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Zusatztext Praise for Awake My Soul: "Readers will savor each chapter! perhaps being drawn to Jones's other writings also. This book's message is significant! timely! and needed."--CBA Marketplace Informationen zum Autor Timothy Jones is the author of several books on prayer and spiritual life, including Nurturing Your Child’s Soul, The Art of Prayer, and Celebration of Angels . Currently the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Halifax, Virginia, Tim previously served as the dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina. A speaker and leader of retreats around the country, he enjoys finding creative approaches to daunting spiritual truths, making them more inviting and accessible. Klappentext These days more and more people are scheduling getaways to retreat centers for their spiritual well-being--over 1.2 million Catholics alone during 1997. Located throughout the United States and Canada, these centers cater to the needs of people seeking quiet time, regardless of religious affiliation. Retreat possibilities range from one day of solitude surrounded by nature, to a few days of quiet time under the guidance of a resident spiritual director, to a week experiencing the rigorous rhythms of community monastery life. In A PLACE FOR GOD, Timothy Jones shares the wisdom of his pilgrimages to retreat centers as diverse as a mountaintop hermitage overlooking the Pacific and a monastic oasis on Chicago's South Side. First he explains everything about retreats: what they are, why people go, how to prepare, what to pack, and what to do while there. Then he provides an extensive directory of over 250 retreat centers in all fifty states and Canada, complete with all the information readers need to contact the retreat center that is right for them. A PLACE FOR GOD is the perfect resource for anyone who wants to find spiritual fulfillment or simply a place to get away.A Vacation for the Soul I'm amazed that it took me so long to go on a personal spiritual retreat. For years I had heard of the practice, one with a pedigree stretching back centuries in spiritual tradition. People I respected raved about the benefits. And I knew I sometimes wanted more than sightseeing and visits with distant relatives. I dreamt about a vacation for my cramped soul. I needed a holiday that actually had something holy about it. But in all, it took ten years for me finally to turn my itch for a spiritual getaway into a reality--ten years from my first halfhearted attempts to my actually going. Had I known then what I know now, I never would have taken so long. When I began my first efforts, I was juggling two jobs, struggling to meet a book deadline, and anxious about a career change I was laying plans for. I felt called to the hundred and one worthy things I pursued but restless. My schedule seemed both to intensify my need to get away and put it out of reach. Still, friends told me about a Mennonite couple who ran a retreat center amid acres of Michigan woodland, not far from my Indiana town. Their reports tantalized me. I need this, I told myself. I would walk the hiking paths of the woods in silence, eat from a well-stocked refrigerator, dip into a library of books on prayer, and simply find rest for my soul. No agendas. No deadlines. And plenty of spiritual elbowroom. The couple who ran the center would get me started on my time there, and then get out of the way. In the tradition of Elijah, Moses, Jesus, Anthony and the desert fathers, Thomas Merton, and countless other spiritual models, I would find a quiet place for a combination of soul work and spiritual rest. I would be like Henry David Thoreau trekking "to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach." Going away in itself would refresh me, I thought, to say nothing of the spiritual a...
