Gerald G May rsquo s name will be familiar to many readers from his previous writings on spiritual matters The present volume offers a series of reflections on his study of the spiritual writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross two of the greatest and most authentic of Christian mystics

This carefully crafted selection of readings from 40 works by Henri Nouwen walks the reader through the seasons of the liturgical year It invites us to travel on quot a journey from chronos the chronological world of clocks and calendars to kairos time viewed as opportunity or encounter quot

If war is hell a literary corollary might be that every society touched by warfare needs its own version of Virgil or Dante to journey to that hell and return to tell the tale In her collection of short stories Anthonia Kalu plays such a role with respect to the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-70 Thi

George Santayana should have warned us those who can remember the past but do so obsessively are just as condemned to repeat it as those who forget The 1999 Nobel laureate G nter Grass has been prophetically attacking and mourning the horrors of 20th-century German history since the publication

Randy Newman has a tune called God rsquo s Song That rsquo s Why I Love Mankind that can send a shiver down the spine of all believers even those who believe we would be better off without belief In it a malicious God sits in his heaven world-weary and sarcastic Man means less to me he says

For Eugene Kennedy Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago 1928-96 is an exemplar of the paschal mystery ldquo Joseph Bernardin rsquo s life tells us what happens when a man accepts the destiny that is given to few on behalf of us who are the many to recreate the central motif of Christian spirit