THE BOOK STUDY FELLOWSHIP   2004-2005 "Practicing Christianity" The Adult Study Fellowship is a monthly Christian book club led by Father Steve that provides an opportunity for fellowship and ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Sponsored jointly by St. Paul’s and St. John Neumann, the ASF is a structured attempt to explore a common path for Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians in living a Spirit-filled, Christ-centered life.  We meet on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 7PM, beginning with a prayer service in the Church. All of the books are available from Joanne Lorton in our parish bookstore. Plan to join us!   October 12th The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren.   What does it mean to live purposefully when you finally realize that life is not about you but about God? You may have already read this book and wondered about some of what Pastor Warrens had said. If not, it would be helpful for you to read some of this book before October 12th — but even if you are not able to read it, please plan to attend! And bring a friend! November 2nd The Shattered Lantern by Ronald Rollheiser, OMI Rollheiser is a popular Roman Catholic author and teacher who diagnoses the practical atheism of our culture as being the result of our unbridled narcissism and pragmatism. He suggests that to remedy this, we must draw from the mystical tradition within Christianity and cleanse our awareness in order to rediscover a felt sense of God’s presence. “The way back to a lively faith is not a question of finding the right answers, but living in a certain way,” he says. December 14th Subtitled A Journey of Rediscovery to the Center of Christian Experience, Mr. Needleman, a philosophy professor, encounters a Middle-Eastern monk named Father Sylvan at the airport in Bangkok whose insistence on an experiential faith sets him off on a personal quest for the mystical heart of Christianity. This book includes interviews with the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom and Father Thomas Keating on prayer and the spiritual life and discusses the writings of Thomas Merton and others. January 11th (2nd Tuesday) The Inner Way by Joseph Allen An essay on spiritual direction in an Orthodox Christian context based on the premise that “the goal of spiritual direction has always been to lead individuals to relate personally to God and move deeper and deeper into the struggle for Christian life; that is, towards wholeness and healing.” February 8th (2nd Tuesday) Father Joe: the man who saved my soul by Tony Hendra Mr. Hendra, a British comedian and satirist who wrote for National Lampoon and starred in the movie Spinal Tap, a parody of 80’s rock bands, tells the story of his broken life and his spiritual journey back to the Roman Catholicism of his youth as a result of the gentle and compassionate spiritual fatherhood of the late Father Joseph Warrilow, a Benedictine monk who spent almost his entire life in an abbey on the Isle of Wight, off England’s southern coast. March 8th  (2nd Tuesday) The Monks of Mt. Athos by M. Basil Pennington, OCSO Father Pennington is a Trappist monk who spent nine months in 1976 in retreat on Mt. Athos, the monastic republic in northern Greece, at the monastery of Simonos Petras. This journal describes his experiences as a Roman Catholic pilgrim living in the heart of Orthodox monasticism and his desire “to be quiet, to be still, to be silent long enough to know, to taste and to experience again the profound unity of my life.”    April 12th  (2nd Tuesday)  Journey Back to Eden by Mark Gruber, OSB  In the Coptic monasteries of modern Egypt is preserved an ancient monastic tradition of Christianity that stretches back to the 4th century and St. Anthony the Great. This is the journal of a Benedictine monk’s yearlong sojourn among the Coptic Orthodox monasteries of Egypt as part of his doctoral studies and records the insights he gleans on prayer, asceticism and living the Christian life from St. Anthony’s contemporary heirs. May 10th (2nd Tuesday) The Mountain of Silence by Kyriakos Markides Markides is a professor of sociology at the University of Maine and writes of his journey back to his native Cyprus, a troubled and divided Mediterranean island, part of which is currently under Turkish occupation. There he meets Father Maximos, a monk of Mt. Athos, who has been sent to the island with the mission of reinvigorating the Christian spiritual life there by establishing churches, monasteries and convents. Their conversations about spiritual illness, personal transformation, knowledge of God and passion for justice form the heart of this book.