About this item
We live inside a nautilus of prayer--if only we open our senses and perceive what is infused all around. Throughout millennia and across the monotheistic religions, the natural was often revered as a sacred text. By the Middle Ages, this text was given a name, "The Book of Nature," the first, best entry point for encounter with the divine. The very act of "reading" the world, of focusing our attention on each twinkling star and unfurling blossom, humbles us and draws us into sacred encounter.As we grapple to make sense of today's tumultuous world, one where nature is at once a damaged and damaging source of disaster, as well as a place of refuge and retreat, we are called again to examine how generously it awaits our attention and devotion, standing ready to be read by all.
About the Author
Barbara Mahany is an author and freelance journalist in Chicago, who writes these days about stumbling on the sacred amid the cacophony of the modern-day domestic melee. She was a reporter and feature writer at the Chicago Tribune for nearly 30 years, and before that a pediatric oncology nurse at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Her first book, "Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door," has been called "a field guide into the depths of your holiest hours;" Publishers Weekly named it one of their Top 10 religion books for Fall 2014. She has since written four other books, including "The Stillness of Winter: Sacred Blessings of the Season" (October 2020) , a compendium of meditations, essays, recipes, and prayers rooted in the depths of winter's months, from Abingdon Press. Her newest book, "The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauties of God's First Sacred Text," will be published in March 2023, from Broadleaf Books. It explores an ancient theology, the Book of Nature, a metaphorical construct flatly stating that God is revealed through all of creation. It's a book about seeing, and a book about reading. And It weaves threads from all religions, drawing especially from ancient Celtic and Jewish traditions where the natural world is the lins through which the sacred is perceived and illuminated.In her second book, "Motherprayer: Lessons in Loving" (April 2017) , Mahany turned her attention to the sacred mysteries of mothering. Publishers Weekly gave "Motherprayer" a starred review, writing: "[Mahany] beautifully captures how mothering - loving deeply day in and day out, even when stretched to emotional and physical limits - can itself be sacramental." And her third book, "The Blessings of Motherprayer: Sacred Whispers of Mothering" (April 2018) , is a distillation of "Motherprayer" and "Slowing Time," and weaves in new essays, meditations, and blessings, all unfolding across the year. Mahany is married to Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Blair Kamin, (formerly with the Chicago Tribune) , and together they've raised their two sons in both their Catholic and Jewish traditions and faiths. Their older son, Will, graduated from Yale Law School in May 2020, and their younger son, Teddy, is studying at Kenyon College.
