Beautifully written meditations on fifteen well-chosen words Book Award in Spirituality — Marilyn McEntyre showed readers how brief scriptural phrases can evoke and invite. In Wo
Beautifully written meditations on fifteen well-chosen words In
What's in a Phrase? — winner of the 2015
Christianity Today Book Award in Spirituality — Marilyn McEntyre showed readers how brief scriptural phrases can evoke and invite. In
Word by WordMcEntyre invites readers to dwell intentionally with single words — remembering their biblical and literary contexts, considering the personal associations they bring up, and allowing them to become a focus for prayer and meditation.
McEntyre has thoughtfully chosen fifteen words (see below), and she gives each word a week, guiding readers in examining the word from seven different angles throughout the week. She draws on the spiritual practices of
lectio divina and centering prayer as she encourages readers to allow these small words to help them pause and hear the voice of the Spirit. "I invite you to discover," says McEntyre in her intro-duction, "how words may become little fountains of grace. How a single word may, if you hold it for a while, become a prayer."
- Listen
- Receive
- Enjoy
- Let Go
- Watch
- Accept
- Resist
- Allow
- Be Still
- Follow
- Rejoice
- Ask
- Dare
- Leave
- Welcome
Scott Cairns
--author of Idiot Psalms
"With her profound summonings, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre recovers for many contemporary readers an ancient practice that is reminiscent of rabbinic attention to the dark sayings of Scripture, those compelling, curious, often challenging passages that would nudge us into seeing more, would have us glimpse the inexhaustibility of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, even the inexhaustibility of His Word."
Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
--author of Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists
"McEntyre has again written with conspicuous grace and truth. She sees deeply into the Christian life. She writes simply and nobly, but with an enormous weight of discernment and suggestion. Some passages here are as powerful and lovely as any I?ve encountered in years."
Carol Zaleski
--coauthor of Prayer: A History
"Seamlessly blending exegesis, philology, lectio divina, and prayer, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre teaches us how to listen for the divine word in all times and circumstances."
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Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is a writer, professor of medical humanities at UC Berkeley, and former professor of English at Westmont College. A longtime hospice volunteer, she is also the author of Drawn to the Light: Poems on Rembrandt's Religious Paintings and Patient Poets: Illness from Inside Out.Her book What's in a Phrase? Pausing Where Scripture Gives You Pause won the Christianity Today 2015 Book Award in the Spirituality category.
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