Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God

Perhaps you've been missing out. God has given us five senses and a brain with two sides. Yet we often approach God in one way only: through words that are analyzed and processed logically in our left brain. The right brain, however, is the creative, intuitive center--the place that connects most to our seeing, smelling, touching, tasting and hearing, and that roots experiences in our hearts in transforming ways.In Awaken Your Senses, longtime ministers Beth Booram and Brent Bill invite you to engage your right brain in your faith through sensory spiritual practices that position your heart for divine encounter. Readings and a variety of exercises that utilize your whole body lead you to experience God in new ways by

• tasting chocolate, words, matzoh, Scripture, forgiveness
• seeing the moon, wisdom, art, glory, your best self
• touching others, stones, prayers, rubble, Jesus
• hearing silence, music, pain, footsteps, the Spirit, the news
• smelling gardenias, life, salty air, home, healing oil, coffee

Teaching you to pay attention in love to your surroundings, Booram and Bill will help you open your eyes and ears and nose to a sensuous faith--one in which God can be experienced each day as we live and move and have our being.So whether you're weary, stuck, struggling, growing or on information-overload, the exercises and reflections offered here can bring refreshment--a cold drink of water, a gentle breeze--to your soul. Come experience God with all of who you are, and discover more of who he is.

Brent Bill is a writer, retreat leader and Quaker minister. He's the author and coauthor of many books, including Awaken Your Senses, Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes, Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with Mission and Message, and Imagination and Spirit: A Contemporary Quaker Reader. In addition, he is the author of more than one hundred short stories, nonfiction articles and the popular blog Holy Ordinary. Bill is a graduate of Wilmington College and the Earlham School of Religion. He has been a local church pastor, denominational executive, seminary faculty member and go-cart track operator.He lives with his wife on Ploughshares Farm, fifty acres of Indiana farmland that is being reclaimed for native hardwood forests and warm season prairie grasses.

Beth A. Booram is the cofounder and director of Fall Creek Abbey, an urban retreat center in Indianapolis, where she and her husband David lead The School of Spiritual Direction and offer individual and group spiritual direction. She is the coauthor of Awaken Your Senses and the author of several books including Starting Something New.