Ancestors of eclipse, the word, intimate a feeling of abandonment. That has captured my imagination today on #eclipse day.
At heart, eclipse is a sorrowful kind of word, rooted in “absence.” Its Ancient Greek forefather ἔκλειψις / ékleipsis means “forsake.” Even older, the Proto-Indo-European root *leikw- for “leave” hides in eclipse. This *leikw- combines with ex- and creates “leave out, fail to appear, abandon.” Eclipse.
As if the sun could abandon us.
Wait. Have you read Brian McLaren’s Life After Doom? Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature? Jeanine M. Canty’s Returning the Self to Nature?
Eclipse is a word expressing relationship among us and nature, sun, moon, all creatures. How much we love the sun, though it’s easy to forget when life is mediated by our screens.
The charlock mustard that I noticed in the marsh early today is as yellow as and as dependent on the sun as are we all, including the various small white butterflies’ larvae who feed on the mustard plant.
“Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?” Mary Oliver keeps asking. That’s from one of her essays included in Parabola, Spring 2022.
An eclipse is a poignant reminder of our interconnectedness.
Indra’s Net comes to mind. It originated in Hinduism and the deva Indra who’s associated with rain and storms, and then Buddhism took it in. It’s this beautiful infinite net hung with a single sparkling jewel at every point of connection, so there are infinite jewels. If we could look at just one of these star-bright jewels up close, we would see reflected there all of the other jewels in the net, infinite in number, and so on, as we went from jewel to jewel. It is a wonderful image of infinitely repeating interconnectedness among all creatures and creations in the cosmos.
I’d like to make a call to enter into a more mindful relationship with words, too. Anyone can explore words at etymonline.com/. It’s free and based on reliable sources.
As a pre-teen suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, I kept failing Reader’s Digest vocabulary quizzes. I began looking up words’ roots. Knowing these helped words stay more still on the page, made reading less impossible. Pretty much daily I’m thankful to have had an early and unquenchable desire to read even when I couldn’t.
Word histories sometimes scare people because they’re called etymologies. But etymology itself has an etymology. Etymon means “true.” And while words’ definitions change (YAY!), knowing a word’s first roots is a lot like viewing the baby pictures of someone you love. You can’t get enough of how they looked when they couldn’t even talk yet and when there’s a photo of them with red spaghetti sauce smeared all over their baby face.
I say “YAY!” because words’ definitions change because humans change. That we and language are capable of change gives me grounds for hope.
Etymologies are also words’ ancestors. Once you start exploring them, you start seeing how many words are relatives of each other. Indra’s Net again. You just have to pause and make a habit of looking up words in etymonline.com/. Soon it will be a bit like eating potato chips, except healthier. One more word.
Look and see how eclipse has so many siblings. To name a few, it would hold family reunions with: delinquent, derelict, eleven, loan, relic, relinquish, reliquiae, and twelve. The Proto-Indo-European root *leikw- for “leave” or “left” forms all or part of delinquent: leave completely/(de-); derelict: leave back/(re-) completely/(de-); eleven: one left (over 10); loan: left with someone “as promise of future return”; relic: left back or behind/(re-); relinquish: leave behind/(re-); reliquiae: leave back or behind/(re-); and twelve: two left (over 10). They’re all to do with “leaving” or being “left”! It’s beginning to sound like a country song.
Searching further in the Cosmic Baby Book for Words, aka the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), we read this etymology for eclipse: “Old French eclipse, esclipse, < Latin eclīpsis, Greek ἔκλειψις, noun of action < ἐκλείπειν to be eclipsed, literally to forsake its accustomed place, fail to appear.” The ἐκλείπω / ekleípō is “I abandon, I go missing, I vanish,” from ἐκ / ek “out” and λείπω / leípō “I leave behind.”
When I learned today that eclipse has French roots from the twelfth century CE, I wondered: How might someone have felt around that time when an eclipse happened? Probably not unlike diverse people do today. One article of a zillion is here.
NASA notes that there were 250 solar eclipses during the 1100’s CE. That NASA has a FREE Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses overjoys the nerd in me. More here. The longest annular solar eclipse happened on January 16, 1116 CE, and the longest total solar eclipse occurred on July 11 that very same year, 1116 CE. The first one lasted 10 minutes and 27 seconds, and the summer one was 6 minutes and 46 seconds of eclipse.
