United Church of Christ
Martha Spong, editor, There’s A Woman in the Pulpit Receives The Antoinette Brown Award
The Antoinette Brown Awards are back at General Synod. After a four-year hiatus, the award that honors outstanding clergywomen in the United Church of Christ returned to the stage at General Synod 2015 to recognize three awardees for their innovative leadership. The Rev. Sharon Ellis Davis, founding pastor of God Can Ministries UCC in Chicago, and the Rev. Traci Blackmon, the minister of Christ the King UCC in Florissant, Mo., were honored as the “trailblazers” in women’s ministry, and RevGalBlogPals, was recognized as the “catalyst” this biennium. The blog, which began in 2009 as an online community of women clergy bloggers, is now a multinational and multi-denominational ministry that supports and amplifies clergywomen. UCC minister the Rev. Martha Spong, RevGalBlogPals director, accepted the award on behalf of the group.
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Tablet Magazine
A Rabbi Seeking Wisdom Across Religious Lines
Rami Shapiro, author of The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness: Preparing to Practice, draws on everything from Zen Buddhism to Catholicism and recovery’s Twelve Steps at his spiritual retreats.
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National Catholic Register
Book Review: God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors
This book is a beautiful gift from Menachem Rosensaft and the descendants of Holocaust survivors, who have invited us to make their legacy part of our own. This legacy can help us prepare to be the Christians Pope Francis—and Christ himself—wants us to become: people always seeking opportunities to exercise mercy and compassion to everyone we meet, particularly to the weak and vulnerable.
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Booklist
Book Review: There’s a Woman in the Pulpit: Christian Clergywomen Share Their Hard Days, Holy Moments and the Healing Power of Humor
Members of the clergy will tell you that it’s not easy balancing the sacred with everyday life. For many years, it was particularly difficult being a woman in the ministry. But recently, attitudes have changed, and conditions have improved. “I am in a rich, ripe moment of history,” writes Rev. Carol Howard Merritt in the foreword, “where I don’t have to fight for my right to be in the pulpit.” Developed from an online community, RevGals, this introduces women who are pioneers: many of them have been the first woman to serve in a particular church, for example. In sum, more than 50 clergywomen are here, representing 15 denominations, from the Church of Scotland to the Mennonite Church USA. The topics covered are varied, too, including callings to minister and leading in a historically male profession. The stories also help to humanize the profession: the women here are not only clerics but soccer moms, romance novelists, bloggers and even partakers of fine Kentucky bourbon. A refreshing look at the ministry from a female perspective.

