Review: The Way of the Heart

About two months ago I picket up
Have been contemplating the role of silence in everyday life (we don’t get enough). This little booklet (i find out after buying it) is actually written for priests and pastors as a guide to help explain to their flock the role of solitude, silence and prayer in connecting to the “other side”. Henri J. M. Nouwen (author of lots of stuff) draws on the experiences and teachings of the “Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth century”. His goal was to see if they had anything to teach us in the 21st century about. They do. Some useful passages:

“In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us to keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and re-creative word to the present world.”
“The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart.” - a practice of many paths. Basically use prayer (or mantra) to disengage your mind from the present and reach the heart (god).
“a word or sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness and thus to listen to the voice of God.”
“Our compulsive, wordy, and mind-oriented world has a firm grip on us, and we need a very strong and persistent discipline not to be squeezed to death by it. By their solitude, silence, and unceasing prayer the Desert Fathers show us the way.”

This little journal is not very useful to someone not already on a journey. And may be a little inaccessible to non-ministers. But it is very insightful reading. And enlightening of a Fourth Century group of people I had never heard of before. I always like learning new stuff.

I rate this a 3 of 5.