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The Way We Were
The Way We Were
Drawing on the story of her own monastic community, a best-selling author shows how to redefine the essentials of faith in a time when old ways and formulas no longer serve.
Joan Chittister is past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She served for twelve years as Prioress of her community, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. Her many books include There Is a Season, Illuminated Life, and The Ten Commandments.
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The truth is that we spend our lives in the centrifuge of paradox. What seems certainly true on the one hand seems just as false on the other. Life is made up of incongruities: Life ends in death; what brings us joy will surely bring us an equal and equivalent amount of sorrow; perfection is a very imperfect concept; fidelities of every ilk promise support but also often end.
How can we account for these things? How can we deal with them? How can we find as much comfort in them as there is confusion? These are the queries that will not go away but which, the spiritual giants of every age knew, need to be faced if we are ever to rise above the agitation of them. There is a point in life when its paradoxes must be not only considered but laid to rest.
This little book is an excursion into recognizing in the convolutions of this process the stuff of our own life of the spirit.
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Discussion Questions
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Awards
Best Spirituality Book of 2017, Spirituality and Practice
Best Book of 2017, Spirituality and Health Magazine