The Christ Church Recommended Reading List

	The Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing List Recommendations on this page come from our Rector and friends and members of the Christ Church Community. We continue to add recommendations, and would love to hear from you if you have a favorite book, music CD, or DVD movie to recommend to others.
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A Year with C. S. Lewis : Daily Readings from His Classic Works (COLLECTED LETTERS OF C S LEWIS) (Hardcover) C.S. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Recommended by several members of the congregation. Click the link for more information on this great read.
Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening Cynthia Bourgeault has studied and taught in a number of Benedictine monasteries in the United States and Canada. An Episcopal priest, she is well known as a retreat and conference leader, a teacher of prayer, and a writer on the spiritual life. She is the author of Mystical Hope, Love Is Stranger than Death, and The Wisdom Way of Knowing. In this paperback, Bourgeault salutes Centering Prayer as the key to interior awakening. She has been a practitioner of this devotional discipline since 1988 and considers Thomas Keating as her teacher and mentor. He has written the foreword. There are chapters on the method, the tradition, the psychology of Centering Prayer, and a final one on how it leads to inner awakening; the latter covers attention of the heart, working with the inner observer, the welcoming prayer, and Centering Prayer's relevance to Christian life. Bourgeault has some thought-provoking things to say about silence, intention, apophatic prayer, self-emptying, and the purification of the false self.
Practicing Resurrection : A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace From Publishers Weekly: When Gallagher's beloved older brother died of cancer, grief struck intensely: "I would be watering the garden or opening an envelope and Kit's death would spring on me completely new and jolting, as if I'd been hit hard from behind with no warning, and I then would fold up, like a fan." Her work at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, which she portrayed so passionately in her 1998 memoir, Things Seen and Unseen, now seemed hollow: "I felt an urgency to reclaim the holy in my life, to find a new way to spend myself." Beginning in 1995 where the earlier book left off, Gallagher describes the three-year process she went through to discern whether to become a priest. While involved in making this decision, she and other church leaders were also wrestling with questions that could split the parish: should their gay rector divulge his sexual orientation? Should he perform same-sex weddings? Meanwhile, Gallagher's husband was repeatedly expressing distaste for her heavy involvement at church. In spite of continued affirmation from church friends and diocesan officials, Gallagher began to wonder if her true calling was to writing, despite her persistent attraction to priesthood. Skillfully interweaving multiple themes, Gallagher maintains suspense right up to the epilogue, where various "resurrections" are revealed. With a poet's ear for language and a novelist's eye for essential detail, Gallagher offers a compelling story of her journey toward "a wholeness bought at the cost of suffering."
'Opening the Prayer Book' by Jeffrey Lee, looks at the Book of Common Prayer. Lee explores general issues of liturgy and common worship/prayer life in the context of the Anglican usage of the BCP. Particularly with the 1979 American version (and some other recent variations, such as the New Zealand and Australian Prayer Books), there is a great deal of flexibility built into the document that at the same time strives toward consistency and identity. Lee looks briefly at the history of the development of the Book of Common Prayer, from its English origins in the sixteenth century to the more recent versions in America, acknowledging the issues that led to a Scottish influence in the construction of the American Prayer Book. After this historical survey, Lee looks at particular pieces of the liturgy in the BCP, including the primary services around the sacrament of baptism and Easter celebrations, the highest of holy days, and the various other liturgies present for both regular and occasional use. Putting this liturgy into action for the entire congregation (worship shouldn't be something that a clergy caste 'does' for the people as they sit in pews and watch) is a primary concern for Lee.		Daughters of the King are studying this book beginning in January 2005
Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan Chittister In "Wisdom Distilled from the Daily", Joan Chittister modernizes the Rule of Saint Benedict and applies it to modern living. Each chapter covers a different aspect of the Rule, including such topics as prayer, work, mindfulness, hospitality, peace, and listening. Her stories from the desert sages are wonderful and extremely funny, and several of her insights are insightful and very helpful. I found the chapter on obedience in particular to be one of the most pithy, eloquent, and well-written summaries on such a loaded topic that I have ever encountered. One can tell that she is a clinical psychologist from that chapter!
How Does God Listen? (Paperback) by Kay Lindahl, Cindy Maloney (Illustrator) From the Inside Flap Children ask a lot of questions. Spiritual questions can become the best conversations. This colorful and engaging book introduces preschoolers as well as young readers to the ways they can use their senses to find God in their everyday lives. Beautiful, vibrant photographs and real-life examples will allow children and parents to explore together the ways we can know that God is always present, and always listening—when we feel sunshine on our faces, hear the purring of a cat, or see rainbows in the sky.
The Red Tent Book Club selection for March was Bad Girls of the Bible and What We Can Learn from Them by LIZ CURTIS HIGGS
The Red Tent Book Club selection for January was The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks