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Showing posts from April, 2017

My Review of "Radical Spirit"

Joan Chittister's Radical Spirit: 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life continues her literary tradition of making Benedictine spirituality accessible for new generations.  I read her Distilled from the Daily several years ago and found her spiritual wisdom deep and transformative.  In Radical Spirit Chittister focuses on the tough "spiritual hinge" of Benedict's Rule:  The 12 steps of humility. Through her judicious use of spiritual parables from around the world and events from her own life, Chittister engages readers with narrative and humor, drawing them down a path to self-revelation and spiritual grounding.  These thoughtfully choreographed chapters address the individual and offer an antidote to contemporary trends where "demagoguery is the new political brand, where narcissism is too often misunderstood to be leadership."  Chittister writes that humility is the corrective to dangerous grandiosity, which "in religion ... makes i