Spiritual Practices

Review: Nothing Can Separate Us

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Cover image of "Nothing Can Separate Us" by Howard Thurman

Nothing Can Separate Us

Nothing Can Separate Us (Plough Spiritual Guides), Howard Thurman, edited by Myles Werntz, Introduction by Vincent W. Lloyd. Plough Publishing (ISBN: 9781636081731) 2026.

Summary: The inner work of transformation through which God works to bring reconciliation, justice, and hope.

Plough Publishing is releasing its latest installment in the Plough Spiritual Guides series in September 2026. In this case, it is a collection of the writings of Howard Thurman. He was a pastor and theologian who mentored civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. This guide, like preceding ones in the series offers a brief biography of Thurman followed by a guide to reading him, and then readings from Thurman’s works. Vincent LW. Lloyd, in the latter, observes this distinction between King and Thurman:

“If Martin Luther King, Jr. invites collective struggle to transform the political world, to end racism, Howard Thurman invites interior struggle to transform the self. There is no need for a choice between the two….Thurman demonstrates how we participate in God through struggle, how we struggle against false gods, against those individuals and systems and habits of mind that take themselves to be absolute authorities, and how the struggle within and the struggle without are intimately linked” (p. xxviii).

Lloyd thus offers a précis of the theme connecting the nine selections from Thurman’s writings. These selections, titled in the form of imperatives, offer nine ways we engage with God as we “engage the struggle without.” In “Know Thyself” he invites us to live in the present and in the disarming presence of God that strips us of illusions. Then, in “Love Your Neighbor” he connects our love of God and neighbor. He concludes with the wonder of “being completely and totally understood in the presence of God.”

But what does love have to do with our enemies? In “Love Your Enemies” he identifies three types of enemies the poor and disinherited face. He observes that even enemies are of infinite worth to God. Thus, it is worthy to try to make contact with this imago dei in the person’s life. We do this through forgiveness, leaving vengeance to God. Then, in “Choose Nonviolence” he addresses the nonviolent ethic of Jesus in both personal and national life. He offers the simple axiom that “No one ever wins a fight.” He discusses the choice of violence as the decision to will the non-existence of another.

Instead, we “Learn to Pray.” It is the acknowledgement that we do not want to be left to our own meagre resources. The chapter concludes with a wonderful prayer that models our dependence on God. An example of utter dependence comes from the slave experience and the spirituals that emerged from it. “Wade in the Water” speaks of coming to God in our vulnerability, trusting that God will “trouble the water” in healing. Finally, the road to dependency leads us to “Surrender to God.” Thurman describes in first person terms all the areas involved in full surrender to God.

This inner transformation has outward effects. For example, his call to “Attend to Nature” challenges us to “reverence for all expressions of life.” Likewise it results in an “at-homeness in the world.” Lastly, he calls us to “Live in Community.” He warns us against isolation and of ever thinking of “people” in merely abstract terms.

To devote oneself to seek God’s kingdom and pursue his reconciliation and justice in the world is a lifetime journey. We look for final fulfillment in Christ’s return. The wisdom captured in these nine short chapters from Howard Thurman’s writings capture the inner journey that transforms and sustains us as we seek societal transformation. The danger in any form of struggle against evil is to become like that against which we struggle. Thurman writes of the inner spiritual transformation that guards our hearts and makes reconciliation and healing possible.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Becoming a Person of Welcome

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Cover image of "Becoming a Person of Welcome" by Laura Baghdassarian Murray

Becoming a Person of Welcome

Becoming a Person of Welcome, Laura Baghdassarian Murray, foreword by Tod Bolsinger. IVP | Formatio (ISBN: 9781514011942) 2025.

Summary: Hospitality as embodying a posture that we carry with us rather than just an activity at our “place.”

Behind the Christian talk of “hospitality,” I think there is a lot of resistance. We think of hosting gatherings with exquisite food in homes that look like something out of the pages of Architectural Digest. And many of us just don’t have homes, apartments, or culinary skills to measure up. (We won’t even talk about cleaning!). Furthermore, often hospitality is treated as “women’s work,” an effort in which women bear all the burden. Martha, do I hear an “Amen!”

Laura Baghdassarian Murray grew up in a hospitable Armenian family who experienced generous welcome when they emigrated to the United States. In this book, she writes out of family, community, and church leadership to describe a vision of hospitality as a posture. Instead of something we do at a place, as much to impress as to host, she explores how we may become persons of welcome wherever we go.

