The Spiritual Seeker’s 2022 Booklist

Mindful Silence: The Heart of Christian Contemplation by Phileena Heuertz (2018)

“In a world full of noise and a Western church that often replicates the distractions, Phileena Heuertz gives us a road map to finding our way back to spiritual roots and practices that reorient ourselves and our communities.” –Kathy Khang, activist and author of Raise Your Voice

“Contemplative spirituality, then, is quite simply a way to practice faith. Practicing faith means we clear space within us to encounter divine love so that we might be freed and changed. A truly liberated and transformed person naturally liberates and transforms the world.” –Phileena Heuertz, Mindful Silence: The Heart of Christian Contemplation

Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad by John Eldredge (2020)

“Touch nature. I’m serious—every day, your soul needs to engage creation.” –John Eldredge, Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad

​​“You’ve got to release the world; you’ve got to release people, crises, trauma, intrigue, all of it. There has to be sometime in your day where you just let it all go. All the tragedy of the world, the heartbreak, the latest shooting, earthquake—the soul was never meant to endure this. The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this. It’s way too much. Your soul is finite. You cannot carry the sorrows of the world. Only God can do that. Only he is infinite. Somewhere, sometime in your day, you’ve just got to release it. You’ve got to let it go.” –John Eldredge, Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (2022) by Brené Brown

“In Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human.” –From the Cover

“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning and self-awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited […] Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.” –Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

Sexless in the City: A Sometimes Sassy, Sometimes Painful, Always Honest Look at Dating, Desire and Sex by Kat Harris (2021)

“I know what it’s like to hide and crush my sexuality in the name of purity culture. I know what it’s like to see my self-image, my body, be warped and hindered by old ways of thinking. Harris invites us into an expansive, generous, biblical view of intimacy that is so needed. I wish I’d had this book when I was younger. But I’m glad we have it now.” –Jedidiah Jenkins, New York Times bestselling author of To Shake the Sleeping Self and Like Streams to the Ocean

“I was sick of hearing mostly male pastors teach about waiting until marriage to have sex and doing it ‘God’s way’ when most of them got married in their early twenties […] Somehow, my breaking became an access point to stepping into untapped freedom and restoration with God, myself, and the world around me.” –Kat Harris, Sexless in the City: A Sometimes Sassy, Sometimes Painful, Always Honest Look at Dating, Desire, and Sex

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path for Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (1992)

“Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the creative soul.” –The New York Times

“Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see “creator” as the literal term for “artist”. I am suggesting you take the term “creator” quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.” –Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path for Higher Creativity

Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength by Kat Armas (2021)

“Combining personal storytelling with biblical reflection, Cuban American writer Kat Armas tells the story of unnamed and overlooked theologians–mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters–whose sacred wisdom teaches us something unique about spirituality and God.” –From the Cover

“Armas invites us to the space of the margins–a space full of struggle, failure, bodies, beauty, and the humanity we all desire to see and embrace. This journey will shake us, put us back together again, and make us free.” –Dante Stewart, writer and speaker

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue (2008)

“In To Bless the Space Between Us, [John O’Donohue’s] compelling blend of elegant, poetic language and spiritual insight offers readers comfort and encouragement on their journeys through life. O’Donohue looks at life’s thresholds—getting married, having children, starting a new job—and offers invaluable guidelines for making the transition from a known, familiar world into a new, unmapped territory. 

Most profoundly, however, O’Donohue explains ‘blessing’ as a way of life, as a lens through which the whole world is transformed.” –From the Cover