Showing results by publisher "Paraclete Press" in All Categories

A young writer is drawn to a small New England town in search of meaning for her life. Soon, she encounters kindness, romance, and is pulled into a mystery centered on an old, abandoned church and the death of a special girl. Are the images that only she can see in the church's stained-glass windows a warning, or is someone trying to reach her, to help heal this broken community?

Discussion around the bestseller The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher has led many people to want to know more about Benedictine principles. Originally written for monks, the principles in the Rule of St. Benedict may be applied by anyone—and in today's hectic, changing world, following its principles offers a rich spiritual connection to the stability and wisdom of monastic life.

40 Days with the Holy Spirit will inspire you to encounter God in fresh and surprising ways. You’ll develop stronger spiritual muscles as you breathe, read, reflect, and pray—all with an eye to cultivating a relationship with the least familiar member of the Trinity.

Each day of Advent, a different animal shows children its own amazing way to meet the dark and cold. Wood Frog freezes into a frog-shaped cube of ice! For six months, Painted Turtle doesn’t breathe! Woodchuck can’t be wakened, even if shaken! With each creature, children hear the refrain: The dark is not an end. It’s a door. It’s the way a new beginning comes.

Every town has its secrets. When it becomes known that Mr. Nicholas, the eccentric owner of the local hardware store, is somehow involved with reindeer, toys, and children, the town becomes more and more suspicious that this man is more than just a clerk on Main Street. JB, a clever, open, ten-year-old boy with Down syndrome, is able to figure out the secret from the first time Mr. Nicholas gives him a chocolate deer wrapped in gold foil.

Rooted in the grit of urban Baltimore and the forests of rural Massachusetts, these poems remind us that life's tensions and polarities are energies we carry within ourselves. These are poems of witness and commentary, conversation and meditation. They offer moments of close looking, and of looking away; of loving, and of bungled attempts to be more loving. They call us to look long and hard and generously at our lives. Written with radiant honesty and fierce tenderness, they suggest a path of inner discovery where mystery awaits us in the ordinary.

New poetry from Scott Cairns on containing the uncontainable. Often, when speaking of what he has called the poetic operation of language, Scott Cairns has characterized that event as our “glimpsing an indeterminate, inexhaustible enormity within a discrete space.” This is the poet’s continuing fascination with lacunae, those spaces, those openings that offer more within than appearances can register from outside the ostensible covert of their terms.

Laurie Brock, Episcopal priest, messy Christian, and horse lover, shares the experiences of love, grief, humility, joy, and deep wisdom that she discovers day to day with horses. From barely-there trails in the Grand Tetons to muddy fields in the Kentucky Bluegrass, God is revealed in the simple ways of these magnificent creatures. For anyone feeling doubtful, distracted, or anxious in these challenging times, Laurie brings us back to center, reminding us to breathe, get back on the saddle, and move beyond the familiar into the freedom of something new.

There is no sure route through grieving. Jerusha McCormack provides instead a series of signposts by which we may find our own path to a new life.

Clare of Assisi is generally known as “the female friend” of Saint Francis of Assisi and for centuries her legacy has remained obscured by his shadow. Yet Clare’s life and story ought to shine in its own light and on its own terms (her name, after all, means “light”). She is a figure of true heroism, tenacity, beatitude and grit who plotted her improbable course in the context of the raucous and explosive period of the Middle Ages.

When you have an experience and tell the story of that experience to someone, something sacred happens inside of you. That experience doesn’t have to be an extravagant moment, but it can be beautiful, nonetheless. And as you store up all those stories and share them, you grow your world’s boundaries. You build community and remind yourself that every moment of your life counts for something holy, good, and glorious.

Each day of Advent a different animal shows children its own amazing way to meet the dark and cold. Wood Frog freezes into a frog-shaped cube of ice! For six months Painted Turtle doesn't breathe! Woodchuck can't be wakened, even if shaken! With each creature, children hear the refrain: The dark is not an end. It's a door. It's the way a new beginning comes.

Pangolins and polar bears, olms, lemurs, and leopards. We share this beautiful blue-green globe with creatures magnificent, delicate, intricate - and now vanishing at a faster rate than at any other time in Earth’s history. Spend Lent with 25 of these wild ones. Vivid descriptions of their lives will fill listeners with wonder - and grief at what they suffer on a planet shaped by human choices. Their stories thaw our stiff hearts and wake us to greater compassion - which is what Lent, meaning “springtime”, has always been for.

Do you long to live the abundant life that Jesus promised his followers? If so, then you will want to weave the threads of beauty, truth, life, and love into the tapestry of your life. When these essentials are each present in some measure in our relationships, ministries, vocations, and life choices, then we are more likely to find ourselves living a good and abundant life with God.

A gift of hope and encouragement to all parents and their children, on the 5th Anniversary of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Got a minute? Thanks to beloved Franciscan priest and retreat leader Fr. Albert Haase, that's all you need to stay in touch with the Gospel every Sunday through the Church year. Inspired by his early days in a busy urban parish, Sundays on the Go is Fr. Albert's gift to busy Catholics–just enough to keep you on track with Jesus, even when you're on the run!

How much time is enough to be with God? While it could be the 40 days, or years, used so often in the Bible, it’s also possible that simply stealing a few minutes, from the busyness of each day, is enough time to be in Kairos, “God time”. The same is true for the space needed to find God. Whether it be in a deserted place or one filled with activity, whatever space we can carve out to find God - or to make enough room to be found - is enough space.

Open a window each day of Advent onto the natural world. The author reads 25 descriptions of wild animals of the northern hemisphere ingeniously adapting when darkness and cold descend. All of them reveal the ancient wisdom of Advent: The dark is not an end but a door, the way a new beginning comes. These short, daily reflections paint vivid, poetic images of familiar animals.

In This Child of Faith, mother and son writing team Sophfronia Scott and Tain Gregory share stories, experiences, and ideas to help parents get to the heart of the question: How do you help a child have faith - real faith that they own - in the challenging world we live in today? This is a fascinating look at the journey of three souls, Tain’s and his parents’, that began with Tain enrolling in Sunday School and led to a strong life of faith for all of them.

There is no sure route through grieving. Jerusha McCormack provides, instead, a series of signposts by which we may find our own path to a new life. “We are all amateurs at grief,” she writes, “it comes to us all; we must all go through it.