Bonnie Thurston – författare

Bonnie Thurston is the author of many books and articles about spirituality and prayer. In For God Alone she shows us, clearly and practically, how to pray. The result is a unique introduction to prayer that will encourage all Christian readers seeking to deepen the life of prayer. For God Alone introduces three traditional trajectories of Christian prayer: oratio, meditatio, and contemplatio. Thurston guides the reader from familiar "voiced prayers" through the prayer of thought and intellect to the less familiar prayer of quiet or listening. Thurston concludes each chapter with practical exercises for the practice of prayer, suggestions for further reading, and space for reader's notes. Drawing material from both Eastern and Western traditions, For God Alone is learned but conversational in tone and thoroughly accessible to the general reader. Adult education classes in various denominations will profit from reading this book. It will also be used in practical ministries courses, spirituality courses, and courses in the theology and practice of prayer.

Merton’s biographer, George Woodcock, once wrote that “almost from the beginning of his monastic career, Thomas Merton tentatively began to discover the great Asian religions of Buddhism and Taoism.” Merton, a longtime social justice advocate, first approached Eastern theology as an admirer of Gandhi’s beliefs on non-violence. Through Gandhi, Merton came to know the great Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita and in time came to have dialogues with the Dalai Lama and Taoist leader D. T. Suzuki. Merton then became deeply interested in Chuang Tzu and Zen thought. On Eastern Meditation, edited by Bonnie Thurston (author of Merton and Buddhism), gathers the best of his Eastern theological writings into a gorgeously designed gift book edition.

This is an insightful examination of the personalities, place, and power of women in the New Testament. Thurston gives the cultural and religious context of women in the Greco-Roman world and seeks to show ways in which early Christianity attempted to liberate people from patriarchic oppression and later compromised under the pressure of the dominant society. She looks specifically at the texts of Paul, Mark, John, and the Luke.

"Spirituality & Practice 2016 Award Winner." Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) was a complex man. Born into French aristocracy, he floundered as a military officer, but rediscovered his Catholic heritage and eventually lived voluntarily as an impoverished priest/hermit in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. Foucauld wanted to emulate the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth and in doing so, left a spiritual legacy that attracted such figures as Dorothy Day and author, poet, and spiritual director Bonnie Thurston. Published in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Charles de Foucauld’s death on December 1, 1916, Hidden in God highlights the profound conversion that led Foucauld to embrace the life of a hermit in the Sahara, where he was eventually murdered by a band of marauders. Foucauld’s legacy is an enduring spiritual vision: believe in God, you should live for God and make him your reason for living. Drawing from his letters and journals, Bonnie Thurston explores how the hidden life of Nazareth brings the grace of great closeness to Jesus; the gift of the desert is the grace of complete dependence on God; and the grace of public life is the practice of charity and self-giving. Thurston adeptly demonstrates how these three locations are metaphors for states of spiritual life and ministry and how each one brings both a challenge and a danger. Words of wisdom from Foucauld, as well as questions to ponder and biblical texts to explore conclude each chapter. Thurston shares how she became enamored with Foucauld for the passionate way he lived his ideals without regard for recognition or success. “I’ve fallen in love with a dead Frenchman who was a hermit,” she admitted to a friend. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, also was attracted to Foucauld’s desert spirituality and wrote to Thomas Merton and others about Foucauld’s spiritual influence.

For years Bonnie Thurston has written short poems that focus on a single image or one revelatory idea. They were not sonnets, but were all fourteen lines long. The great sonneteers wrote sequences, often several on one topic and in this Bonnie Thurston follows in their footsteps, leading the reader on a gentle journey from home and through the seasons of the sequence, one that beckons or disturbs the imagination after setting it free to roam through daily experiences that, in the words of , Wordsworth are ‘reflected in tranquility’. In these insightful, honed and precise poems you will discover the extraordinariness of the ordinary life and, mirabile dictu, wisdom. This is a collection to savour.

Bonnie Thurston’s Forgotten Futures: a memoir is a tender heart’s cry and a passionate celebration in one. There is deep poignancy and longing here, but not a mawkish or maudlin word. We travel in two landscapes — the world inhabited with wonder for each small detail, and the internal world of half a couple, observing both the relationship’s moments of grace, joy and intimacy and those of wounding, longing and loss. In supple, accessible language, honed to beauty, these poems resonate with a sense of the sacredness of small things and the transforming power of memory. 'When Love Is Passed'When love is passed to youon a bone china platelike Petits Fours on a doily,accept with gratitude.Life holds enoughawful, heavy crockery,and we have all eatenmore than our share of sand.

To interrogate darkness at this moment in history is not only timely, but vital and Bonnie Thurston does it with an honesty and precision that holds our attention. From the darkness of a melancholic disposition to darkness that shelters us safely, from sleepless nights and their moons to trusting in the return of the light on the darkest day and longest night, these pieces are poised, precise, full of sensory details, insightful and shot through with hope. There is fear and grief here, but it will not have the last word.