The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The talks on which this book was based were given at the John Main Seminar in 1998, the annual international event of the World Community for Christian Meditation. Previous presenters have included the Dalai Lama, Jean Vanier, Bede Griffiths, and William Johnston. Father Keating’s enlightening commentary on the contemplative meaning of the gospel, particularly the story of the siblings from Bethany, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, fits into the great monastic tradition of Christian teaching. A monk reflects on Scripture in the light of experience. He or she utters a word that startles his listeners into realizing that tradition is not a matter of secondhand experience but the living and human self-transmission of Christ to his disciples.
Save more when you purchase this book as part of the Thomas Keating Collection.
Key Features
- Provides instructional guidebooks, workbooks, and daily devotionals to ease you into silent worship
- Combines contemporary psychological wisdom with time-tested spiritual strategies
- Presents valuable insights and practical application
Top Highlights
“The thrust of Jesus’ initial teaching in the Gospel is the challenge to grow up” (Page 18)
“ is unsettling for us to realize that, mixed in with our good intentions, are these infantile attitudes. They” (Page 17)
“Up till the end of this century, Christian theology has been discussed in terms of Neo-Platonism or Aristotelianism. Now we have to leave behind our former ways of trying to explain the Christian mystery and open ourselves to the great Hebrew intuition that the human being is a body-mind-spirit composite.” (Page 123)
“Rather, Jesus is believed to have descended into the psychological state of hell and undergone the ultimate alienation from God that is the essence of sin.” (Page 118)
“The tradition has structured this process into sacred reading, reflecting (pondering), responding (that is, reacting with prayer), and resting in God. All these moments, so to speak, on the circle of relating to Christ are in the service of the final one, which is resting in God.” (Page 40)
Praise for the Print Edition
This book is easy and enjoyable to read. Those who are interested in ‘the better part’ will be pleased and encouraged to find ways to help themselves along the path.
—Catholic Library World
The Better Part is a modest volume in size but capacious in its wisdom and common (spiritual) sense. . . . It would be wonderful for someone to interview Keating at length and publish the results as a book. His capacity to say profound things in a relatively brief space is pure gift. The final 27 pages of Q&A are worth the price of the book. I wished only for more.
—Lawrence S. Cunningham
Any meditator using any method of wordless, imageless prayer will find this book a rich source of wisdom and very practical advice.
—Betty Fricke
The ‘better part,’ of course, is that chosen by the introspective Mary of Bethany in the New Testament story, whose experience has long been taken by the contemplative religious. Father Keating, leader of the Centering Prayer movement, understands the contemplative and prayerful life as a form of participation in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and his book is both a graceful description of that life and a how-to. For most collections.
—Library Journal
- Title: The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living
- Author: Thomas Keating
- Publisher: Continuum
- Print Publication Date: 2007
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Pages: 128
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Contemplation › Congresses; Spiritual life › Catholic Church--Congresses
- ISBNs: 9780826428202, 0826412297, 9780826412294, 0826428207
- Resource ID: LLS:STGSCNTMPMNT
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:57:33Z