Let’s imagine. Without a cell phone / smart phone constantly in hand, did a European in 1116 CE have an edge on interconnectedness with nature? We do have more screens between us and nature now.
But wait. Feudalism and manorialism were flourishing then, so likely I and many more would’ve been part of the 80-90% of serfs holding sickles instead, which it can be argued is where the plutocracy wants to return the world.
In fact, Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America asks, “Why is there so much poverty in America?” Or, as theologian Walter Brueggemann’s work argues, Why isn’t this poverty and America’s systemic inequity the central questions of Christianity? Desmond shows “how some lives are made small so that others may grow” in the U.S., and his argument challenges us to become “poverty abolitionists.”
Resolving our divorce from nature seems central.
Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe points out how the “highly venerated Oxford English Dictionary” defines nature as “[t]he phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as opposed to humans.”
For emphasis, he repeats the unhealthy binary in this definition: “…as opposed to humans.”
We are brought up thinking that dictionaries set the definitions and that what we find in a dictionary is THE definition of a word. We’ve been taught to treat dictionaries as sacrosanct. But excellent lexicographers and dictionaries don’t determine words’ definitions. Humans do. Dictionaries are meant to record current uses of words. Linguist John Algeo taught me that. There’s even one dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage where word squabbles are recorded. Its tagline: “The complete guide to problems of confused or disputed usage.” In fact, here you learn that one of the most stigmatized words ever in English, “ain’t,” used to be viewed as acceptable, even preferred usage. It ain’t a lie—I did a paper on it in graduate school for John!
Akomolafe was approached by a group campaigning for a new definition of “nature” in our dictionaries, because they had noticed, as he says, “the perceived separateness between humans and nature – especially in the so-called Global North” (LinkedIn, January 23, 2024). Akomolafe argues that this illusion of separateness “has contributed in no small way to the extractive cultures that are folded into the lingering troubles of the Anthropocene.” This group asked him for his own definition, which, he says, “they’d hope might dislodge the centrality of the brutal humanism implied in the official descriptions of ‘nature’.”
Akomolafe offered this definition: “A theoretical, economic, political, and theological designation from the Enlightenment era that attempts to name the material world of trees, ecologies, animals, and general features and products of earth as separate from humans and human society, largely in a bid to position humans as masters over material forces, independent and capable of transforming the world for their exclusive ends.”
His coda? “It’s as far as I could go without waxing poetic about nature as a colonial trope for biopolitical interventions. What felt important to say was that ‘nature’ is a performative, speculative gesture, a ritual of relations that rehearses a dissociation from the world. A subjectivizing force. A lounge in the terminal of the radioactive Human.”
Thank you, Bayo Akomolafe, for this wisdom.
The etymology of eclipse starts looking anthropomorphic.
We no longer have a geocentric model of the cosmos. Isn’t it time we stopped having an anthrocentric model of ‘nature’?
When I was living in Germany, studying at Heidelberg University, I was suffering from anorexia, undiagnosed. My family was experiencing the trauma of my father’s illness, and we were all doing the best we could to survive. I didn’t fully understand yet how dangerous this time was, but I did begin trying to eat well. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but inching forward to wellness, it was very hard, and every tiny success was huge.
I remember I had a handwritten list taped to the back of my closet door in my small two-person dorm room in Neuenheimer Feld, to keep track of showering, to make sure I did regularly. I was living with high-functioning depression, also undiagnosed, and it was exhausting. In spite of these deeply painful and confusing experiences, there were also moments of joy. It was my first time in another country, I was there on a meager but bountiful to me Rotary Graduate Scholarship, and I was trying to learn German, which made me very happy. I had met the Buschbecks in Heidelberg, and they took took me in, and also I came to know the Schusters of Ernsbach, my sweet roommate’s family.
That’s how I came to be in Ernsbach visiting Gundi’s family, who also took me in. I’m forever grateful. They treated me with great kindness. They cooked and baked the most delicious food like roast potatoes, delicate and delicious feldsalat or Rapunzel Lettuce, the very best homemade French onion soup, rabbit, Spätzle, and more, including Lebkuchen. I healed eating their food in the warm-hearted home nestled in Baden-Württemberg.
