5 minute read
Media Reviews
By Susan Hines-Brigger
CreativeMornings: Expanding Our Minds and Creativity
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By nature, we are all curious and have a desire to learn things. Our range of interests, though, can be as varied as we are. We are also creative beings. And that’s where CreativeMornings (CreativeMornings.com) comes in.
The organization was founded in 2008 by Tina Roth Eisenberg out of a desire for an ongoing, accessible event for New York’s creative community. According to its website, the concept was simple: breakfast and a short talk one Friday morning a month. The events would be free of charge and open to anyone. Over time, the gatherings have spread to over 207 cities all over the world.
But for those who can’t or would prefer not to attend those in-person meetings, CreativeMornings has another option to offer, which is their FieldTrips. These free online events are meetups to interact, learn, and collaborate in an effort to take your creative life to the next level.
Topics of the FieldTrips range from the practical, such as tips for boosting the SEO on your website or tools for a healthier home/ work culture, to the more personal, such as “A Guided Creative Journey to Hold Space for the Place between Grief & Joy.” Sometimes the sessions are as simple as providing you with some time to focus and get stuff done.
In addition to these two offerings, the organization’s website is a treasure trove of information and inspiration in itself. There you can find 9,423 CreativeMornings talks that you can sort by categories such as themes, cities, lengths, and languages. There is also a podcast and blog that are full of additional content.
The only downside to the CreativeMornings experience, I would say, is that once you discover the vast amount of content and wide array of presenters it offers in all the various formats, you will want to keep going back again and again. There is just too much good material and not enough time.
Still, finding some time to stretch your creative muscles is always a good thing, and CreativeMornings has found a great way to help people do that, in whatever format they choose.
ICONS
By Julie Horne Traubert
A Perfect Primer on Prayer
LEARNING TO PRAY
BY JAMES MARTIN, SJ
Harper One
—from Learning to Pray “Everyone can pray.” True to form, Father James Martin, SJ, has once again gifted readers with a treasure of a book. Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone is accessible, rooted in Scripture, and truly is for everyone. This practical yet spiritual guide is for the novice, the active contemplative, or someone who has been praying for years. As such, it provides a means to build a more authentic relationship with God and his son, Jesus.
In 18 chapters, Martin dissects all kinds of prayer and offers examples from his own life to inform us on our journey. Much of the book is about spiritual maturity and recognizing that while there is no one specific way to pray, the measure of our spiritual growth evolves from how close we find ourselves in relationship with God. In particular, Martin helps readers to learn to recognize the voice of God through the process of discernment so that they may trust it is God’s voice and not the voice that rattles around inside our brains.
According to Martin, everyone’s prayer and approach is valid. This is less a how-to book and more a way to appreciate different forms of prayer. No matter how you approach prayer, be it in the quiet of a sanctuary or through a walk in the woods, your relationship with God results less from how you pray and more from being open to the call to prayer, which comes from God.
To be certain, there are “ways to pray,” and Martin uses the Jesuit Examen as one kind of formal approach, but praying is not like onestop shopping. The trick is to determine, with God’s help, what works best for you. Once you recognize that the call to God comes from God, all that is required is “a willingness to open your heart to the God who is seeking you.”
All readers, no matter the stage or place of their prayer life, will find this powerful yet simple book an exceptional tool and will come to recognize that it is a loving, kind, and compassionate God who is calling us to make the journey to find ourselves in union with the Divine.
Reviewed by James A. Percoco, a nationally recognized history educator with more than 35 years of teaching experience.
CHURCH, INTERRUPTED
BY JOHN CORNWELL
Chronicle Prism
Many felt a sense of hope when Pope Francis was chosen to lead the Church in 2013. Papal biographer John Cornwell did too. This hope, he says, is focused not only on Church renewal but on the world at large.
Cornwell walks readers through the past eight eventful years, telling the story of a pope who leads with a disarming compassion and humility and who is not afraid to tackle controversial issues. He highlights how the pope has interrupted and questioned some of the most traditional tenets of the Catholic Church and Vatican tradition, leading to changes in perspective and behavior. At its core, Cornwell says, this papacy is giving the world a new vision of Catholicism.
Under the oppressive shadow of the COVID19 pandemic, civil strife, and bitter political divides, we’re still inundated with the call to obtain, consume, discard, repeat. This can’t be good for our well-being—physical, psychological, and spiritual. Kyle Kramer, author of St. Anthony Messenger’s At Home on Earth column and director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, offers a practical and sustainable way out of the cave of consumerism in his latest book, Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living.
As a fellow pilgrim on the way to a healthier lifestyle that removes the unneeded clutter— both material and spiritual—Kramer explores why simplicity is important and how to engage it in essential aspects of our lives, including work, family, finance, nutrition, and recreation.
NEW RELEASE
BY KYLE KRAMER
