“Using the Christian tradition of solitude, silence and contemplation as her foundation, Huston offers one of the best books available on living the simple life.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This book will give solace and guidance to those who, like Paula Huston, have felt the interior call to simplicity, the intense gravitational pull of the God within.” —Bruno Barnhart, Camaldolese monk and author, Second Simplicity
An Invitation to a Simple, More Peaceful Life
Is leading a simple life possible in a world of chaos and complexity? Driven by this searching question, Paula Huston, a busy forty-something college professor, wife, and mother, embarked on a spiritual journey to find a peaceful, less cluttered kind of life.
The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life is the fruit of Huston’s arduous search. Two discoveries sustained her: that she herself could experience simple living just as a nearby community of Catholic monks did and, more important, that she could find the keys to such a life in the lives and writings of the great monastic saints. Drawing on these discoveries, Huston examines a variety of measures that point the way toward the practical, day-to-day simplicity of a life that so many desire.
Paula Huston, a woman of many talents— professor, wife, mother and author (Signatures of Grace)—offers this outstanding Christian guide to voluntary simplicity. Right from the start, we know we are being led by a woman who walks the talk (and is honest about when she stumbles). "One of the first tricks I tried to play on myself was to pretend that some parts of me were exempt from this difficult transformation process, for example my tendency to exaggerate," she confesses. After all, exaggeration is a writer’s birthright, she told herself. "It did not take long to figure out that the quest for a simpler, holier life eventually must touch every aspect of our nature, and that Jesus refers to the spiritual path as the 'narrow way' for a reason." Most of us assume that this "narrow way" is a desolate journey—filled with enormous sacrifice and meal after meal of brown rice with tofu. But, as Huston explains, the path of simpler living begins with an internal journey rather than a sudden external shift in lifestyle. She starts the book with the art of creating more solitude—showing us how much we define and distract ourselves by the company and clutter that surrounds us. When Huston moves into a chapter on silence—we see how the greatest challenge is quieting the noise in our head, not the noise in our household or workplace. She quotes scripture in just the right doses and at the end of every chapter she shares stories of the lives of saints who lived various forms of simplicity. The highlights are Huston's personal reflections, especially as she reveals the challenges and the rewards of "the holy way." This is a highly inspirational life story that becomes more rich and satisfying with every step on the path. --Gail Hudson
From Publishers Weekly
Using the Christian tradition of solitude, silence and contemplation as her foundation, Huston offers one of the best books available on living the simple life. Voluntary simplicity may sound like an enormous personal sacrifice, downscaling material purchases, unplugging the phone, turning off the TV and pursuing meaningful work instead of high-income drudgery. But according to Huston, the payoff is so enormous that it's hard to understand why anyone wouldn't jump on the bandwagon. "Interior chaos subsides; the psychic battlefield goes calm and silent," she promises. She notes that practicing the simple life requires more of an internal shift than an outward act of shedding possessions or moving to a monastery. In each chapter, Huston offers healthy doses of self-disclosure. When she wanted to create more silence, she first tried to quiet all the noise around her, only to discover that the real challenge was learning to silence herself. (She's a self-confessed motor mouth.) When she wanted to start carving out times of spiritual contemplation, she had to face her chronic habit of oversleeping. She even reveals how much of her self-esteem was invested in attracting male attention in her exquisite chapter on the deeper meaning of celibacy. Huston gives readers the sense that if she can make these small, yet profound, steps toward a simpler life, anyone can. Each chapter includes an inspirational story about a saint as well as just the right seasonings of scripture. This excellent guidebook will motivate many readers to take at least one small step toward living a simpler life. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
(Author Photograph by Dennis Eamon Young). Paula Huston, the eldest of five children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1952. Her Norwegian Lutheran family moved to California when she was only two; she grew up in Long Beach, married at nineteen, and relocated to San Luis Obispo county on the Central Coast in her early twenties. About the time her children, Andrea and John, were born, she began writing short stories; in her early thirties, she divorced and spent several years as a single working mother, which convinced her that she really needed to complete her college education. After remarrying and becoming a stepmother to Kelly and Greta, she returned to school for a B.A. in English, and went on for a Masters in English and American Literature while continuing to write and publish fiction.
She began teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo after completing the Master's degree. While still matriculating, she took a class in ethics that helped spur a return to the Christianity she had abandoned years before. This time, however, she came back to the church as a Catholic, and in the process, shifted to writing spiritual non-fiction. Eventually, she became a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, a lay associate of a contemplative Catholic hermitage on the Big Sur coast, which means she does her best to live by two ancient rules written primarily for monks and hermits: the Rule of St. Benedict and the Brief Rule of St. Romuald of Ravenna, Italian founder of the Camaldolese. For many years, she and her husband Mike have lived on four acres in the country where, in the spirit of St. Benedict, they produce much of the food they eat, including fruits, vegetables, olive oil, eggs, honey, and wine. She has two small and beloved grandsons, and is currently anticipating the birth of yet another little boy this fall.
Huston is the author of four books and a co-editor and contributing essayist for a fifth, SIGNATURES OF GRACE: CATHOLIC WRITERS ON THE SACRAMENTS. Her essays and short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines over the years, including AMERICAN SHORT FICTION, STORY, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, IMAGE, AMERICA, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, and GEEZ. She is a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, and a founder and faculty member for a low-residency California State University Consortium Master of Fine Arts program in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Her work has been honored several times by BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and will appear in BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING OF 2010. She has taught at the Glen Workshop at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is a frequent retreat leader and speaker at churches and campuses around the country.
This review is from: The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Paperback)
With our hectic lives it seems impossible to slow down, simplify, and deepen our spiritual relation with God. Author Paula Huston has been here with all the rest of us, but she has found, through her personal experiences, that you can move to a simpler, holier life without moving to a monastery and completely eschewing the modern world. Paula invites us to travel with her along her journey as she shares her experiences successes and shortcomings. She models her philosophy on some of the most prominent saints of the early Christian church including some of my favorites, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, and St. Benedict. As she turned to these people she tried to practice the things that allowed them their holy walk with God. Some of the things she discusses include the need for and ability to obtain solitude, silence, asceticism, meditation and other practices of a simple life. Although she does not word it that way, it becomes obvious that part of what she is talking about is the ability to break free from the things that enslave us and keep us in such a state that we can't even keep our minds quiet for all the thoughts and worries that invade it.
Choosing to lead a simpler life so you can have a more peaceful, more holy life, may sound like an extreme sacrifice, but what is the price that you put on internal peace? Standing on the other side after having made these changes Paula finds it hard to understand why anyone would not do the same. Paula Huston is a role model for those who want to simplify their lives and clearly demonstrates that this path is available to anyone who wants to travel it. "The Holy Way" is a highly recommended book for any audience.
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This review is from: The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Paperback)
Paula Huston's The Holy Way has made a significant impact on my personal and spiritual life. In many ways our lives are parallel, and her spiritual longing for divine transcendence is mine as well. Her book met me on many levels, and has resulted in several changes in outlook and lifestyle for me. Her stories are very human, yet show how a mind open to God and re-creation can result in healing and wholeness. Thank you, Paula Huston.
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This review is from: The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Paperback)
This book practically fell off the shelf at the bookstore, like I was supposed to read it. This is a remarkable book by a remarkable woman. Like Paula, I am on the monastic-contemplative-mystical path. Unlike her, I have remained in the Lutheran tradtion, but like her, have learned a great deal about this path from the Roman Catholic monastic tradition. I've read a number of books by celibate monks, and many books on specific components of this path, such as fasting, celibacy, silence, meditation, etc. What makes Paula's book so helpful for me is that she is married, with kids and a career, like myself. Secondly, she presents a road map for this journey via the ten chapters, each one looking at a component of the path. I appreciated the few pages at the end entitled "How to Begin a Better Life". She is an excellent writer. She has done her homework about the monastic traditon and the saints she writes about in each chapter. Most importantly, she shares her own journey in an honest and vulnerable way. Clearly Paula heard a "call" to live a simpler life; and her book in an autobiographical way shows how she, God, and others are making that happen. This book, and my on-going desire to be a married contemplative/an urban monk, will be the topic of conversation next time I meet with my spiritual director.
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