Book List

Author: Rachel M. Srubas

Your insights as to why the book is important from the perspective of one who seeks to be faithful to Benedictine spirituality in our time: Viewing the Benedictine promises from a practical and unique slant is inspiringly presented by Rachel Srubas in her latest book. Whether one is a Benedictine oblate or a professed Benedictine, insights and challenges are lovingly and creatively put forth for the reader to engage. Referring to those promises as: “Staying Put, Listening Well and Being Changed by God,” in the sub-title of the book provides a hint of the fruitful exploration of those promises for everyday people.

Recommended by: Michaela Hedican, OSB

Author: Jemar Tisby

Your insights as to why the book is important from the perspective of one who seeks to be faithful to Benedictine spirituality in our time: The Color of Compromise is a historical survey of how American Christian Churches chose to remain silent and indifferent to the political, economic, and social problems of systemic racism and as such perpetuated racial injustices. Highlighted in the survey is the slave trade, slavery in colonial America, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, Civil Rights Movement, and, today's Black Lives Matter to make the point that "racism never goes away, it just adapts." The reader is challenged to listen, to become aware and educated to the "original sin" of racism. Only then can we as a Christian people and nation begin to rebuild and renew our communities reconciled in love and commitment to racial reform and equality.

Recommended by: Ann "Marie" Ruggiero

Author: Walter Wink

Your insights as to why the book is important from the perspective of one who seeks to be faithful to Benedictine spirituality in our time: Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination could easily have been an influential text for Benedict if it had been written 15 centuries earlier. Starting from the life and teachings of the non-violent (but not passive) Jesus, Walter Wink unmasks the "domination system" that has ruled humanity since we first became aware of ourselves as separate from nature and began amassing power and fortune. And once aware, it's a challenge to all of us who believe in Jesus to actually put those teachings into practice in our own lives. Almost since the first page I have been called to face myself and look much more deeply at what my Christian and Benedictine life calls me to now. "The struggle against outer evils unleashes evils within our own souls," he writes. "That is no reason to avoid such struggles; they may be the only way we can discover the spiritual work that our destiny requires of us....Either we learn to be one world together, without fear of other races and nations and economic systems, or we will die as one world together.... Jesus' way is a way of engaging evil that involves neither acquiescing to it nor hurling ourselves against it blindly....nonviolence is a spiritual challenge of epic proportions."

Recommended by: Linda Romey, OSB

Author: Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB

Your insights as to why the book is important from the perspective of one who seeks to be faithful to Benedictine spirituality in our time: Benedictine writer Macrina Wiederkehr has a mystical way of approaching everyday life. This is her most recent book, published not long before she died in April 2020. It is an engaging companion for those of us finding ourselves separated from family and friends. Sister Macrina finds an array of teachers in the stuff of ordinary life. There are 52 reflections for the weeks of the year and they are excellent jump-starts to Lectio. Each chapter helps us to wake up and identify "teachers" that arrive in the normal course of life in unexpected ways.

Recommended by: Judith Valente, Oblate

Author: David Zucchino

Your insights as to why the book is important from the perspective of one who seeks to be faithful to Benedictine spirituality in our time: I believe we are called to learn more about the history of racism in America. This powerful book is about an actual coup - the overthrow of an elected city government - in 1898 in Wilmington NC. White supremacists were upset that blacks had been elected to city offices, and wanted to disenfranchise black voters. The whites rioted, murdered blacks, and burned black businesses. This event has been so well hidden that even some natives of North Carolina have never heard of it. But I believe it is a religious and spiritual imperative that we look honestly at our own history - it gives us perspective on what is happening in America today.

Recommended by: Kathleen Norris, Oblate