence in the lives of young people and is supported in the following seven ways: SABBATH, PRAYER, COVENANT COMMUNITY, ACCOMPANIMENT, DISCERNMENT, HOSPITALITY, AUTHENTIC ACTION.

"You know the reality: teens don’t have much downtime in their lives. Between school, extra-curricular activities, jobs, friends (and youth group!), students these days barely have enough time to do all the things they need to do in a day. It’s no wonder that quiet, reflective time in prayer with God is not high on their priority list.With years of experience helping teens encounter God in quiet, contemplative ways, Mark Yaconelli will give you the tools and insights needed to help teens understand why and how to pray, and to guide them towards a life of prayer. You’ll find several prayer exercises in this book, based on the praying tradition of the Christian church, along with instructions to help you introduce the prayers to students. Not only are there explorations of classical methods of prayer that involve silence, solitude, and scripture, but you’ll also discover more recent forms of prayer that use creative media, music, writing, movement, and acts of compassion. As you help teens bring prayer into their everyday lives, your students will find that they long for those times when they can step away from it all and find rest and comfort in God."

Longlisted for the Prix Sade 2021 Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Critics Top Ten Book of the Year Named a Best Book of the Year by over 30 Publications, including The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and the BBC In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves. Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.

From sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing examines the cultural and poetic history of preserving animals in lively postures. But why would anyone want to preserve an animal, and what is this animal-thing now? Rachel Poliquin suggests that taxidermy is entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning with and within the natural world. Her study draws out the longings at the heart of taxidermy—the longing for wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance. In so doing, The Breathless Zoo explores the animal spectacles desired by particular communities, human assumptions of superiority, the yearnings for hidden truths within animal form, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange human existence, being both within and apart from nature.

“Contemplative Youth Ministry is refreshing rain for dry youth workers and barren youth ministries. More than the same old youth ministry tips and tricks, it gives principles and practices to soak in God’s grace, love, and power. I wish I had read it 15 years ago.” - Kara Powell, Ph.D., executive director, Center for Youth Ministry and Family Ministry, Fuller Theological Seminary “Mark invites readers to be encountered by the presence of Jesus who is always near. This book is transparent about the challenges that churches and families face as they desire to be effective in youth ministry. The book is filled with the honest stories of different kinds of youth ministries representing the breadth of Christianity in the United States. I heartily endorse Contemplative Youth Ministry as a rich encounter with the souls of youth and adults whose lives have been transformed by our very present God.” - Bill Kees, director of youth ministries, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) “Mark Yaconelli not only reminds us of some of the long-forgotten pathways of faith, he shares with us how it actually looks when men and women who love God practice it with young people. I especially appreciate Mark’s optimism in his perspective of today’s kids, for his insights are grounded in God’s view of them.” - Chap Clark, Ph.D., associate professor of youth, family, and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary “Mark Yaconelli was experimenting with contemplative youth ministry practices before contemplative youth ministry practices became cool. This book has about it the unique air of authenticity. He shares with us in these pages his own journey as a youth worker who actually believes that God’s still small voice speaks louder than the roaring windstorm of our busy youth ministry calendars. It’s a book about creating for our students places of silence and opening up spaces for God to speak.” - Duffy Robbins, professor of youth ministry, Eastern University; author of Enjoy the Silence and This Way to Youth Ministry “Mark Yaconelli has emerged as one of youth ministry’s most provocative ‘voices in the wilderness,’ calling us back to our theological taproots: The contemplative practices that bind our lives to the life of Christ. If Mark’s research has taught us anything, it’s that these practices do not cause youth ministry to take fl ight into a spiritual never-never land; rather they anchor young people—and their churches—in the fertile soil of Christian tradition, in the nitty-gritty of daily life, and in the explosive transformation that awaits us when we wait upon God.” - Kenda Creasy Dean, parent, pastor, and professor of youth, Princeton Theological Seminary; author of Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church

An unruly cast of emotions come alive in this romping dreamworld, a place Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things could call home Curiosity, a lithe and floppy-eared creature, perches above the open world and gazes out with a zippy blend of hope, wonder, and longing. From the tip of a chimney, we bound into the quiet and mischievous world of feelings, meeting a troupe of tufted creatures as we go. Sympathy helps snails cross a sidewalk to safety, fear pirouettes in an attempt to camouflage with wallflowers, and pleasure reclines across a doily-donned reading chair, sipping a cup of tea. Elsewhere, our insecurities – pesky, cavorting beings – build intricate cages and stride about with clattering sets of keys. Tina Oziewicz’s words hum with truth, and Aleksandra Zajac’s illustrations bloom and burst with charming details like a sail constructed out of a pair of billowing long johns or a red slipper falling from a contented paw. Taking in the perfect harmony of this book is like taking a long gulp from a trusty thermos and filling up with warmth. What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking surprises and soothes, inspires us to feel.

Yet many who sit next to us in the pew at church fit that description, says author Wesley Hill. As a celibate gay Christian, Hill gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's ''No'' to same-sex relationships. What does it mean for gay Christians to live faithful to God while struggling with the challenge of their homosexuality? What is God's will for believers who experience same-sex desires? Those who choose celibacy are often left to deal with loneliness and the hunger for relationships. How can gay Christians experience God's favor and blessing in the midst of a struggle that for many brings a crippling sense of shame and guilt? Weaving together reflections from his own life and the lives of other Christians, such as Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hill offers a fresh perspective on these questions. He advocates neither unqualified ''healing'' for those who struggle, nor their accommodation to temptation, but rather faithfulness in the midst of brokenness. ''I hope this book may encourage other homosexual Christians to take the risky step of opening up their lives to others in the body of Christ,'' Hill writes. ''In so doing, they may find, as I have, by grace, that being known is spiritually healthier than remaining behind closed doors, that the light is better than the darkness.