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Awaken Your Senses
paperback
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- Length: 208 pages
- Published: December 12, 2011
- Imprint: IVP Formatio
- Item Code: 3560
- ISBN: 9780830835607
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Perhaps you've been missing out. God has given us five senses and a brain with two sides. Yet we often approach God in one way only: through words that are analyzed and processed logically in our left brain. The right brain, however, is the creative, intuitive center--the place that connects most to our seeing, smelling, touching, tasting and hearing, and that roots experiences in our hearts in transforming ways.
In Awaken Your Senses, longtime ministers Beth Booram and Brent Bill invite you to engage your right brain in your faith through sensory spiritual practices that position your heart for divine encounter. Readings and a variety of exercises that utilize your whole body lead you to experience God in new ways by
- tasting chocolate, words, matzoh, Scripture, forgiveness
- seeing the moon, wisdom, art, glory, your best self
- touching others, stones, prayers, rubble, Jesus
- hearing silence, music, pain, footsteps, the Spirit, the news
- smelling gardenias, life, salty air, home, healing oil, coffee
Teaching you to pay attention in love to your surroundings, Booram and Bill will help you open your eyes and ears and nose to a sensuous faith--one in which God can be experienced each day as we live and move and have our being.
So whether you're weary, stuck, struggling, growing or on information-overload, the exercises and reflections offered here can bring refreshment--a cold drink of water, a gentle breeze--to your soul. Come experience God with all of who you are, and discover more of who he is.
"Awaken Your Senses by J. Brent Bill and Beth A. Booram is a beautiful invitation to explore and embody the sacred sensual world. This delightful work invites us into a greater integration of head and heart, mind and spirit, through the use of mindful and creative exercises. It is a wonderful companion and guide for becoming more centered, present and aware in the midst of a busy life. What a joy to drink deep of Awaken Your Senses!"
"Awaken Your Senses invites us to notice God's movement in and around us. These pages grant us a permission to remember, and yet be more present through the conduit of our senses. This is the sort of resource that can help us keep a more rhymed company with God."
"Amazingly, we become dull to something as extraordinary as life, and bored by someone as awesome as God. This book woke me up without beating me up, and gave me tangible, practical ways to savor the sacrament of life, to have genuine gratitude for my body and its senses, and to sink into the glory of God until I felt nothing but joy. Read this and be blessed."
"With Awaken Your Senses, Brent Bill and Beth Booram have given us a superb resource for seeking the God of life through sensuous experience, a way of knowing that has been sadly neglected--and too often held suspect--by the church. How did a faith based on the claim that 'the Word became flesh' become so divorced from bodily, incarnate knowledge? Here is a beautiful book that will help us reclaim our bodies, our senses and our relationship with God."
"This book is a feast for the senses. It is an invitation to see, hear, smell, taste and touch deeper spiritual realities through physical senses that are awake and alert to God in all of life. It gently but powerfully leads us into a life that is truly sacramental and enriched through the use of Scripture, personal stories and beautiful images."
"Awaken Your Senses is a wonderful resource that encourages us all to realize life while we're living it -- and tahnk the Giver of all good gifts as we do."
"Modeling the best Sunday School teachers, Bill and Booram get close to God via the five senses. The journey could so easily have been a skip instead of a sail; however, they truly manifest the book's purpose: 'to help more of you experience more of God'. . . . It adds up to a deeply pleasing book."
CONTENTS
Introduction
Part One: Taste
Art Reflection on Tasting
1. Introduction
2. Tasting Forgiveness
3. Keeping Kosher
4. Cravings
5. Spiritual Smorgasbord
6. Tasting Words
Part Two: See
Art Reflection on Seeing
1. Introduction
2. Creaturely Insight
3. Reframe and Refocus
4. Reflecting Glory
5. Going Off Grid
6. I See the Moon
Part Three: Touch
Art Reflection on Touching
1. Introduction
2. Textures
3. A Pile of Stones
4. Touching Absence
5. Feeling Your Prayers
6. Touching Jesus
Part Four: Hear
Art Reflection on Hearing
1. Introduction
2. Soundtrack
3. Footsteps
4. All the News
5. Recurring Themes
6. Dinner Conversation
Part Five: Smell
Art Reflection on Smelling
1. Introduction
2. Smells Like . . . Worship
3. Hospitals
4. Sea Salt and Midwest Mulberries
5. Organic Sweat
6. Wake Up and Smell the Communion
Conclusion: Rhythms that Ground Us
Sensory Exercises:
Additional Activities for Practicing a Sensuous Faith
Resources for Awakening Your Senses
Notes
Permissions
Acknowledgements
Connecting with Authors