One day, to welcome the international student and her sister’s roommate, Marianne walked across the village with a fresh bouquet of multicolored freesia, to her parents’ house. This was all happening in German, so I was translating in my mind as she told me what they were. I was still in that stage of translating what was said to me rather than just hearing and understanding, which thankfully came later, owing to kind Germans living with my then halting German. I have an image of accepting Marianne’s flowers outside, for some reason. I remember Ernsbach as a greening place of beech, hornbeams, sycamores, maples, ash, oaks, birch, and of course deep emerald spruce and fir trees, and in my memory I am standing there accepting this extraordinary and thoughtful gift, surrounded by friendly trees, and I couldn’t believe how beautiful they smelled. I’d never heard of, much less smelled and seen freesia before.
Wood sorrel, however, is what I seem to grow best in California. It lines the spaces under the watermelon-pink crepe myrtle trees in front of our home. We keep trying to make that space grow succulents, Sean and I have planted and tended many there, and they do grow, but wild wood sorrel with its tall yellow blooms grows best there.
But someone who lived here before us left one yellow freesia under the holly tree next to our house and beside the geranium bush. Every spring this lone freesia is the first to bloom, and I developed a ritual where I would go over every day when I go out and bend to smell its perfume and spend a few moments just marveling at it, and remembering.
But this year it didn’t seem to bloom. I was extra busy teaching, having conversations with students, marking their papers and other work, attending faculty meetings at UC Berkeley, etc., and also having very many wonderful conversations with my kind, warm-hearted, and brilliant friends at the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), founded by the Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher Richard Rohr. Since the fall I have been participating as an affiliate faculty along with Randy Woodley and others, making the Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course. Conversations with Randy, Barbara Holmes, Brian McLaren, Drew Jackson, Gigi Ross, Jennifer Tompos, Jim Finley, Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, Richard Rohr, and others have been a course in itself, and a healing through belonging and community.
So the very edible wood sorrel aka weeds outgrew my interest in or time for pulling them. They were approaching knee height when I stopped to fully realize how much I missed my freesia. Every spring this freesia’s delicate, bright yellow fragrance sparkles under the holly’s red berries and spiny green leaves and near the spicy- and green-smelling geranium with its red blooms. We were also left pearl calla lilies in this small patch. I welcome these every spring as they shoot up. A couple of years ago, I sowed orange California poppies. Just recently, the holly’s small cream-colored flowers attracted bees, that yearly ritual I never miss. I watch them from our front step or out the little window there, so focused on their nectar gathering and nothing else. I’ve worked the soil underneath that small tree, as my mother taught me, and I love watching everything sprout, grow tall, bloom, and then fade. The stages are all very beautiful to me.
Often when I gaze on our holly, I think how I remembered not long ago that Acevedo means “a holly grove,” the “holly” is azevo and the “grove” is edo. It’s a surname that originates in Portugal and through colonization to Spain and from there, for my family, to Cuba. I say “remembered” because my best friend tells me that she told me that years ago. I believe her.
So yesterday I was out in that patch under the holly, pulling wood sorrel. Again, I have to say it again, because it has been so remarkable. The rains this season made everything grow faster than imaginable. And thankfully pulling weeds with such a thoroughly soaked ground is like cutting through fudge, smooth, easy, delicious. They come right up.
I learn so much when bending to the soil. Just the smell of earth makes me wiser, I think. I mean it reminds me of my place in all of this, that interconnectedness. Bending to pull up weeds or dig up those bulbs that are outside of the enclosure and moving them to a new spot where they can grow without fear of the lawnmower’s blades—that bending feels like I’m bowing to earth, thank you, thank you.
I learn so much also because the wood sorrel and the orange poppies are totally intertwined. I have to be careful not to pull up poppies with the wood sorrel, and sometimes, even being careful, I do. As I’m doing that, bending and with gloves on trying to find only the wood sorrel to pull up, I think of the wise parable of the weeds from Matthew 13:24 and on. It seems to teach the mind and heart of compassion. First of all, wood sorrel has worth, you can eat it for one thing, and it is beautiful too, and who is to say what is weed and what is flower? In this parable Jesus says to let the weeds and the wheat grow together. It reminds me to be compassionate first with myself, for the wood sorrel and poppies intertwined within me, along with the star thistle, prickly lettuce, and hedgeparsley with its stick-to-your-socks seeds.
