Organizations and Institutions Books

Bede Griffiths (1906-1993)was an English monk who lived in India for 38 years. Based on transcripts from an Australian documentary filmed only 6 months before he died, this (his final work) is a gentle and reflective account of his long search for shared truth within Christianity and Hinduism.

Hi, It's me Adrian. Liz and I were looking at Amazon books and ended up here. Dr. Pasto's translation is also on this sight. He translated a work by Sor Juana Inez de La Cruz. I found your book to be a good addition to our history of Christian thought class. If I ever become a professor I will use it for my classes. I hope that you read my review and that everything is going well for you. Adios.

Adrian Brown

The book is very interesting. Good and creative style of description and worthwhile.

This book has helpful suggestions for any worshipper, but as a worship leader I appreciated it and shared much of it with my team.

This was an excellent book. I highly recommend it and I recommend it often. It was inspiring to hear what God is doing around the world among Gentiles and Jewish people. It is a real eye opener. It may explain some things to you that you never knew you even wondered about.

As a Jew, I knew nothing about the Vatican.

This book helped me out alot.

Enrico is quite the expert.

If you are a devout Christian, Orthodox or otherwise, seeking a deeper knowledge of the Spiritual and Mystical side of our Faith, I would highly recommend this book.

This Saint is unique in Christian writing, and certainly in Orthodox writing. He is a Christian Mystic who does not just hold forth on academic theories of Mysticism, but tells of his own experiences, while still holding the intellectual part of life in high esteem. But, on the other hand, one doesn't have the slightest feeling that he is trying to impress.

And, rare among modern authors who are reflecting on another's writings, the author of this book actually adds to, rather than detracts from, the writings of his subject.

This book tells of the founding of the Society of the Divine Word in Germany by soon-to-be Saint Arnold Janssens, and of his sending the first SVDs to the USA. Then the struggles of the society to get established here are detailed and the whole history both in this country and in its missions overseas is set out. I found the book a most informative and inspiring account.

While many have written about how Greco-Roman culture affected or altered the religious traditions involving Jesus Christ, Inculturation Of The Jesus Tradition: The Impact Of Jesus On Jewish And Roman Cultures by Graydon F. Snyder (Emeritus Professor of New Testament, Chicago Theological Seminary) is a fascinating and thoughtful study of how the Jesus traditions altered Jewish and Roman cultures. Principally focusing on the first two centuries of Christianity, in terms of how faith in Jesus as the Son of God affected the symbols, art, architecture, inscription, calendar, and many other major and minor details of Greco-Roman life, Inculturation Of The Jesus Tradition is a informed and informative study which is highly recommended to students of Antiquarian Christian History, Post-Christian Judaic Studies, and Greco-Roman Anno Dominie culture.

This book moved me deeply, and I'm a *lapsed* Western conventional believer. It is a women's spirituality must-have and a gorgeous compact fine art book, documenting the communal living facilities of an obscure but fascinating category of radically religious yet deeply service-oriented female contemplatives.

These Medieval-era Beguinages (the source of the term "Beguine" is unclear) are small, fully walled "cities within a city", enchanting in their human-scale architecture and layout.

The modern feminist-interest hook: they were the domains of *very* atypically independent women, often well-born and highly educated and always vitally socially engaged, who nevertheless sought closeness to God through a semi-reclusive lifestyle of their own making. And all this without any by-your-leaves from the official Church hierarchy, and often in direct confrontation with it.

The Beguine lifestyle is well summarized by one of the distinguished authors as a "rich and specifically feminine art-de-vivre", and that last phrase is the clincher for me. The authoritative text is accompanied by superb high-quality color photos of the buildings, details and interiors. Together they make one drool with nostalgia for a life in these hauntingly beautiful, tidy and snug-looking spiritual environments.

Said nostalgia pangs are not utterly incurable (unless one is male), because, of the relatively few remaining Beguinages -- astounding rare survivals, peculiar now to the Southern Low Countries -- a few are still functioning institutions and open to new recruits!

The text is historically and culturally comprehensive and touching as well, but it's the pictures (of the 13 extant facilities in Belgium) that are the real knockouts: they seem to breathe the otherworldly serenity of these recherche (pun intended) places and lives.

The semi-magical effect on the modern reader/viewer, regardless of one's religious persuasion or lack thereof, is to open a window on a people truly living life as art -- and thereby prompt us to aspire to a similar level of sublimity, whatever our lifestyle details. A real sleeper ("waker"?!) of a coffee table book, whether the table is in a convent or a condo!