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The Flowing Grace of Now: Encountering Wisdom through the Weeks of the Year
For more than twenty-five years, Sr. Macrina Wiederkehr has authored such bestselling books on Catholic spirituality as Seven Sacred Pauses and A Tree Full of Angels. In The Flowing Grace of Now--her first book in almost a decade--Wiederkehr offers weekly reflections that reveal the spiritual teachers at work in your life, inviting you to listen to these teachers and learn from their wisdom.
"There is an old proverb that says, 'When the student is ready the teacher will arrive.' I think I have been ready for a long time, yet perhaps I have spent too much time looking for the perfect teacher rather than seeing the teachers that arrive in unexpected ways." With these words, retreat guide and author Sr. Macrina Wiederkehr begins The Flowing Grace of Now, a year-long companion that ushers you into the presence of teachers already at work in your life--teachers intent on helping you deepen your faith.
These teachers are not necessarily saints, writers, or theologians, but rather ordinary people, events, and experiences whose presence already permeates your life. These
biblical characters,
day and night,
silence,
the virtues, and
joy in another person's good fortune.
These, Wiederkehr suggests, are the kind of teachers who are the result of the flow of grace in your life. She encourages you to become aware of how they are at work in you and what you might learn from them.
Each reflection begins with a scripture text leading you into the spirit of the week. A brief meditation on this scripture serves as a catalyst for the Word to take root in your heart and a closing prayer sums up the week. A teacher is suggested for you. The final quotation from a spiritual writer contains the spirit of your teacher and can assist you in embracing the wisdom of that teacher.
Using this book as a year-long weekly guide can be an enriching opportunity to deepen and transform your faith life.
"There is an old proverb that says, 'When the student is ready the teacher will arrive.' I think I have been ready for a long time, yet perhaps I have spent too much time looking for the perfect teacher rather than seeing the teachers that arrive in unexpected ways." With these words, retreat guide and author Sr. Macrina Wiederkehr begins The Flowing Grace of Now, a year-long companion that ushers you into the presence of teachers already at work in your life--teachers intent on helping you deepen your faith.
These teachers are not necessarily saints, writers, or theologians, but rather ordinary people, events, and experiences whose presence already permeates your life. These
biblical characters,
day and night,
silence,
the virtues, and
joy in another person's good fortune.
These, Wiederkehr suggests, are the kind of teachers who are the result of the flow of grace in your life. She encourages you to become aware of how they are at work in you and what you might learn from them.
Each reflection begins with a scripture text leading you into the spirit of the week. A brief meditation on this scripture serves as a catalyst for the Word to take root in your heart and a closing prayer sums up the week. A teacher is suggested for you. The final quotation from a spiritual writer contains the spirit of your teacher and can assist you in embracing the wisdom of that teacher.
Using this book as a year-long weekly guide can be an enriching opportunity to deepen and transform your faith life.
- GenresSpiritualityFaith
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 11, 2019
66 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
About the author
Macrina Wiederkehr
19 books55 followersMacrina Wiederkehr is an author and spiritual guide and a Benedictine monastic of St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She travels throughout the US and Canada as a retreat director. In her retreats seekers are guided through experiences of silence, contemplation, and faith sharing.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 14, 2019
“Winter, spring, summer, and fall are mulch for each other. The seasons of our lives are like that also. We learn from the layers of life. Our joys, sorrows, regrets, hopes, miseries, and enthusiasms are mulch for each other.” The Flowing Grace of Now, Macrina Wiederkehr
Book Review by Jodi Blazek Gehr—
“The Flowing Grace of Now,” Macrina Wiederkehr
Our storehouse of personal experiences can be our greatest teacher as we move through the seasons of life. The lessons we have learned through good and hard living can give us insight to navigate our worries and fears, to help us find answers to hard questions, or to let go of the questions altogether, and to, ultimately, help us make peace with our past, present, and future.
Often, it is a commitment to time spent in quiet and solitude, listening to the wisdom that resides within us, that is our best teacher. Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB invites us to this listening practice in her newest book, “The Flowing Grace of Now.” During her sixty years of professed monasticism, Macrina has been committed to the Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina—reading, meditating and praying with Scripture and other sacred writing—and it is this practice that she shares in her ninth book.
“I felt starved for guidance. I wanted someone to appear in my life who was wise and it seemed to me that no such person was in reach. Then suddenly one day while I was praying with the gospel story of Mary and Martha veils fell from my eyes and I realized that I was standing knee-deep in grace. Grace was all around me. Guidance was in my reach. Teachers were plentiful.”—Macrina Wiederkehr
This special book gently takes readers by the hand, walking through the weeks of the year with fifty-two meditative readings. The reading and reflective questions are creative prayer including lessons that Macrina has learned, as well as poetry and prose from teacher-writers like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Joyce Rupp, John O’Donahue, Henri Nouwen and Joan Chittister, mystics like Julian of Norwich, and from the stories of the Old and New Testament.
