Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us

Written by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Reviewed by EW

There is a song that says "Everything old is new again". This book provides the reader with a collection of ancient spiritual practices that can be restorative and transformative when we engage them and knit them into our modern devotional living.

Calhoun, trained in the Reformed tradition, serves as pastor of spiritual formation at Christ Church, Oak Brook, Illinois. She has composed a book which might appear at first glance to be a catalog of spiritual practices and disciplines (NOTE: Don't run screaming because you hear the word "discipline"!). What she provides for the reader is not a complete curriculum but rather a framework in which to discover how the Spirit will use the possibilities contained in the discipline when the sojourner prayerfully discerns to incorporate it into practice. She says that the book "is like a compass that gives you your bearings. It provides you with ways of responding to Jesus, the pole star of the soul. Once you figure out how to navigate the material, you can find your way forward from any point on the spiritual journey".