M. Basil Pennington
Personal Information
Description
Father M. Basil Pennington (1931-2005) died June 3 of injuries sustained in an automobile accident 67 days earlier. Educated at Catholic schools, he entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly known as the Trappists, in 1951 at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. He was consecrated as a monk in 1956 and ordained as a priest in 1957. He later studied in Rome at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas and Gregorian University, obtaining a licentiate in theology and another degree in canon law. Pennington was a friend of Thomas Merton and was present at the Second Vatican Council. During the 1970s, his interest in Eastern and Russian Orthodoxy led him to accept an unprecedented invitation to Mount Athos in Greece. He also took a six-week pilgrimage to India where he received darshan from Mother Teresa and Father Bede Griffiths. These interfaith adventures resulted in books. Over his long and illustrious life he wrote 57 books and 1,000 thousand articles. Pennington was a co-founder of the centering prayer movement and a gifted writer on the spiritual practice of lectio divina. Throughout the 1980s, he lectured around the world and gave spiritual guidance in monasteries from Europe to the Philippines. In February 2000, Pennington was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, but he returned to St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer in July of 2002. He was buried there on June 10, 2005.
Books
Breaking bread
"In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life where people come together to give themselves, to nurture life, to renew their spirits, sustain their hopes, and to make a lived politics of revolutionary struggle an ongoing practice. This 25th anniversary edition continues the dialogue with 'In Solidarity,' their 2016 conversation at the bell hooks Institute on racism, politics, popular culture, and the contemporary Black experience"--Provided by publisher.
Correspondence
The way back home
ALIAS ANNA FITZGERALD... There was danger in Anna Fitzgerald's past--and there would be danger in her future, too, if anyone ever discovered she was really Rosie Jensen. As a teenager, she'd fled from an impossible situation, only to discover that, for a runaway, life on the streets was worse than she could have imagined. But she'd survived, and now she was a woman, with every woman's need for love. If only the man whose love she needed could be anyone but Grady Clayton: honest, upstanding, a public figure-with a career that would be destroyed if the world ever learned of her secret past, her hidden shame.
Who Do You Say I Am?
"I believe that research on the historical Jesus need not be a threat but can be a spiritual resource for us Christians," says the author. Drawing on the highly acclaimed work "The marginal Jew" by John Meier, he helps us sift the evidence to discover what we can know with historical certainty about Jesus. But he leads us beyond the facts of history to an encounter with the risen Jesus, sharing both his own experience of prayer as well as the stories and accounts of other contemporary Christians who have come to know the risen Lord. He guides us in a prayerful dialogue that bridges the gap between the Jesus of history and the Jesus we experience in faith.
The Monastic Way
As modern Christians shift their focus back to orthodoxy, a corresponding resurgence of interest in monastic life and thought has emerged. Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild, longtime collaborators, believe that much wisdom can be gained from those who have lived the monastic life. Their Monastic Way offers inspirational daily readings drawn from the writings of monastics in all the major spiritual traditions of the Eastern and Western churches -- Benedictine, Franciscan, Orthodox, Carmelite, and so on. Covering a year's time, The Monastic Way links the qualities of everyday monastic life to the practical everydayness of all human life. Each month focuses on a specific theme -- living with others, balancing life, working for justice, etc. -- and each theme is introduced by quotations from one of the great monastic Rules. For every day of the year there is an excerpt from the writings of men and women across the centuries, from fifth-century Desert Mothers to Basil Hume, Joan Chittister, Thomas Merton, and hundreds of others. At once practical and sublime, this collection will prove valuable to students of ancient culture, those intrigued by monastic life, and all who are looking for ancient wisdom relevant to modern living.