Close to the Heart [Hardcover]

Ms. Margaret Silf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

A real-life approach to prayer

 

Sharing her own life-changing prayer experiences as well as those of others, Margaret Silf invites us to embark on our own adventure in prayer, with promises that we will not be disappointed. In Close to the Heart, she introduces a world of imaginative yet simple ways to approach personal prayer, tempting us to search for “clues to the kingdom” in everyday life. This experiential book, Silf explains, “starts where people really are and encourages them to discover God in their real lives—in the agony and the ecstasy, the glorious and the mundane.”
Breaking through boundaries and stereotypes, Margaret Silf shows prayer as a journey into reflective living. This comprehensive guide helps readers experience prayer as a natural, organic process and offers a powerful vision of what personal prayer can be.

“This is an excellent book on prayer and its relationship to every aspect of life. Writing of ordinary things in simple, lucid prose, . . . the author helps us glimpse God, seamlessly woven into earthy experience.”
—gerard w. hughes, s.j.

“[Silf] has a great gift. . . . She never skirts real life, with its questions, fears, doubts, and desires. She doesn’t clean anything up and make it ‘spiritual and holy,’ for she sees all of life as spiritual and holy.”
—janet schaeffler, Office for Religious Education, Archdiocese of Detroit

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Silf, author of Inner Compass, offers her readers a basic guide to contemplative prayer. Utilizing techniques acquired during her own spiritual formation, Silf maintains that contemplative prayer is an aid to locating the calm below the emotional and mental turbulence that characterizes much of modern life. She urges her readers toward a creative reappropriation of the biblical Gospels by imagining themselves as participants in many key Gospel narratives. The application of such techniques results in encounters with God that are consistently affirming. Organizationally, the book is designed to guide the beginner from the basic elements of contemplative prayer to praying with "the Word" as discovered through creation and Scripture. Each chapter ventures a bit further in prayer techniques, as Silf encourages readers to discover the joys of the lectio divina and of experimenting with conversational prayer. Yet while aiming to introduce "experiential Catholicism," Silf is mostly silent about Catholic encounters with God through the sacraments of the Church. Her work is less grounded in Catholicism than it is in generic spirituality, tinged with New Age overtones (the first chapter, for example, is entitled "Discovering God Inside You"). Silf presents only selected aspects of the Church's collective experience of God through the ages. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Margaret Silf is a popular retreat director and speaker on Ignatian spirituality. She is the author of numerous books, including Compass Points, Inner Compass, Close to the Heart, Going on Retreat. and her forthcoming book The Other Side of Chaos.  She lives in Scotland.

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Loyola Press; First Edition, First edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0829414525
• ISBN-13: 978-0829414523
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,016,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Margaret Silf travels widely in her work as a retreat director and speaker on Ignatian spirituality. Her books include Compass Points, Inner Compass, Close to the Heart and Going on Retreat(Loyola Press) and The Gift of Prayer: Embracing the Sacred in the Everyday (Bluebridge). She lives in England.