Awaken Your Senses Comes to Philadelphia!

Beth Booram's and my Awaken Your Senses workshop is coming to Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA on October 5-7, 2012.  Based on our Awaken Your Senses book, this interactive and very sensory workshop will teach you ways of engaging your senses and exploring the wonder of God. 

Today would be a great day to register.  I hope we'll see you there!

Awaken Yours Senses Contest: Official Rules

The Awaken Your Senses Contest is about to begin!

Beginning Monday, February 6^th, Brent and Beth will host an “Awaken Your Senses Contest” featured on:

· Awaken Your Senses Facebook Page

· Brent’s Blog

· Beth's Blog

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, for five weeks, Beth and Brent will post a sense of the week. You are invited to pay attention to that particular sense and see how it introduces you to the wonder of God.

2. If something cool happens, post a description about that experience on the Awaken Your Senses FB Page or Beth or Brent’s blogs. (All entries must be submitted by Sunday at noon.)

3. Brent and Beth will choose a winner on Sunday evening and that person will receive a $25 gift card for a gift related to that sense.

4. Brent and Beth will also do a drawing from the names of everyone who participated each week and the weekly winner of the random drawing will receive an autographed copy of Awaken Your Senses.

5. The winners will be announced on Awaken Your Senses Facebook Page and Brent and Beth’s blogs on each Monday when a new sense begins!

The Contest Schedule!

February 6 – Taste

February 13 – See

February 20 – Touch

February 27 – Hear

March 5 -- Smell

Tell your friends about the contest. Tweet, tumblr and blog about it! Spread the word! We can’t wait to hear about your experiences as you awaken your senses to the wonder of God!

-- Brent

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.

"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.

It's a Book Party -- And You're Invited!

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. It's A Party -- And I Hope You'll Come! As you probably know by now, Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God is now available!  To celebrate its release, I'm having a book release party at Ploughshares Farm -- and you're invited. The party will be January 15 from 3-5:30 in the afternoon at Ploughshares Farm (6960 E. Hendricks County Rd, Mooresville, IN 46158).  It's a drop-in/drop-out sort of thing -- so you don't have to stay the whole time, though you're welcome to, if you'd like. We'll have food (fixed by Nancy, who's a great cook!) and drinks.  Beth Booram (the co-author of the book) will be there and she and I will be happy to sign books.  Of course, we'll have copies of Awaken Your Senses for sale -- at the special book release party price of $12 ($3 off retail). If you buy Awaken Your Senses at the party, you'll also get a free copy of my Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes. Reservations are requested -- mostly so we know how much food to fix!  Just email me at brentbil@brentbill.com if you plan on coming. If you'd like a map to Ploughshares, just drop me an email (brentbil@brentbill.com) and I'll send one to you.  Googlemaps is really accurate, though.   I hope you have a blessed holiday season -- full of the peace that this season is meant to bring. Brent PS If you live too far away to attend (or just don't feel like partying), but would still like an autographed book at the release party price, just email me at brentbil@brentbill.com and I'll get one to you! PPS January 15 is also the meeting day of Friends in Fellowship, the Quaker worship group that meets at Ploughshares.  It gathers at 6:30 and you'd be welcome to join us for worship that evening, if you'd like. Awaken Your Senses is available at fine independent stores like and Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. "A deeply pleasing book" -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)   You're receiving this email because you're a friend of Brent Bill's. Unsubscribe << Test Email Address >> from this list. Our mailing address is: J. Brent Bill 6960 E. Hendricks County Rd Mooresville, IN 46158 Add us to your address book Copyright (C) 2012 J. Brent Bill All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

Awaken Your Senses -- Early Reviews

The first reviews of the new book are coming in -- and I couldn't be more pleased. Here are some excerpts!

Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill and Beth A. Booram. InterVarsity ... Modeling the best Sunday School teachers, Bill (Sacred Compass) and Booram (The Wide Open Spaces of God) get close to God via the five senses. The journey could so easily have been a skip instead of a sail; however, they truly manifest the book’s purpose: “to help more of you experience more of God.” The two ministers and workshop leaders accomplish this so well with natural sweetness from the inside, not with treacle glopped on top. Starting with the cover illustrations—a rose, a bird singing treble, threatening thorns, and a bitten pear, each image superimposing on another—the book divides naturally into five parts. ... Within each chapter, the authors alternate essays, their voices nearly indistinguishable except for Bill’s wittier bits; they touch on the personal, such as Booram’s sacred hospital smells. Each chapter includes spiritual exercises. The two cite the Bible’s raising up of the five senses, augmented with quotes from many sensate Christians. It adds up to a deeply pleasing book. -- Publishers Weekly.

Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill & Beth Booram ... I had a very early version of this and was so taken with it I told a few folks this summer that it will be one of the books of the year. ... [Beth and Brent] walk us through an array of wonder-full meditations and experiences that combine a sensuous engagement with creational givens---taste, hearing, touch, smell, seeing---and ways these activities can help us know God. There are two things going on here, it seems---helping us be attentive to the world around us, practicing a sensuous worldview and embodied sort of discipleship, and the ways in which this sort of attentiveness can facilitate a deeper relationship with God. Beautiful! I'll bet you know somebody for whom this will be a godsend. It'll wow 'em, for sure. And that cover---you have to see it "for real." Splendid. Kudos, again, to InterVarsity Press. -- Byron Bolger of Hearts and Minds Books.

Awaken Your Senses is now available at local independent bookstores like Hearts and Minds and, of course, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, InterVarsity Press, and more.

Order a copy online in the next five days and I'll be happy to send you a free signed bookplate!

Holiday Blessings!
Brent