She begins by exploring how our preconceptions of hospitality limit us from becoming a welcoming presence in all the places of our lives. Then she turns to consider God as first host, a theme to which she will recur. We welcome because God has welcomed us in creation and salvation.

She explores the difference between counterfeit hospitality, often a veiled form of hostility, and authentic welcome. Then at times, hospitality is a tit-for-tat exchange of gifts rather than uncalculating generosity. But sometimes hospitality is hard because of past hurts. Murray describes some of her own experiences of wounds and healing. Murray deals realistically with setting boundaries and creating guidelines

Behind all this is the inner work of hospitality. In addition to a discussion of our vision and inner preparation, each chapter concludes with spiritual practices that help us cultivate a welcoming presence.

The final chapter discusses how “closing the loop” helps lay the basis for new beginnings. And befitting closure, she concludes the books with these words:

“We can always find our home in God. And our world needs reminders that we can always come home. God constantly welcomes us home, whether he walks toward us or we walk toward him. May we become people who carry welcome wherever we go and help others find their home in God” (p. 125).

I most love the idea in this book that our hospitality is rooted in God’s hospitality. And Murray offers us spiritual practices to help us make that connection. The study guide makes this a great resource for groups. For this reason, I’d love to see leadership teams in churches read this. Wouldn’t it be great if we became known as the places of welcome in our lonely and disconnected society?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The New Anabaptists

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Cover image of "The New Anabaptist" by Stuart Murray

The New Anabaptists, Stuart Murray. Herald Press (ISBN: 9781513812984) 2024.

Summary: An effort to describe the practices emerging Anabaptist communities embody with three case studies as examples.

In 2010, Stuart Murray published The Naked Anabaptist, articulating the core convictions that have shaped the Anabaptist movement. In recent years, working with Mennonite church planting efforts, it became evident that a follow-up work was needed to, as it were, “clothe the naked Anabaptist” (this was considered as a title for this book). What Murray offers here is a description of common practices, reflecting Anabaptist heritage, that characterize these emerging communities. In six chapters, he explores twelve practices common to these communities. Following this, three case studies of diverse Anabaptist communities exemplify these qualities.

Murray’s first practice is a commitment to start with Jesus. He offers examples of war, baptism, tithing, oaths, and women in leadership to show how a commitment to start with Jesus works in each of these matters. Rather than treat the Bible as a “flat” book in which all parts have equal weight, he proposes that Anabaptists read all scripture in light of Jesus and treat the gospels as starting points.

Building on this, the other practices include baptism of would-be disciples and communion as a peace meal. Communion is understood as a celebration of Jesus’ radical work of peacemaking and it is a real meal, enjoyed in community. Closely related to this is the Anabaptist practice of hospitality, extending from shared meal to offering refuge. A commitment to a multi-voiced church in which members listen to each other include multi-voiced worship and biblical interpretation, non-hierarchical leadership, and consensual decision-making. I especially appreciate these last two in light of the abuses of leadership power and the stifling of dissent in authoritarian churches. Murray follows this by practices of truthtelling–mutual accountability and truth-telling, extending beyond not needing oaths to trustworthiness in our speech and actions.

The next two practices affirmed are simplicity and sharing. The author argues here against tithing, which he believes to have no New Testament foundation. Rather, the call is to live an uncluttered and generous lifestyle. This is reflected in a commitment to mutual aid and commonality. Finally, he describes practices of Anabaptist witness. This includes ethical evangelism: inviting without inducing, persuading without pressuring, friendship without strings, sensitivity without compromise, and humility that foreswears having all the answers. Anabaptist witness is also a peace witness. This means emphasizing restorative justice. And it means building bridges of understanding between different cultures and faiths.

In the second part of the book, three women offer case studies of emerging communities. Alexandra Ellish describes the Incarnate project of planting Anabaptist communities in the UK. Karen Sethuraman describes one of these communities, SoulSpace Belfast. She also shares the core values of a spinoff, Soulspace Bristol, an embodiment of Murray’s practices. Finally, Juliet Kilpin offers an account of Peaceful Borders. It offers support to a concentration of asylum seekers and refugees in Calais, France. Appendices to the book summarize core convictions and practices, and offer a liturgy for gathering around the table.

In concluding, Murray proposes that what he is doing is to articulate the spirituality and practices of post-Christendom churches. I think he properly diagnoses our moment. Rather than trying to return to the Christendom project, Murray returns to Jesus and practices reflecting a gospel-centered understanding of discipleship.