Englewood Review of Books
Book Review: Like A Child: Restoring the Awe, Wonder, Joy, and Resiliency of the Human Spirit
Of course, all adults are knowledgeable of the fact that one cannot build a time machine and return to childhood. However, there is a way to become like a child once again and that is to unlock the inner child-like spirit hiding within every adult. Rev. Timothy J. Mooney has explored this in further detail by researching the Bible, well-known people of the past, people he has met throughout his life, and through his own experiences, compiled in his new book Like A Child: Restoring the Awe, Wonder, Joy, and Resiliency of the Human Spirit.
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Catholic News Service
Book Review: God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors
Catholic readers will be taken into the collection God, Faith & Identity From the Ashes and deeply into themselves, finding spiritual nourishment in the continuing faith of descendants of Jewish survivors of the Shoah and their determination to affirm their Jewishness and to dedicate their lives to helping others.
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Baltimore Jewish Times
In her 2014 book, Mussar Yoga, local author Edith Brotman posits that when practiced together, mussar and yoga, a spiritual tradition originating in Hinduism and Buddhism, “open a new pathway to developing greater wholeness.”
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Publishers Weekly
Book Review: The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings
In this insightful and illuminating work, Newell (Listening for the Heartbeat of God) explores chapter by chapter themes of connecting (with the earth, compassion, light, journey, spiritual practice, nonviolence, unconscious, love) in order to reclaim Christianity’s understanding of being “born anew” and of resurrection.
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Spirituality & Practice
Book Review: Julian of Norwich: Selections from Revelations of Divine Love—Annotated & Explained
In her latest volume in the Skylight Illuminations Series, Mary C. Earle—Episcopal priest, retreat leader, and spiritual director—gives fresh insights into Julian of Norwich's most famous work, Revelations of Divine Love.
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Spirituality & Practice
The Book of Common Prayer: A Spiritual Treasure Chest—Selections Annotated & Explained
The Book of Common Prayer, with annotations by C. K. Robertson and a preface by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, is part of the SkyLight Illuminations series. In 1549 Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury, oversaw the creation of the BCP. Since then it has been revised and seen plenty of use as a devotional classic and as a staple for public worship by the 80 million Anglican Christians around the world.
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USA Today
What does being Jewish mean in 2014?—Interview with Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer, author of: Fly-Fishing— The Sacred Art: Casting a Fly as a Spiritual Practice.
Today's American Jews have become more acclimated than generations past. Rates of secularism and intermarriage have risen, yet certain rituals, such as the Passover seder, remain ingrained in the life of a Jew.
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ReadTheSpirit
Book Review: Sacred Art of Listening / Women Transformative Leadership
4 Things You Need to Know about Kay Lindahl, author of Sacred Art of Listening and Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership If you take 1 thing away from this profile of Kay Lindahl, today, it should be this: She’s the woman behind The Sacred Art of Listening. As Editor of ReadTheSpirit, a well-thumbed copy of Kay’s book has been a part of my own collection of essential reading for more than a decade.
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ForeWord Reviews
Book Review: Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent: Sacred Teachings—Annotated & Explained
At the heart of any search for meaning lie several basic questions that have spurred seekers throughout the ages: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How shall I live, and why? Rabbi Rami Shapiro has addressed these questions with wisdom from the world’s sacred and philosophical teachings and his own illuminating commentary, enhanced by Eknath Easwaran’s practice of “Passage Meditation, to create a ‘bible’ for the spiritually independent.”
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ForeWord Reviews
Book Review: Pilgrimage—the Sacred Art: Journey to the Center of the Heart
Why does there seem to be a universal desire to combine the physically demanding with the inward “journey of the heart?” In Pilgrimage—the Sacred Art we find stunningly insightful answers to that question and an arsenal of new material to deepen our own connection to the divine.
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Read the Spirit
The Sacred Art of Hospitality interview with Nanette Sawyer
Hospitality is all the rage in communities coast to coast this year, in part because we are approaching the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s declaration of a national Thanksgiving. But what is hospitality? Emily Post? Serving tea? A suite at a convention with mixed drinks? Where do we turn to rediscover the spiritual core of hospitality?
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Spirituality & Practice
Book Review: Pilgrimage—The Sacred Art: Journey to the Center of the Heart
The practice of pilgrimage cuts across all cultures and is part of nearly every religion. What does this journey entail? Author, Dr. Sheryl A.Kujawa-Holbrook, defines it as "a life-changing journey" that can be a search for meaning, peace, or freedom.
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MyCentralJersey.com
Hooked on a feeling: Temple B'Nai Shalom's rabbi hopes readers will reel in lessons from his fly-fishing book
If you ask Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer, we are a society that has forgotten to stop and smell the roses. This belief has led him to co-write Fly-Fishing—The Sacred Art, which delves into the spiritual side of the sport while inspiring the reader to do some soul-searching and to appreciate the beauty of nature around us.
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Read the Spirit
The Tom Stella Interview: ‘Finding God Beyond Religion’
To clarify his message, Tom Stella is not an atheist. In fact, you’ll find in today’s interview with Read The Spirit Editor David Crumm that Tom considers himself a Christian. But, he also describes his concept of God, now, as a powerful sense of a Spirit within the world and within all of us. He says his theology is much like that of retired Bishop John Spong, who we also interviewed recently. Stella’s opening lines in this book quote the Muslim-Sufi mystic Rumi inviting “us to leave behind the narrow notion of religion understood as moral teachings and to enter the field where spiritual seekers gather.” That “field” does not try to impose traditional doctrines, Stella explains.
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Christian Century
Spiritual cul-de-sac: How the church fails the divorced by Carolyne Call
I never expected to be a divorce statistic. I confess that I clung to a particular and private hubris: I thought that because my husband and I were ordained, we were immune to divorce. After all, didn’t I as a pastor understand the spiritual aspects of marriage better than most? Surely my faith life was such that my marriage could not fail.
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The Presbyterian Outlook
Book Review: Men Pray: Voices of Strength, Faith, Healing, Hope and Courage
Men are largely absent from the church; yet men still lead the majority of congregations. It’s a pattern than began many years ago and has only increased. This pattern of absence from a spiritual community, one might conclude, has led to the kinds of destructive moral behavior that occurs with greater frequency in men. Some have said semiseriously that we ought to replace all the men in leadership with women. Yet, neither that solution nor the pattern reveal the deep spiritual hunger that abides for men who are showing up in worshipping communities.
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CBS Religion & Culture
What’s So Funny About Religion?
Featuring Baptist Minister Rev. Susan Sparks (author, Laugh Your Way to Grace); Rev. James Martin, SJ; Fearing the Stigmata author Matt Weber; Muslim comedians Azhar Usman & Mo Amer; and playwright, author, standup comedian Lewis Black. You won't see a show like this anywhere else.
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SportFishingWeekly.com
The Path of the Spiritual Fisherman – An interview with the author of Fly Fishing – The Sacred Art
Fishing is far more than catching fish. It is an experience that involves the entire body and engages the whole mind. There is simply no room in the focused fisherman’s consciousness for self doubt. If the fish are there then the successful fisherman will find them and will, more often than not land them.
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Spirituality & Practice
Book Review: Spiritual Gems of Islam: Insights & Practices from the Qur'an, Hadith, Rumi & Muslim Teaching Stories to Enlighten the Heart & Mind
The spiritual riches of Islamic spirituality have been preserved and passed down through the generations in sacred texts, meditations, and knowledge of the heart. But these riches are not just for Muslims and Sufis. If you are a seeker, a person rooted in another tradition, one of the many who identifies yourself as "spiritual but not religious," or an agnostic or atheist, the 33 gems presented by Imam Jamal Rahman will provide light to illuminate your path and lift up your spirit. read on

