"Awaken Your Senses" Blogger Contest: Free Book AND Chocolate!

My new book, Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God, (published by InterVarsity Press) is about to land in bookstores (and hopefully, book-buyer's shopping carts!).

Co-written with Beth Booram, its premise is that 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, Beth and I invite readers to engage their right brain in their faith through sensory spiritual practices that position your heart for divine encounter. Readings and a variety of exercises that utilize the reader's whole body leads them 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

Our book has received some very fine endorsements --

"With Awaken Your Senses, Brent Bill and Beth Booram have given us a superb resource for seeking the God of life through sensuous experience, a way of knowing that has been sadly neglected--and too often held suspect--by the church. How did a faith based on the claim that 'the Word became flesh' become so divorced from bodily, incarnate knowledge? Here is a beautiful book that will help us reclaim our bodies, our senses and our relationship with God."

—Parker J. Palmer, author of Let Your Life Speak

"Amazingly, we become dull to something as extraordinary as life, and bored by someone as awesome as God. This book woke me up without beating me up, and gave me tangible, practical ways to savor the sacrament of life, to have genuine gratitude for my body and its senses, and to sink into the glory of God until I felt nothing but joy. Read this and be blessed."

—James Bryan Smith, author of The Good and Beautiful God

To help get the word out about the message of our book, Beth and I are sponsoring a contest. It's an open call to any blogger to send us 5-10 questions about Awaken Your Senses. We will answer each one individually -- a sort of virtual interview. The virtual interview judged best* will win a signed copy of the book and a gourmet assortment of goodies from The Best Chocolate in Town (my favorite chocolate place!).

A picture of the book jacket, blurbs by others, photos of Beth and me, and video clips (like the one below) are available for the asking.



Questions for the virtual interview will be accepted through January 15th and the virtual interview must be posted by February 1 on the blogger's blog (is that redundant?). Entries will be judged by February 5th ("SuperBlog Sunday") and the winner announced to great acclaim on February 6th (the official book release date). Send interview questions (along w/ a link to your blog) to brentbil@sbcglobal.net

Visit http://www.bethbooram.org/ or http://www.brentbill.com/ for information about Beth or me.

Let the contest begin!

-- Brent

*as judged by my wife Nancy who rarely reads a blog (except mine to make sure I have not said anything to scurrilous) but knows good questions when she sees them.

Family of Brent Bill, employees of Brent Bill and brentbill.com, and Brent Bill's cat are ineligible to participate in the contest. Prohibited where void. Side effects include dizziness, neuralgia, and innuendo.

Sacred Compass Blogger Contest -- First Interviews

The blogger contest for Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment is off and running. The first three to post their interviews are C. Wess Daniels at Gathering in Light, Liz Wine at Lovin' Life Liz, and Shawna Roberts at Mystics, Poets, Fools. I hope you'll give them a visit.

Another person had interview questions but doesn't blog any longer. So I asked her if it would okay to post her questions and my answers on my blog. She said okay, First, though a little background. The interviewer is Jo Morgan of Joywise Heart-to-Heart. Jo lives in Madison, WI and she and her husband and I all went to high school together. Jo and I met in art class at Columbus, Ohio West High School -- under the tutelage of Mr. Robert McLinn. So we're long-time friends, even though Jo looks as even better as she did in high school (as does her husband Rick) and I look ... well, you know how I look. So here goes.

What drew you to this particular topic? Were there specific experiences?
The idea of knowing God’s will for my life, to use the language we used when I was growing up, has always been important to me. From high school days onward I’d buy and/or read books on spiritual discernment. Most of them, while helpful in some ways, were more of the 1-2-3 steps to God’s plan for your life. My life never quite seemed to fit into that 1-2-3 pattern – especially when it came to the challenging times of life or the times when I thought I’d followed God’s direction and seemed to end up in the wrong place. So I began questioning and learning and realized that life is a pilgrimage to God and that all of our experiences are used by God to make us the people we are – and that is good. So I wanted to share those thoughts with others – especially other “strivers” like me who want to do good, seem to often fail, and then beat ourselves up about missing some direction.