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Disclosure of Material Conection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Spirituality of Dreaming

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Cover image of "The Spirituality of Dreaming"

The Spirituality of Dreaming, Kelly Bulkeley. Broadleaf Books (ISBN: 9781506483146), 2023.

Summary: A dream researcher explores both the science and spirituality of dreaming.

Kelly Bulkeley is a dream and philosophy of religion researcher who believes dreaming and attention to our dreams can be a spiritual practice. I should mention at the outset that the “spiritual” here is not necessarily connected with a particular religious tradition but rather to the “spiritual” aspect of our lives. That said, the author does reference dream accounts from the Bible (Joseph, Jacob, and Samuel) as well as other religious texts as well as numerous patients and other contemporary persons. He contends that attention to our dreams connects our conscious and subconscious lives, allowing us to live with greater self and social awareness.

He explores how we sleep. Surprisingly, in many societies, it is together with others rather than alone. He also notes our society’s aversion to sleep and proposes the idea of sleep as a form of resistance to our “always on” society. He discusses the neurophysiology of dreaming and the four categories into which many dreams fall: aggressive, sexual, gravitational and mystic and the metaphorical character of dreams that helps in our understanding. He explores dream sharing including the dream-sharing groups he facilitates. He also offers some cautions about sharing dreams and an alternative to imposed interpretations. He suggests if we do nothing more than to begin to attend to and reflect upon our dreams, we will find our dreams, our sleep, and ourselves changing.

The second part of the book describes some of the work Bulkeley and others are engaged in in developing analytic tools to study dream accounts collected in the Sleep and Dreams Database (SDDb), an open access digital archive. In successive chapters, he considers dream content relating to animals and nature, gods and other spiritual beings, and dreams of the dying and those visited in dreams by the recently deceased. He notes how many dreams of the dying have journey themes and the comfort this affords those who are dying.

The third part explores some cutting edge developments in the field of lucid dreaming. This is a state in which one becomes aware that one is dreaming, and some would introduce training to achieve this ability use brain monitoring to further enhance this experience or even control the dream experience and content. It’s obvious that the author has ethical and mental health concerns of anything beyond self-awareness of lucid dreaming as interrupting healthy sleep cycles or even being potentially manipulative. Instead he urges the idea of dreaming as creative play, using the example of Mary Shelley’s dreams and the creative social commentary that emerged in her Frankenstein. In the end Bulkeley eschews technology for the dream journal and the approach of collecting and subjecting to content analysis the accounts of dreams. He offers an example of one dream contributor, unknown to him, whose dream content over time offered an accurate and insightful account of her life. One can see how tools like the SDDb could enhance dream journaling.

The book’s subtitle may be overstated: “Unlocking the Wisdom of Our Sleeping Selves.” My sense is that we often look for sources of “hidden knowledge.” I wonder if self-awareness or attunement might be a better descriptor–understanding the fears, longings, life-experiences and more that are expressed in our dreams. There may be a kind of “wisdom” in that, to be sure. And this is the value I found in Bulkeley’s book. I fear we are often disconnected from ourselves, and dreams help us find our way to ourselves. His descriptions were helpful of dream sharing groups and the playful approach to our dreams, as well as some warnings of rabbit holes one might fall into (similar to unsupported use of psychoactive drugs by unstable individuals).

Like many, I know I dream, but forget most of these. This book makes me wonder about keeping pen and paper by the bedside. As a Christian, we are told that “old men will dream dreams” (I qualify). I am prompted to wonder if I miss things from God, or even my own subconscious. Bulkeley’s book has at least made me curious.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: Hopeful Lament

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Hopeful Lament, Terra McDaniel. Downers Grove: IVP/Formatio, 2023.

Summary: Out of a string of experiences of loss, the writer, a spiritual director writes about grief, lament, and the hope inherent in biblical lament.

Terra McDaniel and her family went through a season of life where her friends began to liken her to Job. Their house burned to the ground, their daughter lost a child amid a life-threatening miscarriage, and her husband lost his pastoral position, resulting in their deparure from a church community they helped nurture from a home group.

As a spiritual director, and with the aid of others, she turned to the practice of lament to tend her grief. She writes because she believes we all need to recover the practice of lament. If nothing else, we’ve all lived through the experience of loss and grief in the pandemic, and the societal and environmental upheavals of recent years. And lament both heals and engenders hope in allowing us to express our griefs, all our emotions, questions and losses to God rather than being caught in a downward spiral.

