Search results for ""bluebridge""

In Embracing the Seasons Gunilla Norris shares her soulful and thought-provoking observations of a year lived in the countryside and reflects on the abundance and meaning of nature and its cycles of renewal. This journey through the seasons has been shaped by being home in an old farmhouse with its large garden of flowers, vegetables, brook and pond, surrounded by a country landscape of stone walls, woodlots, and living creatures. The book begins in the spring, with the birds singing in the darkness of dawn and the buds knobbing up on the trees and bushes, and then circles through the warmth and richness of summer, the golden bounty of fall, and the dark serenity of winter. Until it is spring once more. Embracing the Seasons opens our eyes to ordinary wonders and not so ordinary meanings in the small events and encounters of the everyday. By illuminating the joy and beauty of daily life, it is an invitation to find and honor the sacred in the place we call home.

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Not only accepting but celebrating getting old, this inspirational and illuminating work looks at the many facets of the aging process, from purposes and challenges to struggles and surprises.

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Looking deeply into biblical stories of female friendships in order to extract greater truths, this compelling work explores the sacred dimension of friendship through the lenses of faith, tradition, and scripture, revealing the often overlooked voices and experiences of women in the Old and New Testaments. Recovering and reclaiming the witness and wisdom of such women as Lydia, Prisca, Phoebe, Martha, Deborah, Esther, Rachel, Ruth, Veronica, Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary Magdalene, and drawing a highly inspiring message from each of these women's lives, the book embraces friendship as it is embodied by women, between God and all of creation, and between all human beings.

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The beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago. Beguines were laywomen, not nuns, and they did not live in monasteries. They practiced a remarkable way of living independently, and they were never a religious order or a formalized movement. But there were common elements that these medieval women shared across Europe, including their visionary spirituality, their unusual business acumen, and their courageous commitment to the poor and sick. Beguines were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them. They lived by themselves or in communities called beguinages, which could be single homes for just a few women or, as in Brugge, Brussels, and Amsterdam, walled-in rows of houses where hundreds of beguines lived together--a village of women within a medieval town or city. Among the beguines were celebrated spiritual writers and mystics, including Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrijs of Nazareth, Hadewijch, and Marguerite Porete--who was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in Paris in 1310. She was not the only beguine suspected of heresy, and often politics were the driving force behind such charges. The beguines, across the centuries, have left us a great legacy. They invite us to listen to their voices, to seek out their wisdom, to discover them anew.

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