Spirituality & Practice
Book Review: Finding God Beyond Religion: A Guide for Skeptics, Agnostics and Unorthodox Believers Inside and Outside the Church
Tom Stella is a hospice chaplain, visiting professor of religion at Colorado College, and spiritual director. In A Faith Worth Believing: Finding New Life Beyond the Rules of Religion, he led us out of the cramped and confining beliefs of parochial Christianity into more expansive and mysterious territory. In this book, he speaks directly to the "spiritual but not religious crowd," who are searching for a path that gives their lives fresh meaning. read on

The Phoenix Spirit
Book Review: Fully Awake & Truly Alive: Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul
The author of Fully Awake & Truly Alive, Rev. Jane E. Vennard, has taught spiritual practices for many years. Drawing on her extensive experience, she provides readers information on spiritual practices that may change their behaviors and transform their lives. Her guidance is invaluable with expanding our definition and understanding of spiritual practice. read on

Contemplative Journal
Non-zero-sum compassion with Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Rami Shapiro, author of The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness and many other SkyLight Paths books, talks with Kate Sheehan Roach, editor of Contemplative Journal, about how the future of humanity lies at the intersection of contemplation and compassion. Watch the interview. read on

DenverPost.com
Jane Vennard: Spiritual practices, such as prayer, bring renewal of soul
Rev. Jane E. Vennard delves into renewal in her new book, Fully Awake and Truly Alive, which explores how spiritual practices from different faith traditions can yield peace, gratitude, humility and compassion.
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ReadTheSpirit
Explore the significance of emotions for Jesus and for Christians today
ReadTheSpirit editor David Crumm interviews Rev. Peter Wallace about his new book, The Passionate Jesus: What We Can Learn from Jesus about Love, Fear, Grief, Joy and Living Authentically.
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Patheos
The Personal Is Theological
Patheos speaks with Lana Dalberg about her new book, Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine.
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