Beatrice Bruteau

The impetus for this book was a request from a group of Christian retreat directors who wanted to know what they could learn from Eastern spiritual traditions. Bruteau's response was a series of five easily accessible, non-technical reflections on various aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism offered generally as interpretations of Christian practices or texts. Here, she has added two additional essays, "Gospel Zen" and "The Immaculate Conception, Our Original Face". Both continue the interpretive application of Eastern traditions to Christian texts. The book's popular style is a strength as it is accessible to a broad audience. Bruteau's interpretations of Christian texts are often insightful and may spark further exploration and dialogue with the East.

How did a Jewish teacher, healer, sage and mystic become the vehicle for so much hatred and harm directed against his own people? "Dialogue is demanding and difficult. It is often painful. It entails deep listening, letting others define themselves and being willing to confront and transform deep-rooted prejudices in ourselves. It requires the courage to re-envision absolutely everything we tend to cherish and protect, and to relinquish our entrenched vainglorious ego attachments, our inflated sense of 'I, me and mine.' This challenge to grow beyond tribalism, to approach others in a fair and reasonable way, is an essential step in our human evolution." —from the Invitation to the Reader Judaism and Christianity have had a volatile relationship in their two-thousand-year history. Anger, rivalry, insensitivity, bloodshed and murder have marred the special connection these two Abrahamic faiths share. In the last several decades, scholars, activists, laypeople and clergy have attempted to expose and eliminate the struggles between Jews and Christians. This collaborative effort brings together the voices of Christian scholar Ron Miller and Jewish scholar Laura Bernstein to further explore the roots of anti-Semitism in Christian faith and scripture. In a probing interfaith dialogue, Miller and Bernstein trace the Jewish-Christian schism to its very source in the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew. Illuminating the often misunderstood context of Matthew’s gospel—a persecuted Christian minority writing some sixty years after Jesus’s death—this examination of a foundational Christian text discerns the ways in which the Jewishness of Jesus was forgotten and Jews and Judaism became Christianity’s foil. More important, it takes a renewed look at Matthew with contemporary retellings that present a new and better future of conciliation and compassion between the two faith traditions.

This profound exposition of the truths of an integrated life challenges the reader to confront difficulty with authentic spirituality. Meditation, the practice of silence, and the body of mystical experience are all effective forces that confound evil and give us the means to live a loving life. Beatrice Bruteau is both a brilliant synthesiser and an original thinker. The book describes the value of meditation, leisure, relaxing the body, and keeping silent for a period of time -- all within the context of the ordinary demands of life. There is a role to be played by imagination, mythology, and self-image in either promoting or interfering with our ability to 'find our base and our centre in the sense of eternity and wholeness'. As the founder of an international network for contemplatives of all traditions, Bruteau is able to present her practical spirituality in terms that all readers can understand, no matter what their backgrounds. The book also expresses the idea that our growing global interdependence -- cultural, economic, and ecological -- can help us to 'sense the reality of each person within the unity of shared life' and thus be motivated to act in the interests of the larger community.

In The Grand Option, renowned author Beatrice Bruteau advances her healing vision for humankind. This collection of beautifully written essays encourages readers to seek personal transformation based on heightened consciousness and Christian spirituality. Bruteau contends that this transformation will produce a profound sense of personal freedom, thus enabling individuals to commune with the Divine and with each other. Bruteau's Trinitarian anthropology brings with it the potential for transforming humanity from a collection of individuals in conflict to a community of wholly developed persons working toward a shared vision. Her message is as compelling as it is concrete. Using the disciplines of philosophy, theology, psychological anthropology, and feminist theory, she interprets New Testament texts in ways that speak to contemporary readers. Bruteau also explores the central Christian symbols of the Imago Dei, the Incarnation, and the Trinity, as well as issues such as global spirituality, transcendent freedom, and contemplative insight.

This book captures the beauty and complexity of God's evolving manifestation through vignettes from physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, economics and politics. This book will inspire us to be co-creators with God in the process of Christogenesis, the growth of the ever greater Christ.

Every age has its visionaries. Bede Griffiths, the gentle Benedictine monk who traveled to India to seek the other half of his soul was one such spiritual giant. Like Mother Teresa and Thich Nhat Hanh, Father Bede's spirituality transcends sectarian labels. His Shantivanam (Forest of Peace) monastery in India is Christian in faith but Hindu in lifestyle. The essays and stories in the moving tribute to Father Bede by such luminaries as Thomas Berry dissolve the boundaries between Christian belief and Eastern practice.