Glimpses #175: SUMMER READING: Getting reacquainted with the classics
Format: 4-page bulletin insert
Our Price: $2.00 per pack (each pack contains 25 copies). Back issues are available only in packs of 25 copies.
Product Description: The Protestant Reformation had caused an explosion in Europe, with Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist forces fighting to redraw the map in their favor. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was especially bloody. For 18 of those years, Nicholas Herman fought with the French army. The smoke cleared with the Peace of Westphalia, and everyone went back to real life, whatever that was.
Nicholas admired the devotion of the Carmelite Order, founded and shaped by the mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. Joining up, he took the name Brother Lawrence and worked for 30 years as a cook in the Carmelite community.
Brother Lawrence never set out to publish a book. He just jotted spiritual notes and letters along the way. There was a partial manuscript of sayings found among his possessions after he died, but he often implored his readers not to distribute these writings. Fortunately for us, that request was ignored. Lawrence's thoughts have been culled and edited in an inspiring work, The Practice of the Presence of Christ.
"We ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity," he says, "speaking to Him frankly and plainly, and imploring His assistance in our affairs, just as they happen." That casual interaction with the Lord might be commonplace for modern believers, but it was ground-breaking in the 17th century. Lawrence describes a spiritual life that goes beyond ritualized worship, inhabiting the mundane aspects of life.