Yes, with practice, we can hear our inner teacher, but it is through solitude and community that we can best traverse the spiritual journey. There are teachers all around us—our circle of friends, spiritual companions, authors, thought-leaders, poets and musicians, as well as the figures from Scripture. A good balance is important—we cannot rely too heavily on others to help us find answers, but we also do not need to go it alone. There are teachers everywhere and within.
The wisdom of the fifty-two-week methodology in “The Flowing Grace of Now,” is by taking an entire week to devote to the reading, the seed has to time burrow. By meditating upon a line or two of scripture, poetry, lyrics or prose, it sinks to a deeper place of resting in one’s heart, taking root, becoming the “mulch” from which to grow from understanding to blooming and becoming. The words take root in your life, impacting your thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
For example, the week six reading is Matthew 13:1-9. We are instructed to keep “in mind that you are the seed being sown…This is a parable about you. You are the seed. Jesus is the sower. What is said about the seed can be said of you….You have been created and sent forth to be a blessing…”
We are the seed that has been planted. We “have been created and sent forth to be a blessing.” It’s not always easy—some soil is better suited for life-living, growth and flourishing, and some soil is thorny, hard and death-dealing. Questions for reflection include: “Can you recognize those moments when you found yourself in the kind of soil that enabled you to grow and flourish? How did that soil differ from the hard and thorny soil?” Surely, one could reflect on this reading in an hour or a day, but there is wisdom in waiting for time to reveal the lesson to be learned.
"Something is waiting for us to make ground for it…so it can make its full presence known.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“The Flowing Grace of Now” is not a book to be read quickly, to get to some conclusion the author has reached. Rather the words are meant to be savored, to be lingered over, resting in the soul, speaking uniquely to the reader as the week unfolds. The teacher truly lies within the heart and only needs to be listened to.
Macrina concludes, “My hope is that you will close the pages of this book with simple joy because of the ever-flowing nature of learning and the abundant ways to absorb the message rather than the mindset that you are finished… The flowing grace of now is never finished. It is ever flowing into the next grace, the next joy, the next awakening, the next sorrow, and the next piece of unfolding life.”
I highly recommend “The Flowing Grace of Now” as a Christmas gift for a loved one. It can be started at any time of the year, but what a beautiful resolution to spend time with a new teacher each week of the new year. Jodi Gehr BeingBenedictine.com
Book Review by Jodi Blazek Gehr—
“The Flowing Grace of Now,” Macrina Wiederkehr
Our storehouse of personal experiences can be our greatest teacher as we move through the seasons of life. The lessons we have learned through good and hard living can give us insight to navigate our worries and fears, to help us find answers to hard questions, or to let go of the questions altogether, and to, ultimately, help us make peace with our past, present, and future.
Often, it is a commitment to time spent in quiet and solitude, listening to the wisdom that resides within us, that is our best teacher. Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB invites us to this listening practice in her newest book, “The Flowing Grace of Now.” During her sixty years of professed monasticism, Macrina has been committed to the Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina—reading, meditating and praying with Scripture and other sacred writing—and it is this practice that she shares in her ninth book.
“I felt starved for guidance. I wanted someone to appear in my life who was wise and it seemed to me that no such person was in reach. Then suddenly one day while I was praying with the gospel story of Mary and Martha veils fell from my eyes and I realized that I was standing knee-deep in grace. Grace was all around me. Guidance was in my reach. Teachers were plentiful.”—Macrina Wiederkehr
This special book gently takes readers by the hand, walking through the weeks of the year with fifty-two meditative readings. The reading and reflective questions are creative prayer including lessons that Macrina has learned, as well as poetry and prose from teacher-writers like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Joyce Rupp, John O’Donahue, Henri Nouwen and Joan Chittister, mystics like Julian of Norwich, and from the stories of the Old and New Testament.
Yes, with practice, we can hear our inner teacher, but it is through solitude and community that we can best traverse the spiritual journey. There are teachers all around us—our circle of friends, spiritual companions, authors, thought-leaders, poets and musicians, as well as the figures from Scripture. A good balance is important—we cannot rely too heavily on others to help us find answers, but we also do not need to go it alone. There are teachers everywhere and within.