How do you personally receive or discern Divine Direction?
There are lots of ways I sense Divine Direction at work in my life. Most are in what Quakers call nudgings – a gentle nudge in the soul to do something worthy. It can be something simple – helping someone whose groceries have tumbled out of his torn grocery sack – or something large – to go work with AIDs orphans in Africa. We all get these nudgings – the important thing is learning to pay attention to them. There are other ways, too, reading wise books, listening to wise people, paying attention in love to the world around me, and much more.

Can you describe a time when the direction was almost as clear as your GPS directions?

One of the clearest times of direction was the time Nancy and I stood in the checkout line at the local grocery store, our cart well loaded. Our three sons lived at home at the time and so food disappeared quickly. Standing in front of us was a member of our Friends meeting, who also had three sons. Her cart held a few essentials. A single mother, she was between jobs and doing her best to get by. I felt a prompting inside me. By almost any standards, you are rich, the voice said. What should you do? Then I remembered Jesus’ words, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink.” I looked at Nancy, she nodded, and I tapped our friend on the shoulder. “Nancy and I would like to buy your groceries, if you’ll allow us,” I said so only she could hear. A look of relief filled her eyes and she nodded yes. As we three left the grocery, she said “Thanks. I have a lead on a job and this will really help tide us over until it comes through.” That was the last thing ever said about this incident between us. That, for me, was a time when Divine direction was a clear as GPS.

What do you believe prevents us from "discerning" God's guidance more easily?

Oh, I think all sorts of things get in our way – our busy-ness, our rushing around, the buzz in our minds of thoughts coming and going and going and coming. Probably the biggest obstacle to discernment is the noise of living, especially when we fail to recognize how it is distracting us from the needs of our souls. When we take time to nurture our spirits, we find discernment much easier.

What recommendations do you give the reader for tapping in more directly to God's Positioning System?
God’s Positioning System! I love that. Well, to tap in more directly, if we’re going to think of GPS, we have to first turn it on, then we have to consult it. GPS doesn’t do any good if it’s just in the car or on our cellphone. It has to be turned on and ready to go – and we have to use it. So, ways of turning it on, I think, include taking time for nurturing the spirit – prayer, quietness, reading, music, art, walking. These things vary person to person. Then ask – “Am I hearing/sensing correctly? Is this the way to go?” And trust the answers your soul receives – especially when the answers lead toward things that bring life and love and light.

Thanks, Jo, for sending in the questions! And for those of you who are bloggers, it's not too late to do the virtual interview.

--Brent

Sacred Compass Blogger Contest

My new book, Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment, (published by Paraclete Press) is just now hitting bookstores. It's premise is that a compass makes a good metaphor for our spiritual lives and the work of discerning God’s will for them. God doesn’t speak as clearly and as obviously as Mapquest or GoogleMaps or GPS. Maybe that’s because we don’t navigate the life of faith via anything remotely resembling GPS. Instead, the divine compass points us the mind and love of God. Our sacred compass operates in our souls and calls us to life with God. As we move toward Divine guidance, we joyfully behold the face of a loving God gazing back at us.

To help get the word out about the message of this book (which Richard J. Foster of Celebration of Discipline calls "one of the finest books on discernment and divine guidance that I have seen in a very long time."), I'm sponsoring a contest. It's an open call to any blogger to send me 5-10 questions about Sacred Compass. I will answer each one individually -- a sort of virtual interview. The virtual interview judged best by an independent, non-biased judge (my wife Nancy who has never read a blog until now but knows good questions when she sees them) will win a signed copy of the book and a gourmet assortment of goodies from The Best Chocolate in Town (my favorite chocolate place!).

A picture of the book jacket, blurbs by others, and photos of me are available for the asking. Questions for the virtual interview will be accepted through April 19th and the virtual interview must be posted by May 1 on the blogger's blog (is that redundant?). Entries will be judged by May 11 (my birthday!) and the winner announced to great acclaim on May 12. Send interview questions (along w/ a link to your blog) to brentbil@sbcglobal.net Visit http://www.brentbill.com/ for information about me.

Let the contest begin!

-- Brent

Family of Brent Bill, employees of Brent Bill, Brent Bill's cats and dog are ineligible to participate in the contest. Prohibited where void. Side effects include dizziness, neuralgia, and innuendo.