Customer Reviews

The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer

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This book for me is like a breath of fresh air for my soul. I like the way it provides a number of golden nuggets for a deeper prayer life and allows me to stay with one topic for as long as I feel I need too. I feel no rush to move on to the next topic until I am done with one and allows for deep reflection. The mantra at the end of each topic helps to concretize the prayer experience for that particular topic.

Also I wish to say while this author has been controversial at times, I find in this little book, the true self of the author which makes her other books a must read.

I have read 3 other books by Joan Chittister and everyone has been a blessing to me. I have had a lot of loss in my life, as I know many have and with my most recent loss 8 months ago have floundered a great deal. I guess the simplest way to say it is, her books have helped me understand and accept my life's path helping me to bring joy back into my life.

Just a lovely, lovely book. Each time I read one of these reflections I see something different. Down to earth spirituality for folks who want real connection. I'm getting copies for every member of our Prayer Guild.

This is a deceptively small book. It fits easily in the hand, which makes it convenient for tucking into a purse or pocket. Although the dimensions are small, the book is hardback and thus fully up to the bumps a book takes when it accompanies a reader.

And "accompanying" is really what this book is about. It can "keep company" with the reader in the sense of being easy to tote around but, crucially, it keeps company with the mind and heart.

It is not a book with a rota of prayers, in a conventional sense. Nor does the book comment on various forms. It is a book about how we bring ourselves to pray, about the attitudes that help and hurt us as we try to find our way toward knowing God.

Each of the 42 chapters is brief. A chapter begins by denoting a topic -- humility, for example, which actually appears more than once -- and then offering a quotation related to the topic. A short essay follows, and the chapter is capped by a few words of prayer and a quotation from scripture. The chapters hang together beautifully, but the author does not promise any special benefit from reading them as ordered. Indeed, she encourages readers to take the book as they can, in order or not, repeating a chapter several times or moving on.

I am tempted to add that each chapter is deceptively brief. More than once, I've read a sentence and started onto the next when -- whoa! What did I just read there? How can I begin to unpack the implications for my life? Ultimately, this is not a book about "saying your prayers"; it is a book about living our prayers. Therein lies its central challenge, a short and simple book that packs a spiritual wallop for a lifetime.

Sr. Joan offers yet another beautiful book for the flourishing of your soul. I once had a Benedictine monk tell me that prayer was as important to the soul as breathing is to the body. Monks often link prayer to breath, praying in rhythm with their inhale/exhale life of breathing as a way to "pray without ceasing". Chittister has been a voice of wisdom and spiritual growth for decades, and her latest work will deepen your spiritual life, no matter what your faith background. Breathe deeply and grow your spiritual life in this book. For two other recently published books on spiritual growth, see Ancient Paths: Discover Christian Formation the Benedictine Way and The Busy Family's Guide to Spirituality: Practical Lessons for Modern Living From the Monastic Tradition

Excellent! I use one chapter a day for reflection and a mantra that I carry during the day. This book can be used again and again in this way to help a person go deeper. The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer

Truly inspiring book. Very impressed with the topics and the author....would highly recommend it to anyone who desires to deepen conscious contact with God

please gift this edifying prayer book to all who pray, and above all to those of us who do not pray as we ought, all who forget to pray, to have no time to pray, please leave this book in a handy place, for us who must pray, for peace.

The Reverend Sister Joan Chittister OSB, past president of US Benedictine Prioresses and renowned authority on religious life, in particular within the most ancient and traditional Benedictine charism, author of several treatises on the life of prayer, including In Pursuit of Peace: Praying the Rosary Through the Psalms, and on the 1500 year old Rule for Monks written by Saint Benedict, most recently, The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century (Spiritual Legacy Series), and several other works of our theology and spirituality, recently Happiness and poignantly, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully, in demand worldwide for her lectures and prayer in common, leader of the Benetvision publishing house which offers so much that is comforting, strengthening, leading, edifying in these troubled times, perceptive political prophet as well with her The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, here graciously and helpfully lends us a hand, we who less than pray, who do not pray as we ought, who fail and forget to pray, who cannot or will not lend ourselves to prayer, regularly, as does she, as a leader of the Benedictine community, herein this humble volume, Sister Joan Chittister, with great strength and perseverance and clarity, charitably prays with us, and guides us along the sweet through slippery path to prayer.

Divided into forty sections, as Jesus prayed forty days in the desert alone, we find here prayer approached form every aspect beginning with self-knowledge and ending with Attention, the first word of the Rule of Saint Benedict for the life of prayer and humility and compassion. Within these forty sections we see each part of prayer, humility, living in God, constancy and discipline, acceptance, patience and blessing, above all gratitude.

The great Sister Joan Chittister OSB presents here patiently for us stumblers the trust and integrity of prayer, our readiness, simplicity, realism, consistency, responsibility purpose and enlightenment, and so much more, impossible to recount briefly and clearly here.

And in fact, had it been possible to write more briefly, Sister Joan would have.

So I urge us all who do not pray, who struggle to pray, who do not know prayer, as well as for all who find we do pray, to pray more deeply, more honestly, more humbly more gratefully, more brightly, with greater awareness, and everlasting, growing love, the object of our prayer, love, and peace, increasingly, progressively, with the wise and sure hand of the Reverend Sister Joan Chittister OSB, with her life time of dedicated, devote, loving prayer.

What a true jewel we find in this book, crystallizing Sister Joan's life time of integral, formal prayer.

Not only did I purchase one for me but when my friend saw it she asked me to purchase one for her.

I see a study coming uup in our Spiritual Life study group.

This little gem is worth the money to buy it and the time to read it. I've left it around the house and visitors even pick it up and read a section. The sections are short enough and powerful enough to engage both the mind and the soul.