Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit

by Paula Huston

Overview

Award-winning author and Benedictine oblate Paula Huston invites readers to de-clutter their minds, hearts, relationships, and souls in a book of daily Lenten practices woven from the gospels, the Desert Fathers, and the author’s own wealth of spiritual experience. “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” It’s the expected question amongst Christian friends each spring. In Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, Huston asks her readers a deeper, alternative sort of question: “How will you rid your life of excess this Lent?” She encourages readers to see Lent as a time to seek out silence and free themselves of “stuff” and to acknowledge the connections between what they pray about and what they do. With honesty, vulnerability, and grace, Huston challenges readers to move outward and act, showing them how everyday actions like cleaning out a junk drawer, giving away something no longer used, or spending fifteen minutes in silence can be surprisingly powerful ways of experiencing a more meaningful Lent and a simpler life. Whether cutting up a credit card, visiting someone at the hospital, or forgiving someone with whom they are angry, readers experience, under Huston’s gentle and expert care, how such practices lead to a more authentic Christian faith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594713248
Publisher:	Ave Maria Press
Publication date:	12/19/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	504 KB

About the Author

Paula Huston, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She taught writing and literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and currently mentors graduate students in creative nonfiction for Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.

Her first nonfiction project was Signatures of Grace, for which she served as coeditor and contributor; it earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her book The Holy Way, which garnered another PW starred review, was a Catholic Press Association award-winner, a Catholic Book Club major selection, and a ForeWord Magazine bronze medalist for Book of the Year in Religion. Huston’s other spiritual nonfiction includes By Way of Grace, Forgiveness, Simplifying the Soul, and A Season of Mystery. A Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate, Huston is married, has four children and four grandchildren, and lives on the central California coast.

What People are Saying About This

James Martin

Too often thought of as simply a season of sacrifice, Lent is revealed here as something far richer—a privileged time to experience God in your everyday life, to open yourself to conversion, and to savor God's transforming love. (Rev. James Martin, S.J., Author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything)

Eugene Peterson

Huston offers herself as a lively companion in a Lenten practice stripped of clichés. Join her—it might be the simplest and liveliest Lent you have ever kept. (Eugene Peterson, Author of Pastor: A Memoir)

Luci Shaw

When I read Huston's words I am galvanized and motivated toward greater simplicity. (Luci Shaw, Author of Water My Soul)

Phyllis Tickle

This is the most moving, most appealing, and, at the same time, most practical book I have ever seen on Lenten practices. (Phyllis Tickle, Author of The Great Emergence)