Swept up by the Spirit, Journey of Transformation by Gary Garner

By Nancy Ward

Art: The Ideal by Louis Janmot

“I have lived two vastly different lives—one spent exalting materialism and filled with spiritual darkness, the other spent exalting Jesus the Lord and filled with light and hope.” Because Gary’s conversion was so “life and death,” he sees it that way for everyone.

He recounts how the Spirit plainly revealed some of the traps he and his family narrowly avoided. He credits angels, signposts and appointed helpers, “pinpoints of light in the darkness, placed there for us to discover and to show us the way—without them we couldn’t possibly have made it to where we are now. There is hardly an hour that I don’t feel an urgency toward others of the impending dangers and perils that await them, much like someone who barely avoided a collapsing bridge.”

His journey of transformation eventually brought him from his agnostic-pro-Catholic religious view into the Catholic Church by way of the charismatic renewal. His conversion began with a voice telling him to buckle his seatbelt, saving his life. Then Fr. Walt, a young, motorcycle-riding priest invited him and his wife Nancy to a parish prayer meeting. The people shared their Spirit-led encounters with unbelievable praise reports. They spoke as if the Holy Spirit was telling them what to do and enabling them to do it.

In Swept Up by the Spirit, Gary tells story after story of how he opened everything in this life to the Holy Spirit who indeed did tell him what to do and enabled him to do it. Much of his leadings from “the Voice” involved ministries with groups of Protestant and Catholic men praying and evangelizing together in street ministry in rough neighborhoods or at abortion clinics. Often this involved marches with a handful or hundreds of people singing and carrying large crosses, or praying behind bars or gambling houses. He prayed with strangers for physical healings, deliverance and conversion.“It was only after I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me out there that I could begin to be effective at all,” he says of his sidewalk ministry at Planned Parenthood.

Read more about Gary's journey of transformation on JOYAlive.net  

Win a signed print copy of Trusting God with St. Therese!

 By Connie Rossini

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the day! Happy Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Trusting God with St. Therese is now available on Amazon for the Kindle and in print.  For the time being (at least the next 90 days) the ebook will be exclusive to Amazon. However, the paperback should be available soon at Barnes and Noble and other online retailers. I hope to see it in some Catholic bookstores as well. And those of you who are local or who know me personally are always welcome to purchase the paperback directly from me as well.

The last 14 months writing and publishing this book have been busy but rewarding. I pray you will find them rewarding for you too. I really believe it will help almost everyone but those very advanced in the spiritual life to come closer to Christ.

Now for the fun stuff!


Visit Contemplative Homeschool to enter the contest and see the other contests and events marking the release of  Trusting God with St. Therese.

Tobit’s Dog, A Novel by Michael Nicholas Richard (Reviewed by Nancy Ward)

By Nancy Ward

Tobit’s Dog is a love story amid the battle between heaven and hell  for the souls of the good guys as well as the racists, murderers, rapists, thieves and connivers not portrayed in the biblical version of the Book of Tobit. In this imaginary take on the Book of Tobit, exciting enough a tale, Richard skillfully uses the characters, symbols, and scriptural principles. All the vital elements are there: Tobit’s sudden blindness and miraculous healing. Prejudice and bravery — this time, involving a lynching and Tobiah’s arrest for his compassion toward the boy hanging from a tree.
 
Richard sets this, his first professionally published novel, in North Carolina during the depression. The Jim Crow era provides the tension between the black characters (Tobiah and family) and the white businessmen and law enforcement determined to keep the Negros in their place. And they are Catholics. Is this how the enemies of the Jews treated the chosen people during their exile?

I relate to this language, landscape, food, music and culture, having been raised in the south, although a few decades later. The scenery, described so beautifully and succinctly, is somewhat familiar to me. More like my Texas than the biblical Nineva.


Continue reading at Nancy's blog JOY Alive in our hearts.

