I appreciate the way Lauren Winner writes. She is honest, and writes honestly and bravely about things that mean a lot to me. She writes in a way that engages my attention and makes me want to read more. I appreciate her sense of humor and her sense of perspective. I enjoy reading what Lauren […]
Book Review: Still Read More »
The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune is an excellent book. If the Craft Brewery Pilgrimage were a college course, this would be required reading. It is well-written, informative, entertaining, opinionated, and a lot of fun. If you have questions about brewing, if you are intimidated by having so many craft brewing choices, if
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Brew Like a Monk by Stan Hieronymus is a very valuable resource for anyone who is interested in monks, brewing beer, and the strong tradition of the Belgian monastic communities that produce some of the best beers in the world. Benedictine monastic communities live by the Rule of Benedict, which encourages them to contribute to
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You can find just about anything you want to know about beer and brewing in the Oxford Companion to Beer. It is a big book, over 900 pages. It is the kind of book for which the words “comprehensive” and “definitive reference” were created. It is a beer lover’s dream, the kind of book that makes
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Paula Huston is a lay oblate of New Camaldoli Monastery and Hermitage in Big Sur, California, which is the monastery where I am also an oblate. I have met her once at New Camaldoli; of course, we did not talk to each other. We are, though, friends on Facebook. I was introduced to New Camaldoli
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We expect our leaders to be better than we are. We assume, deep inside ourselves, that a person who can lead an organization well can lead themselves well. We believe that the actions of leaders we see in the world demonstrate values like effectiveness, organization, and inspiration. We project that these actions reflect the inner
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I believe that almost nothing is worth doing unless you can buy a book about it before you start. I almost always need a good book to get started. I love reading good books, and talking about them with the people who write them and read them. Even when I read them on my iPad, I
Cyprian Consiglio is a musician and composer, spiritual teacher, and Camaldolese Benedictine monk; he is part of the same branch of the Benedictine family to which I am connected as a lay oblate. Brother Cyprian begins Prayer in the Cave of the Heart by acknowledging the growing hunger for interiority in our world, and our
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I have read quite a few books about contemplation and people who practice it as I have become one of those people. For me, those books often tend to be fairly conceptual and a little cosmic, and not to include much accessible or tangible help. It can be challenging to talk or write clearly about
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In Take This Bread, Sara Miles tells her story. She writes about how working in restaurants in New York deepened her love of food. She writes about working as a journalist in the midst of armed conflicts in Central America. She writes about the birth of her daughter. She writes about being raised without spiritual
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