A Journey of Sea and Stone
How Holy Places Guide and Renew Us
by Tracy Balzer
Broadleaf Books, 2021. 228 pages.
Review written June 26, 2024, from my own copy purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review
A Journey of Sea and Stone includes thoughts and meditations on spiritual direction – taken from the author’s experience guiding people on retreats on the Isle of Iona.
Now, I’ve been on Iona, and somehow when a friend proposed an exercise of visualizing where I want to be in ten years, I came up with the thought that future Sondy would be booking her annual personal spiritual retreat on the Isle of Iona. The spiritual retreat part being annual, the Isle of Iona part being special. I still hope it will happen – and meanwhile, this book let me do that in spirit, if not in person.
I read it slowly, a short section at a time. But it’s full of inspirational thoughts about sacred places and how the holy fits into our lives. Each chapter ends with Questions for Spiritual Direction. As an example, here are the questions at the end of the first chapter:
1. Where are the sacred places in your life? How have they changed you?
2. If you were to be honest with God about the deepest longings of your heart, what would they be? What is keeping you from admitting them?
3. When have you experienced kairos? Is there something in your life that creates an obstacle to kairos?
Even though it was a very different place than Iona, I took this book with me on my 60th birthday trip back to Germany and finished it there. I like the author’s way of raising thoughts and asking questions. She gets you thinking about how the holy touches your life.
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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