A sad anniversary and a free chapter of Trusting God with St. Therese

By Connie Rossini

This is my family (plus two friends) on June 10, 1974.
I’m the one with the braids in the front.
Terri is behind me next to our mom.

Here is how our car looked thirty minutes later.

Today is the fortieth anniversary of one of the saddest events in my life so far. On June 10, 1974, our family was driving to the annual Catholic Charismatic Conference at the University of Notre Dame. We began our journey in Spokane, Washington, where we had spent a weekend on retreat. Just outside Missoula, Montana, the car rolled over three times, landing in the median of the freeway. I was in the back with the seat down and no seat belt. So were two of my siblings and two friends.

I ended up with stitches in my leg and a bump on my head. My sister Terri, who had been sitting next to me, was thrown from the car and died. She was ten years old.

Why did God let this happen? Didn’t He know where we had come from and where we were going? Hadn’t He heard Terri’s voice, when she had volunteered that morning to pray for a safe trip?


Continue to Connie's blog to receive your free chapter of Trusting God with St. Therese.

Abandon yourself to God

By Lora Goulet

Contemporary trends bombard us relentlessly. We are encouraged to demand unrealistic outcomes from painstaking plans. This often leads to frustration. Failure, by the world's standards, is the most likely result.

Abandonment to Divine Providence offers the reader a clear view of the supernatural rewards of complete surrender to the perfect and holy will of God. Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade's classic work presents us with the option to free ourselves of the burden to acquire wealth, popularity and status.

Quietly living within God's will fills our every day with the joys of holy simplicity. We are strengthened to bear our trials with constancy and hope.

This is an excellent book for a spiritual journal.


Read Abandonment to Divine Providence on line at Catholic Treasury or puchase a copy at TAN Books

Lora originally posted this on her blog, Mommy Novenas. 

Shadows of God's Fatherhood

By Nancy Shuman

The Bookworm  by Spitzwieg
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

The shop was long and narrow, dimly lit by naked bulbs dangling from the ceiling. It was a shadowed, solemn, wondrous place, tucked away in a dusty corner of the city where shops didn't sparkle like the department stores over on Main. Mysterious and musty it was; filled with with rows and racks and piles of volumes.  Used hardbacks, yellowing paperbacks, comics... all stacked haphazardly and ready for a rummager's quest.

I'd step out of the light of day and onto the squeaky wood floor in search of buried treasure.  It was my own personal library, and the best part was: I could read the books and then - I could keep them!  No need to keep close tabs on them, no stamps inside warning that this was a "14 day book," no falling in love with a whole fictional family only to have to dump them on a counter at the end of the month.

I was allowed to buy all of the books I could carry, pretty much.. . and this because of the kind man who took me to the bookstore: my father, who (okay, I'll admit it) spoiled me.  Rather than leaving me home on a Saturday so he could go rummage for his own treasures at "our bookshop," he patiently took his bubbly little buddy and shelled out who-knows-how-much for mystery stories I would stay up much too late reading.

I think back now and imagine the one sided "conversations" he had to endure on the drives home, as I cradled newfound treasures in my arms (no putting them in a bag for me, no sir) and rattled on about this being the EXACT Nancy Drew I've been looking for and oh LOOK at the green cover on this book it looks JUST like leather and omigosh I once got this one from the library and then couldn't find it ever again and oh Daddy isn't this just the best BEST day?


Continue reading at Nancy's blog The Breadbox Letters.

Good-bye Amazon store, hello Goodreads group

by Connie Rossini

Madonna des Kanonikusby Jan van Eyck (photo in public domain).

Beginning July 1, Minnesota, the state where I live, is charging sales tax for online purchases from major retailers with a presence in the state. Amazon does not want to deal with charging sales tax, so the company ended its relationship with all affiliates in Minnesota. This means the CSBN Amazon Store is defunct.

I've been looking for other ways CSBN authors can promote our published books and e-books as a group. Yesterday (Saturday, July 13) I set up a new Catholic Spirituality Books group on Goodreads.