The wisdom of the fifty-two-week methodology in “The Flowing Grace of Now,” is by taking an entire week to devote to the reading, the seed has to time burrow. By meditating upon a line or two of scripture, poetry, lyrics or prose, it sinks to a deeper place of resting in one’s heart, taking root, becoming the “mulch” from which to grow from understanding to blooming and becoming. The words take root in your life, impacting your thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
For example, the week six reading is Matthew 13:1-9. We are instructed to keep “in mind that you are the seed being sown…This is a parable about you. You are the seed. Jesus is the sower. What is said about the seed can be said of you….You have been created and sent forth to be a blessing…”
We are the seed that has been planted. We “have been created and sent forth to be a blessing.” It’s not always easy—some soil is better suited for life-living, growth and flourishing, and some soil is thorny, hard and death-dealing. Questions for reflection include: “Can you recognize those moments when you found yourself in the kind of soil that enabled you to grow and flourish? How did that soil differ from the hard and thorny soil?” Surely, one could reflect on this reading in an hour or a day, but there is wisdom in waiting for time to reveal the lesson to be learned.
"Something is waiting for us to make ground for it…so it can make its full presence known.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“The Flowing Grace of Now” is not a book to be read quickly, to get to some conclusion the author has reached. Rather the words are meant to be savored, to be lingered over, resting in the soul, speaking uniquely to the reader as the week unfolds. The teacher truly lies within the heart and only needs to be listened to.
Macrina concludes, “My hope is that you will close the pages of this book with simple joy because of the ever-flowing nature of learning and the abundant ways to absorb the message rather than the mindset that you are finished… The flowing grace of now is never finished. It is ever flowing into the next grace, the next joy, the next awakening, the next sorrow, and the next piece of unfolding life.”
I highly recommend “The Flowing Grace of Now” as a Christmas gift for a loved one. It can be started at any time of the year, but what a beautiful resolution to spend time with a new teacher each week of the new year. Jodi Gehr BeingBenedictine.com
October 13, 2019
Macrina Wiederkehr is a true modern-day mystic. Her new book, "The Flowing Grace of Now: Encountering Wisdom Through the Weeks of the Year," just may be my favorite book of all she has written (and I have read and LOVE all of her books). I was fortunate to read an advance review copy. This summer, I was also glad to visit her at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
November 6, 2019
The premise of her book is this: The teachers we can learn from are often the ones we normally want to shrug off, ignore, or hide because of shame or pride. Some of the voices are more positive and familiar to us. What if we tuned in and truly welcomed these teachers, asked God what he was trying to teach us through them, and then listen and wait?
Here is an excerpt from Macrina’s book The Flowing Grace Of Now.
Here is an exercise in humility you might want to try sometime this week—perhaps every day this week. Use your imagination and throw a banquet for the crippled, blind, and lame parts of yourself. Invite your doubts, your pride, and your superiority and arrogance. Invite your resentments, your selfishness, your narrow-mindedness, and your prejudice. In all probability, you won’t find any of these invited guests trying to claim the first place. They will more likely all climb into the chair reserved for you. Here is one last suggestion. Treat each of these guests with reverence. Try to discover what this invitee is to teach you. O lavish Caregiver, Each day I am invited to your feast of life. Teach me to be grateful as I take my place at the table of plenty. Show me how to honor even my faults. They teach me humility. They have the potential of being transformed into something beautiful. They can become my teachers. May I learn to listen to my life. Your teacher for the week will be the crippled and lame parts of yourself. Our faults and weaknesses can become our best teachers. Choose one each day this week. Try to discern why it is a part of your life.
Macrina’s book takes the reader through the weeks of the year, with a suggestion of a “teacher” for each of those weeks. Her insights are powerful and help me center my soul, focus again on Jesus and remember that all of life is here to learn from. I highly suggest this wonderful book! Macrina is a beautiful person and a wonderful friend to all who turn the pages of this book.
Here is an excerpt from Macrina’s book The Flowing Grace Of Now.
Here is an exercise in humility you might want to try sometime this week—perhaps every day this week. Use your imagination and throw a banquet for the crippled, blind, and lame parts of yourself. Invite your doubts, your pride, and your superiority and arrogance. Invite your resentments, your selfishness, your narrow-mindedness, and your prejudice. In all probability, you won’t find any of these invited guests trying to claim the first place. They will more likely all climb into the chair reserved for you. Here is one last suggestion. Treat each of these guests with reverence. Try to discover what this invitee is to teach you. O lavish Caregiver, Each day I am invited to your feast of life. Teach me to be grateful as I take my place at the table of plenty. Show me how to honor even my faults. They teach me humility. They have the potential of being transformed into something beautiful. They can become my teachers. May I learn to listen to my life. Your teacher for the week will be the crippled and lame parts of yourself. Our faults and weaknesses can become our best teachers. Choose one each day this week. Try to discern why it is a part of your life.
