10 episodes

Pray-as-you-go with episodes that bring together music, an inspiring text, time for meditation, brief interviews with faith-filled creatives who share how sacred reading can provide soul food for us all, and writing prompts on the www.readpraywrite.com website for further contemplation.

Read. Pray. Write‪.‬ Read. Pray. Write.

    • Religion & Spirituality

Pray-as-you-go with episodes that bring together music, an inspiring text, time for meditation, brief interviews with faith-filled creatives who share how sacred reading can provide soul food for us all, and writing prompts on the www.readpraywrite.com website for further contemplation.

    Have No Desire to be Perfect

    Have No Desire to be Perfect

    “I had no desire to be perfect and I didn’t want a life of conformity….God was calling me to be authentically myself the person who God made me to be..” Sr. Julia Walsh















































    Lent reminds us that perfection is never the goal, even for those called to avowed life.  In FOR LOVE OF THE BROKEN BODY (Monkfish), Franciscan sister Julia Walsh admits that even she fights the “shoulds” when it comes to spiritual life.  















































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    About the Author & Text





















    Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration who is part of The Fireplace Community in Chicago. She serves as a spiritual director and vocation minister plus hosts the Messy Jesus Business podcast. A widely published spiritual writer, her work is found in places such as America, Geez, Global Sisters Report and St. Anthony Messenger. She is host of the podcast Messy Jesus Business. 

    • 10 min
    Finding Grace to Practice More Healing, Less Helping

    Finding Grace to Practice More Healing, Less Helping

    “I would not allow hurt to harden my body, mind, and spirit, as it had so many troubled souls in my life.” –– Jean P. Kelly















































    All of us recycle pain, but few of us caught in a spiral of suffering have the energy, the knowledge, and the courage to spot and manage deep dysfunction in family and romantic relationships.In Less Helping Them, More Healing You podcast host Jean Kelly offers an approach to reading as meditation that is not another task to add to a fraught day of healing one’s self by one’s self. It is an invitation to join an ancient community of seekers who have practiced, taught, and embodied centeredness—a detachment—achieved through texts of all kinds, not just scriptural or religious.















































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    About the Author & Text





















    Author, educator, and podcast host Jean P. Kelly believes in the power of stories, both hers and others, to heal and restore hope in both individuals and communities.In her new book, Less Helping Them, More Healing You; The Transcendent Gift of an Ancient Spiritual Practice, Jean teaches that Spiritual Reading can heal because it creates the time, space, and grace necessary to achieve authentic self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-gift, even in times of desperation. Her memoir not only shares how the ancient practice helped her recover from unbalanced relationships, but also offers tips for practical application of Spiritual Reading in your life.Over the last 30 years, Jean’s writing as been published in local, regional and national publications and websites.  She regularly contributes essays, cultural commentary, video lectionary reflections, and journalistic stories to U.S. Catholic, Sojourners and others, often exploring the intersections of faith, intellect, and writing and reading as forms of prayer. 

    • 10 min
    Love, Pray, Listen, then let prodigal children go

    Love, Pray, Listen, then let prodigal children go

    “We long for restoration of relationship. And we rely on the Father, who understands. After all, we also were wayward prodigals once, living for our whims.” – Mary DeMuth.















































    Unparenting children begins the first time we drop them at daycare or a playdate.  That doesn’t make letting go any easier when they are adults, until we remember that they were never ours. Children were and are God’s, writes author Mary DeMuth in her new book, Love, Pray, Listen: Parenting your Wayward Adult Kids with Joy.















































    https://amzn.to/41ge1xX





















    About the Author & Text





















    Mary DeMuth is literary agent, international speaker, podcaster, and she’s the novelist and nonfiction author of nearly 50 books, including 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge (Bethany 2023). She loves to help people re-story their lives. Find out more at marydemuth.com.

    • 8 min
    Listening for the holy means accepting others as beloved.

    Listening for the holy means accepting others as beloved.

    “Even before losing my hearing, so much of my identity was upheld by trying to meet expectations, gain and maintain approval, and avoid rejection at all costs. I was deaf to the voice of God calling me the beloved.” Sarah Forti















































    “From our center of being grounded in contemplative practices, we can choose to listen for the Holy by receiving the other as a whole person, not merely their words, but God’s intention for them as his beloved,” writes Sarah Forti in “Listening for the Holy,” from Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership.















































     





















    About the Author & Text





















    Sarah Forti is the co-director of “Crossing the Threshold”, a two-year Contemplative Leadership program at the Shalem Institute of Spiritual Formation in Washington, DC. Sarah also teaches Group Spiritual Direction at Shalem, and serves as Director of Missions and Ministry Programming at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Bon Air, VA.



































































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    • 11 min
    Speak with Love, not Judgement

    Speak with Love, not Judgement

    “Never assume the right to be concerned with the intentions of other people, but only with discerning [God’s] merciful will.” St. Catherine of Sienna 















































    While it might be tempting to correct loved ones we think are going astray, worse yet is the rationalization of such judgement as a duty or as an act of caring.  Writer, editor and spiritual director Vinita Hampton Wright calls this “spiritual venting,” something St. Catherine of Sienna warned against.  In Set the World on Fire: A 4-week personal retreat with the female doctors of the church, the saint offers an alternative aligned with God’s perfect love.















































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    About the Author & Text





















    Vinita Hampton Wright recently retired from a thirty-year career as a book editor. She has published various books, fiction and nonfiction, and continues to write, do some freelance editing, lead retreats and workshops, and serve as a spiritual director.

    • 9 min
    Pray: Even negative emotions can be welcomed as guests

    Pray: Even negative emotions can be welcomed as guests

    When “strangers”—the full spectrum of human emotions—knock at our inner door, they, too, must be welcomed and recognized as bearers of wisdom. Accepting thoughts that arise during lectio divina with a benign wonder and curiosity—an inner hospitality, allows us to attend a voice that is not judgmental. All connections, feelings, and memories—even confusing or painful ones—can be processed if we cultivate an interior witness that is compassionate. —















































     





















    About the Author & Text





















    From Madonna to Deepak Chopra, celebrities have helped create a resurgence of interest in the work of 13th century Sufi mystic, Rumi. Considered to be one of the greatest poets in the Persian language, his spiritual legacy over the last centuries has transcended national borders and ethnic divisions because his guidance for life’s inner journey is universal.

    • 8 min

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