If you're not familiar with Goodreads, it's a book review and discussion site. You can rate books, write full-scale reviews, recommend them to friends, and join discussion groups. If you are an author, Goodreads will provide you with an author's page that showcases your work and includes your latest blog post.

The Catholic Spirituality Books Group is a place where anyone can join a discussion of books about orthodox Catholic spirituality. I have started discussion topics for each CSBN published author. You are free to organize a chapter-by-chapter reading of a book or have less formal conversations. You can link to book reviews on your blog, keep readers up to date on your latest projects, and poll fellow members. I haven't explored all the possibilities yet.

Please join us at Goodreads. Be aware that, like other social media, it can suck up all your time, if you allow it to. But it can also be a tool for evangelization.

As for a new store at CSBN, I will continue to look at new opportunities for ways to offer our books to blog followers.


Connie Rossini is administrator of Catholic Spirituality Blogs Network. She blogs at  Contemplative Homeschool.

Discernement and what ifs?

by Annabelle Hazard

What if… you’d married the beer-loving football hero you dated in college; never turned in that starter job application at The Coffee Bean; stayed home in Llama County instead of flying off to the Big Apple; didn’t sit beside the girl with the pink polka dot hair-bow that first day of school; took the smog-congested freeway to work that one morning; kept up with your music/tennis/ballet lessons?

Surely, anyone who’s ever had a wide-awake moment of silence in the middle of the night has their own version of sighs regrets and sighs of reliefs. Or has simply posed the BIG WHAT IF?             
Twelve years ago, the nagging, whopping question mark in my life was: WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

With the help of a spiritual director, I learned to discern which of the open paths that lay before me had God’s finger pointed to it and which one would lead me away from my destiny. “Destiny,” as Fr. David Lonsdale SJ paints it, is “God’s hopes and dreams for our lives” if we discern and follow where He leads.   Listening to the music of the Holy Spirit, Fr. Lonsdale’s valuable book, is on “the art of discernment.”

            

 Although I (usually) discern before making important decisions, there is no avoiding the occasional “what if.”  But the answer is always, “It wouldn’t have been part of God’s will for my life.”  And there is immeasurable peace knowing that. I can go back to sound sleep (except when co-sleeping with a nursing baby or with the exhausted hard-working occasional snoring roommate-- can't help you there). 

My husband and I are currently facing a crossroad in our lives so I’m drawing up the significant points of discernment from my old journal and summarizing it for clarity.   You are welcome to peek into my diary, but don’t take this post as a substitute for spiritual direction.


Read Anabelle's 7 tips for discerning God's will at her blog  Written by the Finger of God.

The mother of all parenting books

by Anabelle Hazard

Catholic Mothers of the world, drop whatever book you are reading and read this one, The Mother of the Little Flower by Celine Martin. 

Here are some of the 7 quick things I’ve learned from Blessed Zelie Martin:

1. She encouraged her children to perform acts of self-denial for heaven and had them slide rosary beads or fill a drawer with nuts for each good deed.  I was so inspired that I sprinted off to Hobby Lobby with a project.  My flower-picking girls placed baskets on our altar and decorated it with a flower for each good deed/self-denial.  The bouquets will be offered up when we renew our consecration to Our Lady.

 

2. Bl. Zelie “was constantly busy with lace-making, housekeeping, working for her children and correspondence.”  I note the ‘correspondence’ with glee because what remains of her letters have been used as evidence for her canonization and gives me justified permission for the time I spend online. It’s certainly possible that if Bl. Zelie were living today, she’d be e-mailing, blogging or face-booking to keep her friends and family inspired.

3. She was vigilant at correcting her children’s faults: from poutiness, to selfishness, to vanity. But did her children call her a nag?  No!  Pauline, her oldest praised her:  “My parents always seemed to me to be saints.  We were filled with respect and admiration for them. I sometimes asked myself if it were possible to find their equals on earth.”

Read the rest of this guest post by Anabelle at her blog  Written by the Finger of God.