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"When the scholar and the poet wrestles in you," Bonnie Thurston was once asked by a friend at Tymawr, "who wins?" The poems in Belonging to Borders are her response. In these poems, Thurston reverences the borders, literal and metaphorical, that have been a part of her life since childhood. This reverence shines in her deep appreciation for holy space, for nature infused with the divine, for roots that are deep. These prayerful meditations on Celtic saints and places invite the reader to honor the borders in their own lives and to recognize the holiness of living on the borders.
Bonnie Thurston examines the personalities, place, and power of women in the New Testament. She provides a cultural and religious context for them by briefly outlining the position of women in the Greco-Roman world. The aim is to reveal the ways in which early Christianity attempted to liberate people from oppression (particularly patriarchy), as well as to point out the places and ways in which the early Christian community compromised with the dominant society.
2009 Catholic Press Association Award Winner To read the Gospel of Mark is to embark on a journey that begins in a desert and ends with a boulder rolled away from the tomb. In between, Jesus teaches his disciples, calls them to journey and learn what it means to follow him, and guides them to Jerusalem, the scene of the Passion. In The Spiritual Landscape of Mark, Bonnie Thurston has adapted a retreat that she gave to the Society of the Sacred Cross at Tymawr Convent in Wales, thereby inviting all of us to embark on this spiritual journey. Mark's gospel is full of places' desert, house, sea, valley, mountain, city, cross, garden and the winding roads between them. Thurston's prose invites us...
"Spirituality & Practice 2016 Award Winner." Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) was a complex man. Born into French aristocracy, he floundered as a military officer, but rediscovered his Catholic heritage and eventually lived voluntarily as an impoverished priest/hermit in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. Foucauld wanted to emulate the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth and in doing so, left a spiritual legacy that attracted such figures as Dorothy Day and author, poet, and spiritual director Bonnie Thurston. Published in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Charles de Foucauld’s death on December 1, 1916, Hidden in God highlights the profound conversion that led Foucauld to e...
To understand the life and thought of Thomas Merton, one must understand him as a monk. After introducing his vocation and entrance into the Trappist order, this book highlights some of his basic spiritual presuppositions. Relying primarily on Merton's writing, Bonnie B. Thurston surveys his thought on fundamental aspects of monastic formation and spirituality, particularly obedience, silence, solitude, and prayer. She also addresses some of the temptations and popular misunderstandings surrounding monastic life. Accessible and conversational in style, the book suggests how monastic spirituality is relevant, not only for all Christians, but also for serious spiritual seekers.
Somewhere along the way, says Bonnie Thurston, the wild unlikelihood of the Christian message has been reined in and made to fit more conventional categories of thought. That it is good and moral to be Christian we understand. That it is feral and almost uncontrollably countercultural is something that has been largely forgotten or suppressed. This taming has been especially effective in the case of the first gospel. In Maverick Mark, Thurston sets out to rediscover the radicalism of Mark's original message. Thurston focuses on Mark's conception of discipleship, economic justice, and personal lifestyle. She demonstrates that this gospel raises fundamental questions about some common contempo...
The fruit of her determined prayer for a way to give her spirit time to catch up, this pithy reflection on the qualities of time will introduce highly respected biblical scholar, professor, pastor, widow, friend, and author Bonnie Thurston to a wider audience - everyone who is time-pressed and deadline pressured. The news is good: Time is the creation of a generous God who always provides not only the bare essentials, but usually a feast. As the writer of Ecclesiastes mused: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. It is with her trust in this abundance that Thurston explores the mystery of time and the rediscovery of the Judeo-Christian understanding of ti...
By taking a closer look at the “stones” that impeded Jesus’s last week, we are challenged to identify the obstructions to our spiritual lives. When Jesus descends the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem to the acclamation of the crowd, he announces “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” In TheStones of the Last Week, Bonnie B. Thurston reflects on the Passion narratives in Luke 19-24, and explores the many references to stones, both literal and spiritual, that impeded Jesus’s last week with a view to their significance for our own journey to the fullness of life that resurrection offers. The Stones of the Last Week reflects on the impediments to Easter, challenging us to consider our own “stones,”—the difficulties, hindrances, and obstructions in our spiritual lives—from the perspective of talking stones, stones of destruction, impermanent stones, stones that measure distances, and the stone marking life and death. Turn to this enriching resource as Lent unfolds into Easter, or for personal reading and reflection throughout the year.
"With updated bibliography"--Copyright page.
2022 Catholic Media Association second place award in mysticism From its origins in the fourth and fifth centuries, first in monastic circles and then in wider Christian communities, the story of Mary of Egypt was wildly popular. From early Christianity through the medieval periods, from Egypt to Scandinavia, verse lives in Greek, Latin, and vernacular languages portray her as the model of repentance. Continuously venerated in the liturgy and icons of the Orthodox Churches, she is now seldom known in the West. This modern verse life and the accompanying essay reintroduces St. Mary’s extraordinary life, its theological and spiritual implications, and its remarkable depiction of gender complementarity.