The Folks in the Woods focuses on Mary Ann Ackerson, 1904-91, in an isolated French village located in southeast Missouri. When she was seven years old, her parents--Daly and Sarah Ackeson--died of typhoid fever on successive days in 1911. Because Missouri was not yet a state, there were no adoption procedures for Mary Ann and her two brothers and one sister. The author's maternal great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Zeno and Sarah Osia, took Mary Ann to live with them. She grew up wit...

This book presents forty-two reflections on biblical names for God in an abecedarian (A through Z) format. The names, terms by which God is known, are not biblically exhaustive. These entries present spiritual reflections, grounded in Scripture, with Psalm responses, questions for meditation and/or journaling, and prayers designed to nourish spirituality at any time. Beginning with Abba, Alpha, and Ancient One, individual entries continue through the alphabet to Yahweh and Zion. By reflect...

Prayer, the raising of the heart to God, is the heart of the Christian life. For the author of Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, prayer is the habit of being in the presence of God. One of the primary ways Jesus is characterized in Luke's Gospel is that of a pray-er. Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles are portrayed being in God's presence. Prayer is the topic of this book; it highlights the passages where Jesus is found praying in the Gospel and where the apostles...

Because there is no single word that translates the Hebrew word hesed and the Greek word eleos, multiple words are used in English biblical translations. Mercy is the most frequently used word in English, but forgiveness, generosity, pity, and others are also used. Using 106 biblical texts gathered from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Old Testament Apocrypha, and the Christian Bible (New Testament), a representative sample of the various ways hesed and eleos are translated is present...

If there were only one Paul in the Christian Bible (New Testament), it would not be so difficult to understand him. However, there are three faces (and maybe more) of Paul found in the Bible. In biblical book order, there is the Acts-of-the-Apostles Paul; this Paul is generated by the same author--whoever he was--who wrote Luke's Gospel. Second, there is genuine Paul, the author of seven letters. Third, there are the multiple faces of second-generation Paul; these faces represent believers...

The Spirit of the Lord God presents seventy-three biblical-based reflections on the invisible power and life-source of God, known as Spirit, in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), Old Testament (Apocrypha), and the Christian Bible (New Testament). Each exercise begins with a biblical quotation about the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, or Spirit. The biblical words are followed by an in-depth reflection highlighting both the names for and the images of the Holy Spirit ...

Christ Our Passover Has Been Sacrificed examines the paschal mystery as it is presented throughout the liturgical year in The Roman Missal. After offering an in-depth definition of the paschal mystery the author guides the reader through Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and more, mining the riches of paschal mystery spirituality. Biblical accounts interpret the death and resurrection of Jesus; liturgical texts in The Roman Missal present a rich seam of spiritual truth for the reader to ...

The adjective spiritual refers to aspects of one's spirit. The idea that each person possesses an immaterial and immortal soul, which is distinct from the body, did not appear in Jewish (biblical) literature before the Babylonian exile. After interacting with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies, the word nephesh entered Hebrew, meaning living being--not the dichotomous Hellenistic meaning. Thus, the biblical soul refers to a living, breathing, conscious body. According to biblical literat...

The Bible has multiple creation accounts. Most people know or have heard of the one which took six days, but they are not familiar with the rest. Biblical creation stories are plural because they are hypothetical inventions by various biblical authors. The simple fact of the matter is that there was no one present when creation occurred. Thus, with no firsthand experience, various biblical authors--each with his own biases and politics--wrote one. Biblical creation stories are about the ac...

Smothered with Inexhaustible Mercy: An Anthology of Poems represents almost fifty years of well-known spiritual master Mark G. Boyer's poetry writing. After writing seventy books of prose on spirituality and history, he has collected over two hundred of his poems and divided them into nineteen chapters (collections). You will find poems on Alaska, Christmas, Colorado, day and night, Easter, friendship, ocean, seasons, wind and rain, and more. Over the years, a few were published in now out...

This book presents one hundred reflections on the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The seasons of the year bring change to people. Winter heating gives way to spring and summer air conditioning. The new life of spring--trees leafing, bulbs blooming, grass growing--brought about by rain turns into summer maintenance. Summer maintenance diminishes as the autumn chill begins to spread across the land, and T-shirts and shorts are exchanged for sweaters and jeans. Coats are bro...

Living Parables: Today's Versions presents parables in updated language and images. Biblical parables are culture-bound; they are embedded in images that were well-known to a Jewish culture. Jesus was a first-century, Jewish, Galilean peasant, and his concerns, speech, and idioms belong to that culture. His milieu is far removed from ours today. The images found in parables carried meaning that is lost on modern audiences. A simple example will suffice. In the Jewish world of the first cen...