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Claire Harris
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GRATEFUL

Diana Butler Bass

The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

The author of the multiple award-winning Grounded and leading trend spotter in contemporary Christianity explores why gratitude is missing as a modern spiritual practice, offers practical suggestions for reclaiming it, and illuminates how the shared practice of gratitude can lead to greater connection with God, our world, and our own souls.
More and more people are finding God beyond the walls of traditional religious institutions, but these seekers often miss the church community itself, including its shared spiritual practices such as gratitude. While four out of five Americans have told pollsters they feel gratitude in their daily lives, cultural commentator and religion expert Diana Butler Bass finds that claim to be at odds with the discontent that permeates modern society.

There is a gap, she argues, between our desire to be grateful and our ability to behave gratefully - a divide that influences our understanding of morality, worship, and institutional religion itself. In Grateful, Bass challenges readers to think about the impact gratitude has in our spiritual lives, and encourages them to make gratitude a "difficult and much-needed spiritual practice for our personal lives and to make a better world."

Grateful is partially an individual, emotional response to our circumstances, but research has shown that what we often miss is how much more it is a communal, actionable response. Bass examines this more unexpected experience of gratitude, and reveals how people and communities can practice it and thrive, whether or not they are part of a traditional religious community.


Diana Butler Bass is the author of eight books on American religion, including Christianity After Religion, Christianity for the Rest of Us, and A People's History of Christianity. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Duke University, has taught at the college and graduate level, and is currently an independent scholar. She was a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate, and blogs for the Huffington Post and the Washington Post on issues of religion, spirituality, and culture. Bass is a popular speaker at conferences, colleges and universities, and churches across North America.
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Book

Published 2018-04-03 by HarperOne

Book

Published 2018-04-03 by HarperOne

Comments

Grateful is that beautiful miracle of both challenge and embrace; pushing us toward a deeper way of living while understanding how difficult that living can be and what it costs us. Diana's warmth, humor, and resilient faith are in full bloom in Grateful - and they're contagious.

GRATEFUL is one of PW's Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2018, Religion Category

In an acquisitive and success-driven culture, too many people spend a lot of time thinking about what they want and don't have, instead of being conscious of what they do have and being thankful for it. [Grateful] seeks to remedy that.

Grateful is a timely and beautifully-written book. The practice of gratitude has been a lifeline for me in a challenging season, and this wise book articulates both a helpful challenge and a soul-shaping framework.

Bass writes about things that matter, and she does so with graceful, accessible intelligence. In Grateful, she guides us to discover how we can grow in gratitude as individuals and as communities. If you let this book into your mind, it will find its way to your deepest heart.

In Grateful, Diana Butler Bass is a calming voice in raging cultural seas. She accomplishes this feat by flipping individualism on its head using a surprising lever: gratitude.Gratefulis challenging and refreshing, and speaks to the core of so much modern misery.

Deep, warm, smart, spiritual, reflective, practical, thoughtful and oh-so-engaging, Gratitude is a spoonful of honey to help us transform the 'hard' in our lives into wisdom, compassion, and even resistance.

Gratitude is the undeniable beginning of the spiritual life. Diana Butler Bass offers us a superb overview of this virtue in our individual and communal lives. As she unpacked the various graces and challenges associated with expressing thanks, I found myself grateful to her for this deeply spiritual book.

There is no better response to this historical moment than cultivating gratitude. This book will show both why and how to do it, and in the process you will get the extraordinary pleasure of Diana's company, as she rediscovers the gifts that gratitude brings.

Diana Butler Bass is one of the most thoughtful, insightful voices to emerge among us. Her words are a gentle but fierce reminder that on some eternal level, all is well.