Contemplative Heart, The »

James Finley was born in Akron, Ohio on May 30, 1943. After graduating in 1961 from Hoban High School, a Catholic school run by the Holy Cross Brothers, he entered the cloistered Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Ky. where he studied under Thomas Merton.

"I sat at Thomas Merton s feet in the classical sense," Finley says. "I saw him as a man of God whose guidance I could trust and follow in committing myself to a life of contemplative self transformation."

Before making his final vows to become a Trappist monk, Finley left the monastery in January 1967 and began to work toward a bachelor s in English Literature from the University of Akron and a master s in education from Saint John College in Cleveland. Finley also taught high school religion and wrote religion textbooks.

In the early 1980s, Finley accepted a full-time doctoral scholarship in clinical psychology from the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He focused his studies on integrating sound clinical practice with the contemplative dimensions of healing.

Today, Finley and his wife, Maureen Fox, are psychotherapists in private practice in Santa Monica, Calif. Finley also conducts "silent retreats" throughout the United States and Canada where he helps participants draw from both Christian and Buddhist sources to identify the fundamentals of contemplative living.

The author of several books including Merton s Palace of Nowhere and The Awakening Call, Finley has two grown daughters from a previous marriage and three grandchildren.

It is possible to live a contemplative life in today's world.

James Finley recognizes the depth and range of today's spiritual yearning and refuses to settle for anything but its most profound possibilities.

He opens our everyday living to the contemplative traditions, practices, and teaching that have been traditionally the preserve of the monk, and he does so without diluting them.

He makes us realize that wherever we live, whatever we do, the richest possibilities of a contemplative life are within our reach-that they are in fact what we have been searching for all along.

He shows us how to:

• develop a contemplative way of life
• discover our contemplative practices
• find our contemplative community and enter it
• find our contemplative teaching and follow it.

The Contemplative Heart is a deeply satisfying contemplative book about contemplation.

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The Contemplative Heart shows us how to find breathing room in our cluttered daily lives. For five years James Finley lived at the cloistered Trappist monastery where he studied with Thomas Merton. Finley's meditations relate directly to our everyday experience of the hectic, modern world and the necessity to remain grounded in the meaning and value of our lives beyond what we produce, consume, and achieve. Finley offers guidelines for meditative practices that promote self-reflection, and shows how to include contemplative influences in our lives, while rooting out those that hinder the process. The Contemplative Heart is highly recommended reading for anyone needing to find tranquility in the midst of confusion, silence in the noise of the world, and personal spirituality within the framework of a secular life.