I grew up with the eradicate your prickly lettuce mentality. Know the good and fight and rid yourself of the bad. This grew the perfectionist mindset in me.
This teaching from Jesus doesn’t mean it’s okay to be unkind to my self or others, or that it’s okay to be thoughtless or selfish, but it does say that I’m a mixture of wood sorrel, prickly lettuce, orange poppies, hedgeparsley, and star thistle. I love my self with my mix of faults and kindness just as I love others with theirs.
I also have to relearn to notice and appreciate my inner freesia. This spring, again, the wood sorrel, rain-fed, shot up, juicy and strong and abundant, and the wonderful conversations I was having with so many students and friends, all my teachers, meant that I thought that my freesia had not bloomed. It was mostly the green and yellow of wood sorrel. But yesterday—voila!—as I was pulling up wood sorrel underneath the holly tree, there it was, the blooming as always bright yellow freesia, hidden underneath the abundant weeds. It has ten or more flowers already. It is heavy with them. As I pulled weeds, I had thought I kept smelling its uniquely wonderful fragrance but had told myself I was imagining things. See how you can catch the scent of goodness and kindness even if you can’t see it? My Self said to my self. So happy to be reunited with my freesia and to see it again, I carefully cleared out the space around it to give it breathing room, and I breathed in deep the aromatic earth.
I thought how my mother recently turned 87 and how fortunate we are to still have her with us. She is a gardener and I always feel close to her when I smell dirt and touch it. Because she is so humble, she is exceptionally strong and smart without advertisement, in that it’s-not-much-noticed way. She somehow nursed my father for three years through his dementia and death, she has had two bouts of Covid, and she was hospitalized for pneumonia, and nearly died two years ago. My brother and his family live with her right now, and she enjoys the extended family arrangement.
I thought as I dug and positioned a decorative stone under the freesia, to prop it up and also so I don’t lose it again, how Marianne in Ernsbach introduced me to these. Not too many years after she walked her bouquet so thoughtfully across that village to gift it to me, welcoming the stranger, she died in a tragic accident, very young, too young. It was unthinkable. I thank you, Marianne, every time I see and smell freesia anywhere, and especially the one in my front yard. Thank you.
Recently I had an experience of release that is the result of years of therapy, years of reading psychology deeply and also spiritually wise works, years of writing poetry and of translating spiritual texts like Cloud and Presence, years of steeping in scripture and wise works, recent conversations with my CAC friends, and years of kindness and love from my family and friends, all beloveds. That includes Tao our cat, and Lucky who lived to be 20, our cat friend before Tao. I let go of much recently, and I found the freesia in me, and the tears came and since I was lying in bed at the time, they ran into my ears, and these were good tears.
Though I have not been depressed for many years now, and my doctor says it is in “remission,” and I’m grateful, and though I know I am whole, I am also healing. This release recently was a major part of that ongoing healing.
I am grateful for freesia, within me and in my front garden, for freedom to be self-compassionate and others-compassionate and to grow and heal, and for the weeds.
Students and I discuss that in class. The concept often surprises them. One wrote, “I never thought of research as a conversation, but by this point, it is very clear to me that research is more than just looking stuff up. It’s about finding connections between different sources and ideas by comparing and contrasting them, and creating something of your own.”
Research can also be a deeper conversing, a communing with. In this way, I visited daily for over a year with Brother Lawrence. This kind down-to-earth mystic lived in seventeenth-century Paris as a Discalced Carmelite friar. The Discalced for “without shoes” means he wore sandals as a sign of simplicity and voluntary poverty. While I lived with Brother Lawrence during the scholarly serious and playfully creative act of translation, a true conversation with this humble man developed. I listened to his voice in his French words, first in his spiritual maxims, then in his surviving letters. These and his conversations with his good friend Joseph of Beaufort, who took good notes, are the happy center of Practice of the Presence.
Living with this calm friar and his wise words on contemplation was a deeply satisfying, silent conversation. How life-altering healthy conversations always are. Listening to the friar’s vibrant presence in his book made my own life significantly calmer, even (or especially) in the middle of how-life-happens-to-everyone-including-me.
This book was also a conversation with my kind first readers. I spent hours on the phone with them and hours pouring over their emails, listening, asking for clarification, and revising. Their questions improved the book tremendously. Grateful doesn’t begin to describe how thankful I am for their helpful dialogue.
