Robert J. Wicks

Thomas E. Rodgerson

Written as a partial antidote to the isolation and potential alienation of people living in a world that is moving too fast, this book adapts insights gleaned from the pastoral counseling profession to help everyday people hone and heighten gifts that can help them reach out to others in a more Christian and transformational form of caring. The authors offer concrete means to help readers enhance their talents in the areas of listening, being supportive, problem solving, dealing with crises and knowing when and how to refer in order to equip them as they seek to offer care to others in daily encounters.

The Art of Christian Caring

Companions in Hope

While the steady increase of the religiously unaffiliated Nones in America has generated anxious responses about rising secularism and loss of national identity, this book suggests a wider meaning-making approach wherein the Nones are seen as valuable dialogue partners necessary in this pivotal moment for the revealing of still hidden truths about culture, spirituality, and religion. Christians who overhear this dialogue may find upon self-reflection an emerging truth about their relationships, embedded stories, level of faith development, and susceptibility to a culturally conditioned, transactional religion. Nones who choose to engage in dialogue may find that the “nothingness” they bring to the dialogue is more significant than they realize, revealing truths of an apophatic spiritual path necessary for generating a transformational faith of freedom and capable of rebalancing a divisive, consumer-driven society. The religious and the not-religious, who are often seen as being on opposite sides of an imagined religious threshold, may instead be seen as standing together in a liminal space that opens in wordless silence to yet unseen possibilities and from which emerge new stories aligned with the heart of Creation.

Thomas E. Rodgerson

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