This multifaith, interreligious book of spiritual practice is designed help you find your joy, connect more intimately with your body, and “lean into wonder” through imagination, breathing, vision, and exercises for your body-soul.
The author was trained as a Christian theologian, counselor, and pastor, but the book is truly interreligious. Garcia tells a personal story of leaving behind restrictive Christian teachings and practices in order to find what is deeper, more life-affirming, and real.
When it comes time to recommend inspiring spiritual texts for readers on a similar quest, the first four Garcia names and describes are A Course in Miracles (a metaphysical post-Christian text), The Gleanings of Bahaullah (sayings of the prophet of Bahai), Be Here Now (by Ram Dass), and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (yogic wisdom), before getting to The New New Testament, which Garcia describes as “an edited and updated edition of the New Testament with curation by Dr. Hal Taussig. This includes many of the gospels, poetry, and letters that were important to early Jesus peoples before the movement was co-opted by the 'Holy' Roman Empire.”
Chapters are devoted to rest and gentleness, friendship and generosity, honesty and kindness, compassion and patience, grief and joy.
By the tenth and final chapter, called “A Living Practice,” Garcia writes: “This will be the clear, point-by-point how-to for creating a Living Practice for yourself.” And that is what is offered, setting this book apart from many others with its relentless insistence of application. We recommend Garcia highly.
The book’s title is fulfilled, by the end. The author concludes: “If you take nothing else from this book, if you take nothing else from this offering, please, please, please tattoo this upon your heart: You are God’s Wonder, fully made. And you don’t have to believe that. However, you’d be unspeakably happy if you did.”