Then I sent the manuscript out, hopefully asking for endorsements. Twenty-three said, “Yes.” Their input added another layer of conversation to the book. Even as they responded, their words profoundly affected me. Listening to their words also contributed to the manuscript during its last stages before publication. They gave me confidence about my work. They helped me see it anew, often in ways I had not been able to, because I was too close to it.
Many days I walked around in a kind of happy daze: “They read my book. They sent an endorsement.” Interrupting for many moments the Quaker chant or Mary Oliver poem or mantra I was attending to.
Conversation of all kinds is the backbone of my translation. It supported the creation also of this humble friar’s life and work, since he lived his whole life in sandals and a coarse tunic, never trying to publish during his lifetime. We only have his work because of the conversations between him and his friend Joseph of Beaufort, who published Brother Lawrence’s words a year after the friar’s death, when other friends asked for more of his letters, since they found them uplifting to read, and encouraging.
Conversation rewards attention. It’s from con-/com- “with, together,” and versare “turn, bend.” It’s easy to think of conversation mostly as words, but converse also means “move about with, live with, dwell with, keep company with.” Today we’d say, “Hang out.” Translating is a uniquely intimate act of “hanging out” with another human, conversing. Converse also means “turn around, transform,” the way kind friendship, “hanging out” with others, can change us for the better and happier, forever.
Here are the nearly two dozen endorsers and their words for my revolutionary translation of Brother Lawrence and his Practice of the Presence. In print for over three centuries, beloved by kind seekers and thinkers from varied backgrounds – religious, not-religious, and everything in-between and beyond those categories, this spiritual classic is available for pre-order now here.
“Acevedo Butcher’s careful translation recreates the volatile, war-filled, plague-ridden world of seventeenth-century France. She invites us into the monastery kitchen with Brother Lawrence as he cleans the pots and pans amidst literal turmoil outside the monastery doors – a similar situation to what I imagine many of us find ourselves in today! This comprehensive translation of letters, maxims, and last words revolves around the simple practice of the presence, which is simply, and at its most essential, an awareness of the presence of God. Acevedo Butcher beautifully captures what Brother Lawrence continually reminds us: There are no special words, devotions, or actions needed, just simplicity of thought and deed.”
—Father Richard Rohr, OFM, Center for Action and Contemplation
Every skilled translator knows only too well the looming meaning of the French phrase Traduire, c’est trahir—‘To translate is to betray.’ The phrase means that something essential in the original language is left out of the translation. The translator’s art requires two skills at once. She must indwell each language while at the same time listening deeply and waiting patiently. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, both delicate and precise as embroidery, is no traitor. With inspiring, poetic prose she provides us the first complete translation of all Brother Lawrence’s works. And she does this from a unique perspective. As a woman of color, she is sensitive to the need to look beneath the pot-scrubbing Brother Lawrence (he actually detested the work) to see the social constraints that bore upon the man, Nicolas Herman, who, in King Louis XIV’s France, was socially excluded for not being adequately French in quite the right way. Carmen Acevedo Butcher gives a living voice to a person who did not count in his one culture. Out of this place of not-counting, emerges a depth of spiritual wisdom that transcends the ages. Carmen Acevedo Butcher is uniquely positioned to give him a voice in a way no previous translator has. Her translation will be the new standard by which other translations will be measured.
—Martin Laird, OSA, is professor of early Christian studies at Villanova University; author of Into the Silent Land; A Sunlit Absence; and An Ocean of Light (all by Oxford University Press)
“Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s insightful and inclusive translation of Brother Lawrence’s classic, Practice of the Presence, is such a needed balm for our beleaguered souls. Its wisdom reminds us that the maelstrom of this present age is not unique. In this world we will have trouble, i.e., pandemics, environmental disasters, and severely strained social contracts, but they are transitory distractions. Acevedo Butcher’s spiritually attuned translation invites us to host presence, awaken hope, and immerse ourselves in love.”
—Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Holmes, president emerita, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities; core faculty for the Center for Action and Contemplation
“The best translations of spiritual classics are not those that sound familiar but those that strike the ear in a whole new way, because they offer proof that the teachings are still alive and evolving in our own day. Whether you love the teachings of Brother Lawrence or have never encountered them before, you can trust Carmen Acevedo Butcher to offer you a fresh hearing that is in tune with the lives we are living right now.”
—Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World
“Imagine Mr. Rogers was a mystic. That will give you a sense of the warm spiritual heart of Brother Lawrence, brought to life for the twenty-first century in this vivid, timely new translation. In our age of distraction and despair, Brother Lawrence’s counsel to practice the presence of Love is not a method or a formula, but the gentle gift from a friend of the God who is our Friend. This is a book to cherish as God’s incessant invitation to draw near.”
—James K.A. Smith, author of You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
“To be present to God: this is the ‘method without method’ experimented by a humble Parisian religious of the seventeenth century. This new translation, faithful to the original text, allows us to rediscover a simple spiritual path accessible to all.” —Denis Sureau, editor, theologian, author of Frère Laurent de la Résurrection: Le cordonnier de Dieu (Artège, 2020)
“What a bold, vibrant, and potent translation of this mystical masterpiece! As she did with the perennial wisdom jewel, Cloud of Unknowing, Carmen Acevedo Butcher once again breaks open the stilted and patriarchal language that encrusts our most life-giving spiritual treasures and makes the Practice of the Presence easy to grasp and impossible to resist. Its author, the humble seventeenth-century sage Brother Lawrence, reminds us that every task, no matter how ordinary, is a fresh opportunity for drawing near to the Friend. And that the more we take refuge in this intimacy, frequently repeating such phrases as ‘My God, I am all yours,’ or ‘God of love, I love you with all my heart,’ or ‘Love, create in me a new heart,’ the more often we find ourselves simply resting in the presence of Love Itself.”
—Mirabai Starr, translator of John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila and Julian of Norwich, author of God of Love and Wild Mercy
“The greatest mystics, like Kabir and Rumi, have a simplicity and electric directness that both takes our breath away and points us to the true north of our essential divine identity and the radiance of the Divine Presence in and as everything. Brother Lawrence is one of these universal visionaries, and reminds us relentlessly, in his soberly ecstatic and humble way, that what we search for with such anxiety and longing is always alive in us, and that the divine presence soaks and invigorates all things at all times. In a time of such devastation and rabid confusion, Brother Lawrence’s testimony is of sublime help, and a source of radical encouragement to all seekers on all paths. In these wonderful, naked, luminous translations he lives afresh inviting us with every word into the reality he knows and embodies so simply and fully. Do not miss this book and give it to everyone you know.”
—Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope and Turn Me to Gold: 108 Translations of Kabir
“To live guided by true presence. To pray as an invitation to embodied authenticity. To orient heart and mind in the direction of kindness. This is the theology of Brother Lawrence brought alive in this beautiful translation of The Practice of Presence by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. Accessible and freshly relevant, the book is a bell of mindfulness to accompany readers in deeper contemplation, making it an important guide to self-understanding, spiritual exploration, and Unity. Pause as you read. Breathe. Practice presence. Allow this profoundly invitational book to settle into your heart.”
—Valerie Brown, JD, MA, PCC, Dharma teacher, Plum Village; faculty, Georgetown University, School of Continuing Studies; author of Hope Leans Forward
“A vibrant, urgent, and earthy translation of a timeless classic.”
—James Martin, SJ, author of Learning to Pray
“In this radiant new translation Carmen Acevedo Butcher puts her acclaimed skills as a translator fully in the service of her listening heart to deliver Brother Lawrence’s timeless teaching on simplicity and presence to a world desperately in need of it. More than a translation, this is a transmission, conveying not only Lawrence’s words, but the spirit of inclusivity and kindness from which he wrote them. It is her faithfulness to the fragrance of his presence that makes her translation so inviting, even as we watch her take a few risks to reach a whole new world of seekers. It was a joy to watch Carmen and Brother Lawrence making such sweet music together.”
—Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Heart of Centering Prayer, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene
“How to live in the presence of God is of the essence of the Christian mystical tradition. Few mystical texts have presented a practical method for attaining God’s presence as effectively as the collection of letters, conversations, and biographical materials known as The Practice of the Presence of God, stemming from the Carmelite brother, Lawrence of the Resurrection (d. 1691). This gem of the Christian mystical tradition has now been made available in a striking new translation and study by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. It is a book to be treasured by all who are devoted to the inner life.”
—Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor emeritus, Divinity School, University of Chicago
“Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s powerful translation of Brother Lawrence’s Spiritual Maxims, letters, and conversations opens our hearts to experience God through the lens of a humble seventeenth-century friar, one who had very little to say about institutional religion and very much to say about the presence of God in the everyday lives of ordinary people. At a time when institutionalized religion often fails us, this translation reminds us that we are constantly surrounded by the divine presence and that God is accessible to us at any moment of life and far beyond the confines of churches, temples, and synagogues. It is a timely translation that holds enormous possibility for the reformation of a religious faith that desperately needs it.”
—Rob Nash, associate dean for doctoral programs and professor of comparative religion and mission at the McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University, Atlanta, Georgia
“Carmen Acevedo Butcher brings scholarly expertise and abundant love to this fresh rendering of a classic work of Christian literature. Brother Lawrence’s spiritual insights are as timely now as they were when first written centuries ago, making this beautiful translation a much-needed gift to the world today. With its inclusion of helpful historical and biographical context, this edition deserves a place in every personal and public library.”
—Karen Swallow Prior, research professor of English and Christianity & Culture, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
“Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century French monk, persists as a powerful force and resource in Christian tradition. His testimony, in letters and conversations, is marked by humility, vulnerability, simplicity, and a focus on love. In this welcome new edition Carmen Acevedo Butcher has made the work of Brother Lawrence freshly available in a most accessible and compelling way. In our world marked by speed, convenience, and hostility, no doubt Brother Lawrence is a persuasive antidote and alternative to a culture of alienation. We may be grateful to Acevedo Butcher for her careful, attentive work in this contemporary offer of ancient trustful wisdom.”
—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, author of Money and Possessions
“Presence, not often or easily practiced, is made, once more, available to us. Each of us can practice presence by embodying all that we inhabit. May we come closer to ourselves and to God by a newly found practice of presence. This book is one such tool to inhabit a profound presence.”
—Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, PhD, author of Body Becoming: A Path to our Liberation
“Brother Lawrence is not only a great Christian mystic, he’s also charming and accessible—a sage whose wisdom is thoroughly down-to-earth and relevant to today. Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s fresh, richly embodied, and at times surprising translation makes the words of this Carmelite contemplative truly come alive.” —Carl McColman, author of Eternal Heart and The Big Book of Christian Mysticism
“Carmen Acevedo Butcher listens across the centuries and finds a companion for all of us in a disabled, veteran of war, shoe-mending, soup-making monk. Brother Lawrence’s ‘sacred, ordinary, and necessary’ way of prayer can help all of us to pause, and more importantly, to bring our minds back to love. This translation is a joyful conversation with Brother Lawrence, one in which we can all participate.”
—Kaya Oakes, author of The Defiant Middle
“In these pages, I sat across from a blue-collar saint whose temple is a kitchen. Brother Lawrence has bequeathed to us that rare wisdom that weds the celestial to the terrestrial. He teaches us how to punctuate the ordinary tasks of life with petition, thanksgiving, and the practice of standing in the presence of Jesus, even as he flips omelets for the Almighty. This splendid book, exquisitely written and scintillating with wisdom, will breathe divine life into the sacred ordinary of the Christian.”
—Chad Bird, Scholar in Residence at 1517
“As time goes on, new translations of classic works are desirable. Carmen Acevedo Butcher has provided one for our times. Her work reflects her love of Brother Lawrence and her familiarity with the Practice of the Presence of God. Her comprehensive version is quite extensive and full.”
—Father Salvatore Sciurba, OCD, Discalced Carmelite Friars, Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Washington, DC
“Many have an acquaintance with Brother Lawrence but Carmen Acevedo Butcher helps us to know him far better in this new translation. We not only experience a fresh, contemporary, and accessible translation of The Practice of the Presence of God but we also get a greater understanding of this legendary yet simple man who guides us on a path of contemplation of the greatest love of all.”
—Vincent Bacote, director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics, and professor of theology, Wheaton College
“Carmen Acevedo Butcher has given us a careful and luminous translation of a spiritual classic. This great book still has the power to bring us into the Presence.”
—Don Brophy, author of One Hundred Great Catholic Books
“This is Presence come alive for a new generation, for our conflicted spirits. Reveals the most durable way of prayer not dependent on words I’ve ever found. Highly recommended!”
—Jon M. Sweeney, author of Nicholas Black Elk and Feed the Wolf
