The Only Mind Worth Having by Fiona Gardner

The Only Mind Worth Having by Fiona Gardner

In The Only Mind Worth Having, Fiona Gardner takes Thomas Merton's belief that the child mind is the only mind worth having and explores it in the context of Jesus' challenging, paradoxical, and enigmatic command to become like small children. She demonstrates how Merton's belief and Jesus's command can be understood as part of contemporary spirituality and spiritual practice. To follow Christ's command requires a great leap of the imagination. Gardner examines what it might mean to make this leap when one is an adult without it becoming sentimental and mawkish, or regressive and pathological. Using both psychological and spiritual insights, and drawing on the experiences of Thomas Merton and others, Gardner suggests that in some mysterious and paradoxical way recovering a sense of childhood spirituality is the path toward spiritual maturity. The move from childhood spirituality to adulthood and on to a spiritual maturity through the child mind is a move from innocence to experience to organized innocence, or from dependence to independence to a state of being in-dependence with God.

Fiona Gardner is a spiritual director and a professional psychotherapist. She served as the chair of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 2004 to 2008. She is the co-editor of the Merton Journal and the International Thomas Merton Society's UK adviser, as well as the author of various books, including Journeying Home (DLT 2004) and The Four Stages of Loving (DLT 2007).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781498230223
ISBN 10	1498230229
Title	The Only Mind Worth Having
Author	Fiona Gardner
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Year published	2015-11-06
Number of pages	242
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.