Marilyn McEntyre Livres

With the pervasiveness of vitriol and dishonesty today, language needs to be revived and restored. In Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn McEntyre exposes the commercial and political forces that affect public discourse in American culture and counters with twelve constructive "strategies of stewardship"--such as challenging lies (including widely tolerated forms of deception and spin), fostering the art of conversation, and encouraging playfulness and prayerfulness in writing and speaking. The second edition of this timely and timeless book includes updated cultural references and questions for reflection and discussion at the end, allowing a new generation of readers to apply McEntyre's wisdom in a world that struggles with truth and graceful language more than ever before

In Word by Word Marilyn McEntyre invites you to dwell with and savor fifteen specific words-- listen, receive, enjoy, and a dozen more -- as she gives each word a week, reflecting on it for seven days from seven different angles. Drawing on the spiritual practices of lecito divina and centering prayer, McEntyre's evocative reflections open up rich new layers of meaning to nourish your heart, mind, and soul. -- from back of the book.

Focusing on the significance of life's recurring occasions, these poems capture celebrations, commemorations, and everyday moments that resonate as pivotal experiences. Each piece is anchored in specific times and places, inviting readers to reflect on their own memories of beginnings, farewells, and moments of realization. The collection emphasizes the universal nature of these experiences, allowing for personal connections to the themes of transformation and remembrance.

Wise, nurturing, faith-based reflections for caregivers of dying loved ones At some point in our lives most of us will become caregivers. It is a vocation that can last for a few weeks of recovery time or for a long period of chronic illness or disability, and it will involve us intimately in others preparation for death. This collection of poignant reflections by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is for family members and friends who are doing the life-changing work of accompanying someone on the final stretch of his or her journey. In quiet counterpoint to our hurried lives, A Long Letting Go invites caregivers to slow down for reflection and prayer as they prepare to say good-bye to a beloved friend or family member. Based on McEntyre s professional and personal experience with the dying, these gentle meditations offer comfort, direction, hope, respite, and consolation to caregivers during a difficult season of their own lives.

Two dozen select prayer poems to learn from and live with Poetry and prayer are closely related. We often look to poets to give language to our deepest hopes, fears, losses—and prayers. Poets slow us down. They teach us to stop and go in before we go on. They play at the edges of mystery, holding a tension between line and sentence, between sense and reason, between the transcendent and the deeply, comfortingly familiar. When Poets Pray  contains thoughtful meditations by Marilyn McEntyre on choice poems/prayers and poems about prayer. Her beautifully written reflections are contemplative exercises, not scholarly analyses, meant more as invitation than instruc¬tion. Here McEntyre shares gifts that she herself has received from poets who pray, or who reflect on prayer, believing that they have other gifts to offer readers seeking spiritual companionship along our pilgrim way. POETS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOKHildegard of Bingen Lucille Clifton Walter Chalmers Smith Robert Frost Wendell Berry Joy Harjo John Donne Gerard Manley Hopkins Said Marilyn McEntyre George HerbertThomas Merton Denise Levertov Scott Cairns Mary Oliver Marin Sorescu T. S. Eliot Richard Wilbur Francisco X. Alarcon Anna Kamienska Michael Chitwood Psalm 139:1-12

“Like any other life-sustaining resource,” says Marilyn McEntyre, “language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants.” Today more than ever, language needs to be rescued and restored. Drawing on a wide range of sources, both critical and literary, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies is an engaging address to everyone concerned with preserving the vitality and precision of the spoken and written word. “If every literate person in the United States read this book, the result could dramatically transform our society. . . . Written with modesty, keen insight, and grace, Marilyn McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies proposes a revolution of human expression that would bring precision, honesty, and felicity to the spoken and written discourse of contemporary culture. 

What can we learn from contemporary writers about keeping public conversation compassionate, vigorous, faithful, and life-giving?Those who want to avoid simplistic partisan rhetoric and use words in a challenging, spirited way need practical strategies. This book offers a range of them. Drawing upon the work of exemplary contemporary writers, Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict shows how to speak and write clearly and generously. For example, we can attend more carefully to the effects of metaphors, recognize and avoid glib euphemisms, define terms in ways that retrieve core meanings and revitalize them, and enrich our sense of history by deft use of allusion. Contemporary readers are awash in many words that have been cheapened and profaned. But with deliberate use of intelligence and grace we can redeem their “sacramentality”—humanely uttered words can convey life-giving clarity and compassion. Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict is an homage to outstanding wordsmiths who have achieved that potential and an invitation to follow them in making well-chosen words instruments of peace.

Lent is about more than going to church on weekdays and giving up chocolate or social media. It’s also a time to form one’s heart and mind through study and prayer. In Where the Eye Alights, Marilyn McEntyre offers forty short meditations, based on excerpts from Scripture and poetry, that guide readers on a devotional journey from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday. As in lectio divina—the spiritual practice of reading Scripture repetitively and meditatively—McEntyre invites us to notice words that may give us pause and summon us to reflection. This book calls our attention to how the Spirit speaks through phrases that can open doors to deep places for those willing to sit still with them. “Lent is a time of permission,” says McEntyre. “Many of us find it hard to give ourselves permission to pause, to sit still, to reflect or meditate or pray in the midst of daily occupations—most of them very likely worthy in themselves—that fill our waking minds and propel us out of bed and on to the next thing. We need the explicit invitation the liturgical year provides to change pace, to curtail our busyness a bit, to make our times with self and God a little more spacious, a little more leisurely, and see what comes. The reflections I offer here come from a very simple practice of daily meditation on whatever has come to mind in the quiet of early morning.”

"Well-known biblical phrases -- "in the fullness of time," "fearfully and wonderfully made," "in the beauty of holiness," and others -- suggest and evoke and invite. In this book Marilyn Chandler McEntyre offers brief reflections on more than fifty such scriptural phrases that prompt readers to pay attention, to pause where we sense a beckoning. Some of these select phrases are devotional, some speculative, some whimsical, some edgy. McEntyre encourages us to see such "words within the Word" as invitations and, in doing so, to discover that they are places of divine encounter, epiphany, or unexpected guidance. The three sections of the book "Assurance," "Invitation," and "Surprise"--Organize the reflections by tone as well as theme. Rich with eloquence, wisdom, and wonder, these reflections will lead readers to enter the sacred spaces of Scripture, play with possibilities, and connect the biblical word with the ordinary -- and extraordinary -- lives we've been given to live."--book description, Amazon.com

In the form of an open letter from patients to their doctors, spiritual writer and professor of medical humanities Marilyn McEntyre brings to light the hidden fears, desperate needs, deepest hopes, and heartfelt truths that many feel doctors overlook in their approach to health care. It's a clarion call for doctors to attend to the whole person and listen deeply, rather than rush to assess a set of symptoms. And it's a letter that informs doctors of the many things that patients already know about themselves and their health. Engaging and candid, Dear Doctor covers the basics of how patients view their time with doctors, how they want doctors to collaborate on health issues, and even how patients bring their faith and spirituality to their view of their health and their bodies. Ultimately, this book is an important first step to begin a dialogue between two communities that often have a very large disconnect.