God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas [Hardcover]

Gregory Wolfe (Editor), Greg Pennoyer (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2007

God with us. This is the meaning of the Incarnation. This is the meaning of Christmas.

When we cut through all of the sentiment and marketing to the spiritual richness and vitality of Christmas, we not only discover who God is, but who we are as human beings.

When we become adults, and the wide-eyed wonder of childhood has passed, we need to replace what was once magical with something much more meaningful.

Now is the time to put first things first, and seek silence, if only for a few precious minutes a day. Now, ever more intently, we are to watch and listen for God.

God With Us is a companion for those who want to experience Christmas as the early Christians once did, set in the larger context of Advent and Epiphany. Through daily meditations, scripture, prayer, illuminating history and fine art, we experience what saints have glimpsed through the ages - the wonder of God made flesh.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Scott Cairns is the author of six poetry collections, including Compass of Affection. He is Professor of English at the University of Missouri, and a recent Guggenheim Fellow.

Emilie Griffin is the author of Doors Into Prayer, Turning, and Wonderful and Dark is This Road.

Richard John Neuhaus is a Catholic priest and one of the leading voices on religion and culture in America. He is the founder and editor of the journal First Things.

Kathleen Norris is an award-winning poet and bestselling author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk.

Eugene Peterson is a pastor, author, and professor emeritus of theology at Regent College. He is the author of the popular paraphrase of the Bible, The Message.

Luci Shaw is a poet and writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver.

Editor Gregory Wolfe is writer-in-residence and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University and the founder and editor of Image. Greg Pennoyer is the co-founder of the Centre for Cultural Renewal in Ottawa, Canada, and the Project Director for Incarnation: A Recovery of Meaning, an international art exhibition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: Paraclete Press (MA) (October 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557255415
• ISBN-13: 978-1557255419
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Cairns is the author of six collections of poetry, The Theology of Doubt, The Translation of Babel, Figures for the Ghost, Recovered Body, Philokalia, and most recently Compass of Affection: Poems New & Selected. With W. Scott Olsen, he co-edited The Sacred Place, a collection of prose and verse celebrating the intersections of landscape and ideas of the holy. He wrote the libretto for The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, an oratorio composed by JAC Redford. His poetry and essays have been included in Best Spiritual Writing, Best American Spiritual Writing, The Pushcart Prize XXVI, Upholding Mystery (Oxford, 1997), The Best of Prairie Schooner, and Shadow & Light, among other anthologies. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, The New Republic, Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion, Spiritus, Tiferet, Western Humanities Review, and many other journals. He has taught American literature, poetry writing, and poetics courses at Westminster College, University of North Texas, Old Dominion University, and at University of Missouri, where he is currently Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing. In 1993, he founded the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry; he served as its series editor from 1993 through 2006. In 2007, his spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge, was published by HarperSanFrancisco and his translations and adaptations, Love's Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life, was published by Paraclete Press. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and was named the Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the University of Missouri in 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best gift I received this Christmas, December 29, 2007

By 

J. Baker (Norfolk, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas (Hardcover)

I discovered this book while doing some last minute shopping on Christmas Eve day. I was experiencing that familiar feeling of "missing" Christmas again this year. I found it again in this book. It has inspired me to celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas for the first time. The readings are timely, thought provoking, prayer inspiring, and quite simply BEAUTIFUL! I'm already looking for copies to give as gifts for next year. I hope the authors are planning on a similiar collection for Lent and Easter. I would order it sight unseen.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Preparing for Christmas, December 17, 2007

By 

P. Murphy (Lancaster, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas (Hardcover)

Every Christmas my wife and I think, "O my, we've done it again - Christmas is here and we've allowed the busy-ness of the season to keep us from preparing our hearts and our home for the coming of the Christ child." We started using this book at the recommendation of a friend and whole-heartedly recommend it to you. We are being prepared this Advent and this book has much to do with it. The paintings, Scripture verses, discussions and prayers have been a great help to us and those in our small group as well.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Advent Reader, December 21, 2007

By 

Liz (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas (Hardcover)

I was looking for a way to focus my attention during Advent this year and heard about this book from the journal Image. As promised, the book has beautiful reproductions of art to go with each daily reading during Advent. There are also scripture passages each day and a short reflection written by one of the six contributors. Information and reflections on feast days are included, and I really like the fact that the book continues until Epiphany. I've been able to keep up so far and have been challenged and encouraged by the readings to remember Jesus in the midst of what can be a very distracting time of year. This book will make a great gift for my friends and family for next year's Advent season.