Emerging Heart : Global Spirituality And The Sacred

Millions of Americans have adopted and adapted spiritual practices and virtues from a variety of traditions. What are they looking for? Theologian and retreat leader Beverly Lanzetta believes that our contemporary world desperately seeks a shared spiritual foundation adequate to meet our most pressing moral, religious, economic, and social issues. We need, she argues, a spiritual vocabulary to describe the unspoken, to interpret our common humanity, and to articulate our earthly concerns in a way respectful and inclusive of all.

Highlighting pioneers of global spirituality such as Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Abraham Heschel, Mohandas Gandhi, Howard Thurman, Bede Griffiths, and Dorothy Day, Emerging Heart shows how a variety of religious traditions emerge from and converge on a divine nature and mystic quality that creates a loving heart. Lanzetta first describes this phenomenon in her own experience and then elaborates on that mystical core, the notion of the divine, the new shape of interreligious dialogue, pioneers of this new global spirituality, and the personal, spiritual, and ethical challenges that it poses to us.

This is a book of breathtaking insight and high moral ambition to restore our sense of human possibility and high purpose.