Review: Speaking with Spirit: 52 Prayers to Guide, Inspire, and Uplift You
Speaking with Spirit: 52 Prayers to Guide, Inspire, and Uplift You by Agapi Stassinopoulos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
You get 52 reflections (2-3 pages each) on various aspects of Life, that if you actually have any experience with might help; however, I found it difficult to relate to most of them. Each reflection opens with a personal anecdote and a little self analysis that I felt would apply more specifically to the author than to me. Increasing the disconnect is the actual form of the Prayer. If your spirituality is more independent of the established religions and you are comfortable with more generic language, the Prayers probably are not that bad … but I just could not get past the opening of Dear Beloved and ending with So Be It for all of them. The language is generic enough to potentially fit within any tradition … or no tradition; but that actually makes it difficult to connect to somebody with a solid connection to a particular tradition … which is the primary issue that I had with this (for me, there just was no spark and spirituality is all about the spark). While I [think] I understand what the author was going for, it was enough beyond my comfort zone to impede any spiritual benefit I might have found if the topic were more relevant to me.
Introduction
Living
1: My Birthday Wish: May My Life Be an Offering
2: How to Dial the Spirit for Directions
3: It’s Not a Trade; It’s an Offering
4: The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
5: The Gifts That Lie in the In-Between Times
6: God, Help Me Laugh Again!
7: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
8: The Courage to Give All Parts of Yourself a Voice
9: Putting the Day to Rest
Creating
10: Reviving Your Enthusiasm for Each New Day
11: Hearing the Whisper of Your Creativity
12: Asking God to Come with Me to My Job Interview
13: You Hold the Keys to Your Purpose
Becoming
14: Becoming You: The Greatest Accomplishment
15: The God Diet
16: The Hidden Gifts of Being Alone
17: Replace Your Addiction with God
18: The Imprisonment of Perfectionism
19: The Importance of Feeling Unimportant
20: Our Divine Right to Heal
21: To Thine Own Self Be True
22: You Are Never Really Abandoned
23: Stand in Your Mighty Self and Banish Self-Doubt
Overcoming
24: How to Get Out of a Toxic Environment
25: You’re Bigger Than Your Fear
26: The Discouragement Trap
27: The the Wisdom in Your Disappointment
28: Reframing Failure to Your Advantage
29: In the Eye of the Hurricane: Finding Calm in Crisis
30: Having the Freedom to Choose How You React
31: Resetting Your Balance
32: Yes, You Can Kick the Worry Habit
33: When You Shut Others Out, You Shut Yourself Down
Loving
34: The Gift of Praying for Others
35: Finding Your People
36: To Compare Is to Despair
37: Free Yourself from Being Caught in the Middle
38: How to Lose an Argument and Still Be Okay
39: Breaking the Pattern of Unhealthy Attachments
40: Breaking Up: A Divine Opportunity to Upgrade Yourself
41: Yes, You Can Be Happy After Divorce
42: Parenting Through the Ups and Downs of the Teenage Years
43 Partnering with Spirit to Care for Aging Parents
44: Finding Comfort and Grace in the Loss of a Loved One
45: Being at Home Wherever You Are
46: Love Yourself the Way You Want to Be Loved
47: You Are the One You’re Looking For
Transforming
48: Embracing All Aspects of the Feminine in You
49: How to Navigate Being an Empath
50: Living with a Sense of Timelessness
51: Forgiveness: The Greatest Gift of All
52: Gratitude: The Key to Happiness and Fulfillment
Ending Questions
I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#SpeakingwithSpirit #NetGalley.
View all my reviews
Popular posts from this blog
Dominican Inquirer
Technically speaking, this is really more of an independent, unstructured, investigation of a particular Lay Dominican Fraternity, where you can attend meetings as a guest with no particular commitment ... sort of a "try it before you buy it" approach to see if you and the fraternity members are even remotely compatible. Given some of the conflict within the American Church today ... this might not be a given. As might be expected, there can be strong personalities and intense beliefs about how to approach the faith within the fraternities that can reflect the same divisions that are seen in the Church at large. However, there are also some additional questions to contemplate to see if you might be a fit for the Dominican Family in general. Each of the Major Orders that have tertiaries (third orders) share their specific charisms (gifts) with their lay members, so in addition to a general desire for a deeper spiritual devotion to the faith, there are elem...
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector Lectionary: 150 Reading 1 - Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18 [sic] Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23 Reading 2 - 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Alleluia - 2 Corinthians 5:19 Gospel - Luke 18:9-14 '... for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.' In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents us with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. This story is closely connected to the one which comes just before it about the persistent widow who secures a just decision from a dishonest judge. While the first encourages us to pray and never give up. The second reminds us how, and in what manner, we ought to pray. However, to fully understand the example Jesus gives us, we should look more closely at first the century audience that He initially spoke to. A faithful Jew at that time would have assumed two things: That the Pharisee was a very holy and devout man. And that...
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle A)
Word of God Sunday Lectionary: 67 Reading 1 - Isaiah 8:23—9:3 Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14 Reading 2 - 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17 Alleluia - Matthew 4:23 Gospel - Matthew 4:12-23 The Promise of Salvation Under a New Davidic King. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light … In the first act of creation, God created light and “saw that the light was good. God then separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:4) … However, light and darkness are more than just opposites; they are symbols, metaphors, and emotional currents that have shaped our understanding of the world around us for centuries. Within the stories we tell each other, we find a natural contrast between what is seen and what is hidden, between safety and the unknown, between clarity and mystery. This duality of light and dark exists because of one’s relationship to the other … and our experiences of the two. For those of us who have spent any time on the w...
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)
Lazarus and the Rich Man (Dives) Lectionary: 138 Reading 1 - Amos 6:1a, 4-7 Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10 Reading 2 - 1 Timothy 6:11-16 Alleluia - Cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9 Gospel - Luke 16:19-31 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.' Justice, both socially and spiritually, is at the heart of today’s readings. Social Justice is about seeing the “unseen”… remembering the “forgotten” in our society. It’s about the men, women and children who only want a better life in a world that God has given to all of us, just not a select few. In our first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we hear from Amos, the prophet of social justice. God called him to speak to the rich of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The country was about to be destroyed by the Assyrians while the wealthy “lie on beds of ivory” and “drink wine from bowls,” confident that “the ruin of Joseph” ...
Comments
Post a Comment