As part of my year of healthy changes I’ve started reading a devotional book every morning.  Some are Christian, some just inspirational and yet others are in the Buddhism tradition.  Often I’ll start one and abandon it after a few days if it doesn’t speak to me, but these two I finished and was lifted up every day.

 My Soul in Silence Waits: Meditations on Psalm 62 by Margaret Guenther. Finished 8-26-19, 4.25/5, 152 pages, pub. 2000

 In these reflections on Psalm 62 Margaret Guenther provides the foundation for a time of reflection and retreat without ever leaving home. The book’s first chapter introduces us to ways of making a retreat wherever we are, at a place apart or in the midst of our daily lives. Guenther then offers eight meditations on Psalm 62, with its themes of waiting on God’s presence with patience, trust, and expectation.   from Goodreads

I love devotional books that start with a verse or even story in the Bible and then expounds on what that means for my daily life.  I admit that I’m pretty picky because so many of these types of books do not inspire or cause me to grow, but this one did both.  Here’s something I marked from one of the eight chapters,

In the realm of enemy voices, fearfulness is a close relative of self-doubt and self-contempt.  We persuade ourselves that it is better to stick with the tried and true.  As the old Scottish saying puts it, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”  Change for the sake of change and risk for the sake of risk can be foolish and imprudent.  But unwillingness to stretch and risk and grow is also a kind of death wish.

Highly recommend it.

 Illuminated Life:Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light by Joan Chittister.  Finished 9-30-19, 4/5, 143 pages, pub. 2000

So many of the books that I have loved this year have really centered on finding the magical and profound in every day.  From the introduction…

Religion is about rituals, about morals, about systems of thought, all of them good but all of them incomplete. Spirituality is about coming to consciousness of the sacred.  It is in that consciousness that perspective comes, that peace comes.  It is in that consciousness that a person comes to wholeness.  

This book chooses a theme for each letter of the alphabet, awareness, beauty, community, dailiness, enlightenment, faith, growth, humility, justice, kindness…  The beginning of each section is very short story followed by ways to bring true meaning into your life.  It focuses on the contemplatives and what we can do to understand not only God but our role in the universe.  I loved this one!