"The Benedictine Gift to Music illustrates how Gregorian chant, faithfully practiced each day for centuries by the Benedictines in monasteries and convents across Europe, developed into the complex polyphonic music we enjoy today. It details the outstanding contributions of the Benedictine musicians from the sixth-century Abbey of St. Benedict to the modern French Abbey of Solesmes." "For contemporary performers composers of sacred music, and those interested in singing Gregorian chant, The Benedictine Gift to Music explains the opportunity that chant provides to still the mind and enter in a meaningful way into the contemplative tradition of the Church."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This beautifully illustrated book opens a door for those who wish to explore how Benedict's vision can help them live a more balanced and centred life. Passages from the Rule are presented under key aspects of Benedict's wisdom such as prayer, work, community, compassion. The illustrations invite readers to a slower, more contemplative look at the text -- and at their own lives.

"For contemporary performers composers of sacred music, and those interested in singing Gregorian chant, The Benedictine Gift to Music explains the opportunity that chant provides to still the mind and enter in a meaningful way into the contemplative tradition of the Church."--BOOK JACKET.

Heaney traces the hidden history of music's presence in Christian thought, including its often unrecognized influence on key figures such as von Balthasar, Barth and Bonhoeffer. She uses Lonergan's theological framework to explore musical composition as a theological act, showing why, when and how music is a useful symbolic form. The book introduces eleven ground-breaking theologians, and each chapter offers an entry point into the thought of the theologian being presented through an original piece of music, which can be found on the companion website: https://bloomsbury.pub/suspended-god. Heaney argues that music is a universally important means of making sense of life with which theology needs to engage as a means of expression and of development. Musical composition is presented as an appropriate and even necessary form of doing theology in its quest to engage with the past, mediate truth to the present and tradition it into the future.

Reaching for God is a compendium of Benedictine life and prayer for oblates. It brings together in one volume the essence of Benedictine spirituality-its history, its relevance through the ages and in the present, and a summary of the most fundamental gifts and values it offers for living a meaningful life. Here, the meaning and purpose of the oblate way of life is explained in a clear and encouraging way. Werner offers guidance and examples of prayer to enrich any spiritual life. Sister Roberta Werner, OSB, having worked as a teacher, caregiver, and educational administrator, is now the assistant oblate director at St. Benedict's Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota. In this role, she guides an oblate discussion group, contributes to oblate newsletter publications, has set up an oblate library, and makes the spiritual journey with the many oblates who connect with her and with the monastery in their search for God.

In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God.

This biography has thirty-one chapters, over eighty thousand words, and over two hundred illustrations, photos, or diagrams. Billy Graham, the world-famous evangelist, once described his wife, Ruth Bell Graham, as the world's greatest Christian. Stan Berg, the author of June's biography, is convinced that June is the greatest Christian that he has ever known. June portrays the Christian love, the cornerstone of the Christian religion, always smiling, friendly, and dedicated to the Lutheran Church. One entire chapter of this book (the longest) is so dedicated in chapter 8, "June and the Lutheran Church." It was June's influence that changed the author Stan from a declared agnostic to a devoted and dedicated Christian. One chapter (chapter 30) tells the story of June's Christian love in the chapter on "June and a Little Girl from Africa." The book traces June's life through her early (Great Depression), middle, and elderly years, including her Alzheimer's years. Her many worldwide forensic-science travels are detailed. June and Stan traveled the world attending about 170 forensic-science conferences in Russia, Hungary, Austria, London, Edinburgh, Rome, the Vatican, Zurich, Canada, Mexico, and Dusseldorf, Germany. London was June's favorite city where she visited nine times and made personal friends of the Bruce's, south of London in Bexley, Kent. June also had an interest in Sherlock Holmes and visited his London haunts and twice stayed at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel. Stan often described June as his Dr. Watson for a lifetime!

Visionary singer Susan Hale believes that early peoples deliberately built their structures to enhance natural vibrations. She takes us around the globe-from Stonehenge and New Grange to Gothic cathedrals and Tibetan stupas in New Mexico-to explore the acoustics of sacred places. But, she says, you don't have to go to the Taj Mahal: The sacred is all around us, and we are all sound chambers resonating with the One Song.

Benedict in the World presents biographical sketches of nineteen men and women who were oblates of the Order of St. Benedict, that is, members of the Benedictine family of a given monastery who lived in the world, observing the Rule of St. Benedict as they raised families and pursued professions and careers. Dorothy Day, Rumer Godden, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Walker Percy, H. A. Reinhold, and Elena Cornaro are among the oblate subjects of this book.

In this book of reflections about Benedictine spirituality, author Daniel Conway shares with readers his reflections on the joy and peace that he has found in and through 50 years of association with women and men who follow the "Benedictine Way." In spite of what some would say, the Benedictine way is not primarily about the fuga mundi (withdrawal or "flight from the world"). It is, instead, a way of "being in the world but not of it," a manner of engagement that allows Christians to enjoy all the good things God has made without turning them into false idols that distort our values and consume us in the process. Archabbot Kurt Stasiak of Saint Meinrad summarizes Benedictine monasticism as "seeking God in community" which presumes a commitment to being guided by others and helping others find God. Prayer and fidelity to the common life are the principal ways that followers of St. Benedict seek God in community over the course of a whole lifetime. Archabbot Kurt goes on to say that "mutual obedience to the Rule, the abbot and to each other is the way to God" for monks and for all who strive to live according to the teaching of St. Benedict. Once it is understood and lived authentically, the Benedictine Way is truly a way of peace and joy. That never happens overnight. It takes time to absorb the principles and practices of Benedictine spirituality and to integrate them into our minds and hearts. This is true for vowed monks whose whole lives are dedicated to living the Rule of Benedict in a particular place and time. It's also true for ordinary people who are not called to be monks but who are seeking ways to live the Gospel that can help them cope with the madness of everyday living "in the world."