Sacred Threads participant and Author Catherine Brunell has published her first book this fall. Becoming Catholic, Again - Connecting the Faith We Were Taught with the Faith We Live (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2012).
In her passionate voice, Brunell writes about the permission she found
to be on the spiritual journey that her life is revealing. In the
memoir she attends to the details of her own path but, in doing so
Brunell offers all of us a gentle way of living in and through our
faith. Here are two excerpts from the book :
When
I hear people ask the question "Are you Catholic" they often respond,
"I'm sort of Catholic," or "Not a practicing one." People have
disengage from the institution, and yet on some level, we have a nagging
connection to it. We judge ourselves based on others' rubrics of how
our faith should look, and in doing so we remove ourselves from the only
experience that we can actually have. The judgement is a waste of
time, because God doesn't care what kind of Catholics (or any religion
for that matter we are); God wants us to be connected to one another and
to God. If we find these connections, we're simply being Catholic in
the way that we need to be. pg. 10
***
I
really have no idea about everything the divine entails and what
exactly religion should be. I also don't know what will happen as I come
to the end of my life or what the church will look like in a hundred
years. But I do know how to respond to the grace that moves in my life
today. I try to keep my faith this simple, because ultimately this is
what puts me in relationship with an incarnate God. When I say yes to
what is before me in life, I know that I am saying yes to the sacred
that is there, too. God is in the concrete, and concrete life is in God
p. 85.
The book is available on amazon.com, b&n.com, and loyolapress.com
To read more about Becoming Catholic, Again: www.facebook.com/becomingcatholicagain
Contact Catherine to schedule a book event for your school, church or friends:
@CatholicAsIAm
