This unique and intensely personal memoir is about spirituality, not about religion, and it is alive with the raw energy of a journal and polished with the skill of the master storyteller.

In a little town in Italy, nearly eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi renounced everything he owned to follow Christ with passionate and single-minded abandon. Even today, centuries later, this simple saint draws people around the world to his story of living in humility, love, and joy. Here in Following Francis, Susan Pitchford tells her own story of the Franciscan life, as a member of the Third Order, founded by Francis himself so that people...

They're cast in plaster or simpering on a holy card, performing miracles with superhero strength, or playing a harp in highest heaven. Yet they are very near to us in every way. Hahn dispels the false notions and urban legends people use to keep the saints at a safe distance. The truth is that Jesus Christ has united heaven and earth in a close communion. Drawing deeply from Scripture, Hahn shows that the hosts of heaven surround the earthly Church...

"The activist, nun, and esteemed spiritual voice who has twice appeared on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday sounds the call to create a monastery within ourselves -- to cultivate wisdom and resilience so that we may join God in the work of renewal, restoration, and justice right where we are. "In every beating heart is a silent undercurrent that calls each of us to a place unknown, to the vision of a wiser life, to become what we feel we must be -- but cannot...