Macrina’s book takes the reader through the weeks of the year, with a suggestion of a “teacher” for each of those weeks. Her insights are powerful and help me center my soul, focus again on Jesus and remember that all of life is here to learn from. I highly suggest this wonderful book! Macrina is a beautiful person and a wonderful friend to all who turn the pages of this book.
April 21, 2020
The Flowing Grace of Now
Encountering Wisdom through the Weeks of the Year
by Macrina Wiederkehr
Ave Maria Press
Sorin Books
Christian | Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 11 Oct 2019
I am reviewing a copy of The Flowing Grace of Now through Ave Maria Press/Sorin Books and Netgalley:
This book is to be used folhlowing the fifty two weeks of the year. A teacher for each week. Every week you are supposed to open the pages of scripture and pray the verses chosen for you. You will have a teacher chosen for you. There are times you may be given a teacher that sounds confusing. You may find yourself wondering "How can this be my teacher?". But in a sense the entire scripture you are praying is your teacher.
The teachers used in this book are not necessarily saints, writers or theologians, but they are ordinary people, events, and experiences whose presence already permeates your life. These include Biblical Characters, day and night, silence, the virtues and finding joy in the good fortune of others.
The Flowing Grace of Now is a year long companion that shows you the presence of the teachers that are already at work in your life, teachers that you may not have realized were there. The teachers that are intent on strengthening and deepening your Faith.
I give The Flowing Grace of Now four out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
Encountering Wisdom through the Weeks of the Year
by Macrina Wiederkehr
Ave Maria Press
Sorin Books
Christian | Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 11 Oct 2019
I am reviewing a copy of The Flowing Grace of Now through Ave Maria Press/Sorin Books and Netgalley:
This book is to be used folhlowing the fifty two weeks of the year. A teacher for each week. Every week you are supposed to open the pages of scripture and pray the verses chosen for you. You will have a teacher chosen for you. There are times you may be given a teacher that sounds confusing. You may find yourself wondering "How can this be my teacher?". But in a sense the entire scripture you are praying is your teacher.
The teachers used in this book are not necessarily saints, writers or theologians, but they are ordinary people, events, and experiences whose presence already permeates your life. These include Biblical Characters, day and night, silence, the virtues and finding joy in the good fortune of others.
The Flowing Grace of Now is a year long companion that shows you the presence of the teachers that are already at work in your life, teachers that you may not have realized were there. The teachers that are intent on strengthening and deepening your Faith.
I give The Flowing Grace of Now four out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
October 14, 2019
The Flowing Grace of Now is a year-long devotional guide written by Macrina Wiederkehr. Since she is one of my favorite contemporary Christian authors, I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of this book. Each of the 52 devotions includes a Bible reference, reflection, prayer, and quotation to be prayerfully considered over the course of a week. I especially like that Macrina also suggests a teacher (for spiritual guidance) for each devotion, ranging from the concrete / obvious (“those who God has chosen to be a part of your life”) to the more abstract / thought-provoking (“the eyes and ears of your heart” or “the hem of God’s garment”). In Macrina’s words, “…perhaps I have spent too much time looking for the perfect teacher rather than seeing the teachers that arrive in unexpected ways.” I’m sure that this book will be cherished by all who want to deepen their understanding of God’s grace in their lives.
December 15, 2020
This is not a typical daily devotional. It calls the reader to explore a Scripture passage repeatedly over the course of a week. Then it asks the reader to “listen to” a teacher that the author reveals based on that passage. I have read other books by this author, none that I loved more than Seven Sacred Pauses. She is a mystic and heady, and also forces the reader to be contemplative and quiet.
It’s a great book that convicts the heart!
Transparency: I offer this review in exchange by Net Galley for a free copy of the book.
It’s a great book that convicts the heart!
Transparency: I offer this review in exchange by Net Galley for a free copy of the book.
January 1, 2021
Everyday we find teachers - in our experiences and in pausing...
August 11, 2022
Loved this devotional with a weekly focus on all of the variety of life experiences that can be our teachers.
April 10, 2023
Doing a little spiritual exploration within Christianity, but beyond my former conservative evangelical comfort zone, I read this book with a study group. It's a lovely book of short weekly devotions with some inspiration and good food for thought. Written by a nun, it naturally is from a Roman Catholic perspective. Although some of my theology differs from the author's, there were plenty nuggets of wisdom here.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews