Beguiled by Beauty: Cultivating a Life of Contemplation and Compassion
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Contemplative disciplines, such as centering prayer and meditation, have been part of Christian life for centuries. They seem hard to practice now, not simply because our distracted and hyperstimulated age makes them difficult but also because they can appear irrelevant to the needs of a fractured and ugly historical moment. Yet these practices are more essential now than ever, claims Wendy Farley. These practices essentially awaken and attune us to the beauty both of the created order and of human relationships. Farley helps readers discover being made for both kinds of beauty, with contemplative disciplines immersing us in it. Tying these disciplines with contemplation allows us to engage with the struggle for justice in an unjust society. Beguiled by Beauty includes practical advice for readers to learn several contemplative-meditation practices.
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- Includes practical advice for readers to learn contemplative-meditation practices
- Provides wide-ranging endnotes and references
- Helps readers discover being made for the beauty of the created order and of human relationships
- Contemplation on the Borderlands
- We Are Made for the Beloved
- Awakening to Beauty
- Practice
- Contemplative Dispositions
- Watching the Mind
- Guarding the Heart
- Contemplative Practices
Amid a vast literature on contemplative prayer and the spiritual life, Wendy Farley has given us a true contemporary ‘wisdom book.’ A harvest of her lifelong teaching and practice, she writes beautifully about beauty, prayerfully about prayer, and wisely about the human heart and mind. These pages embrace the reader with a wondrous company of companions, from Evagrius, to Teresa and Julian, to Merton and Alice Walker. Her wide-ranging endnotes and references are astonishing and nurturing. You will be encouraged and challenged—and beguiled—to begin again the contemplative way, as we always must, in the world of suffering, distraction, and spiritual hunger we know all too well. To fall in love with the beauty of God and the created world is not a one-time thing but a way of life. Take up this book, read, digest, then practice, practice, practice!
—Don E. Saliers, Cannon Distinguished Professor of Theology and Worship Emeritus and Theologian-in-Residence, Emory University
Wendy Farley’s magic and mastery continues to be the fluidity with which she engages both the ancients and their wisdom and current movements and social action. The delicate, scholarly interweaving of them both succeeds in making them accessible, and relevant, while providing deep roots to complex social issues.
—Ellen Rankin, Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, California
The world is on fire, and beauty abounds. How do we hold both of these truths at the same time, without succumbing to despair or denying the reality of suffering? Wendy Farley—whose evocative, soulful, and down-to-earth writing reflects the tenderness and courage of a heart broken wide open—guides us lovingly and joyfully through this complex and essential inquiry. Through reflection, story, and contemplative practice, she invites us to embrace and take deep refuge in the bittersweet interdependence of beauty and destruction. This stunning book has helped me commit to falling even more deeply in love with the sacredness of the world—in all its brokenness—even in dark times.
—Brooke D. Lavelle, PhD, President, The Courage of Care Coalition
- Title: Beguiled by Beauty: Cultivating a Life of Contemplation and Compassion
- Author: Wendy Farley
- Publisher: Westminster John Knox
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Pages: 237
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780664266813, 0664266819
- Resource ID: LLS:BGLDBTYCNCMPSSN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-19T22:07:08Z
Dr. Wendy Farley is the Rice Family Chair of Spirituality at San Francisco Theological Seminary, part of the Graduate School of Theology at Redlands University. In that capacity, she is the Director of Programs in Christian Spirituality and Director of Programs in the Art of Spiritual Direction. She is professor emerita from Emory University, where she taught in the college for 28 years and chaired Theological Studies in the doctoral program for more than two decades. She is the author of several books of theology and wisdom, and is a celebrated speaker and teacher. She has studied many forms of contemplative practice within Christianity, Buddhism, and yoga, including chant, energy work, meditation, centering prayer, visualization, and lectio divina. She is an associate at the Green Bough House of Prayer in Adrian, GA. She lives in San Anselmo, CA.