Over ten chapters, she walks us through how this is so. Lament gives us permission to grieve and not suppress our grief but walk through it. Lament allows us to speak our sadness, with biblical lament offering us language to express our sorrows to God. Lament allows us to give our vulnerability, our “broken hallelujahs” to God and to discover that this is enough. She explores trauma and how it manifests physically and the practices that allow one to gently and safely lament trauma. She addresses how we lament when what we’ve lost is a toxic Christian community and the complicated work of both grieving and confessing our own complicity. Sometimes grief comes to whole families and she offers guidance of how we do that both individually and together, particularly with children who may grieve differently but need to grieve, whether it is the loss of a pet or a parent. Finally, she explores how we make our way through lament to life beginning anew.

Each of the chapters is accompanied with an exercise with suggestions both for adults and children. And this is one of the strengths of the work, its recognition that lament is important to children and shared experiences, whether making collages, using our bodies to express how we feel, or terra divina, identifying an object in nature and thinking about what God might say to us through the object.

McDaniel’s book gives permission to “feel all the feels” and express them to God, to take the time to tend and go through our grief, and offers ways to give voice both verbally and bodily, with all our being, to our laments. She shows sensitivity to safety, to what triggers, and to times when we need to get help. It’s a book born of real-life experience honestly shared. We and those we love will face loss. This book, along with caring friends, can be a trusted companion offering help and hope.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Intentional Year

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The Intentional Year, Holly Packiam and Glenn Packiam. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2022.

Summary: An invitation to stop, assess, and plan around five clusters of practices that enable us to live purposeful lives.

It’s the time of the year we make resolutions out of a sense that our lives are not all they could be. It’s a good impulse as far as it goes. The problem is that, for most of us, it doesn’t go very far.

What we often lack is intention. The co-authors of this book, sharing out of their own yearly practice, suggest that we intentionally “stop for the purpose of moving forward.” They encourage us to take time, perhaps at the beginning of a new year, to assess our lives, looking back at our recent past, reviewing five spheres of life to think about what live giving practices or rhythms may help us flourish, and then establishing plans in each of these areas that reflect God’s word for us as we’ve assessed.

The book commends a three-fold process:

Reflection: First, we are encouraged to look back over the year, its highs and lows using the prayer of examen. Then they suggest considering what our review of our year suggests about what season we are in. Are there recurring themes? And through all this, are we hearing a “word” from the Lord. What do our trusted friends think of this word–do they hear the Lord in it?

Inventory: This involves taking a look at five spheres of our lives and the spiritual practices that undergird them. Are they life-giving for us, and if this is not the case, what practices might help us develop healthier rhythms? The five areas are:

  1. Prayer. The authors share several practices including psalm praying, silence, and lectio divina as new practices.
  2. Rest. Here, ideas for practicing sabbath are discussed and how this may cultivate a life of freedom.
  3. Renewal. Physical, mental, and emotional renewal are discussed, including setting aside time for reading and for gratitude.
  4. Circles of Relationship. We’re helped here to identify the concentric circles of relationships we have and how we might set priorities for these circles.
  5. Habits of Work. Vocation is briefly touched on, reflecting the intersection of God’s glory, the world’s good, and our joy, and then thinking about the shape of good work well done.

Action: The idea here is “making it stick. The authors walk us through the five spheres again in light of God’s word to us and challenge us to get specific with ONE practice for each sphere and what we will do daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly to implement and review our progress. Then the last thing is to get these plans into our calendar.

The book is set up so that it may be used over a weekend retreat or a series of day. The aim of developing rhythms of intentionality is to position ourselves under God’s grace to be fruitful. The co-authors conclude:

“That means the intentional year–your intentional life!–is not really about you. It’ s about how your life becomes good news for the world. The rhythms of prayer, rest, renewal, relationships, and work that you cultivate in your life are meant to produce fruit for the sake of others, gifts for the good of the church and the world. When you’re healthy, intentional, and living in freedom, peace, and purpose, others benefit. Yes, Irenaeus was right: The glory of God is the human fully alive” (p. 195).

Tired of failed resolutions yet want this to be a year of living well in Christ? This book offers a simple process, lots of practical guidance and examples, and reflection prompts and questions that can help you to be more intentional about your life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.