Still Small Voice

In A Still, Small Voice, famed psychic Echo Bodine turns to a subject she knows deeply and is passionate about: intuition. Using humorous anecdotes and a positive, readable style, this sequel to Echoes of the Soul explores what intuition is, where it's located, what it sounds like, and how to cultivate it. The author, who comes from a family of psychics, exposes the various internalized voices that can mask one's intuition. These include the voices of parents, grandparents, peers, therapists, significant others, religious figures, and society, along with emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, and despair. The book challenges the cliche that psychic abilities and intuition are the same, or that they are evil. One chapter is devoted to the many practical benefits that come from listening to intuition; another looks at the "faith-building times" in life and how to cope with others' negative reactions to setting off on the spiritual path.

Father Groeschel, the highly respected author, psychologist, spiritual director and leader of renewal in the religious life, has written a brief but comprehensive practical guide for all those interested in private revelations, the reports of visions and other extraordinary religious phenomena that are so widespread in these times. Because of the intense interest in extraordinary religious experience that ranges from Medjugorje to the New Age, Groeschel's book is an urgently needed resource that gives practical norms to everyone on how to evaluate these claims. Drawing on spiritual classics and Church documents not readily available, he summarizes the Church's perennial wisdom on this topic. He also offers an alternative to unusual and extraordinary ways of knowing the things of God, which is a normal everyday opportunity open to all called "religious experience"--the action of grace operating in the context of a human life that can become a powerful source of virtue and holiness. Father Groeschel skillfully directs the reader to the humbler and safer path which discerns God's presence in prayer, Scripture, the sacraments and love of neighbor. The great example of this path to holiness is St. Thérèse of Lisieux who, though having very few extraordinary experiences, was filled with a profound awareness of God's presence and said, "To ecstasy, I prefer the monotony of sacrifice."

After the departure of the woman he loves, Frank struggles to rebuild his life among the sugarcane and sand dunes that surround his oceanside shack. Forty years earlier, Leon is drafted to serve in Vietnam and finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father. As these two stories weave around each other—each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce—we learn what binds Frank and Leon together, and what may end up keeping them apart. Set in the unforgiving landscape of eastern Australia, Evie Wyld’s accomplished debut tackles the inescapability of the past, the ineffable ties of family, and the wars fought by fathers and sons.

Whereas Freud himself viewed conscience as one of the functions of the superego, in The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience, the author argues that superego and conscience are distinct mental functions and that, therefore, a fourth mental structure, the conscience, needs to be added to the psychoanalytic structural theory of the mind. He claims that while both conscience and superego originate in the so-called pre-oedipal phase of infant and child development they are comprised of contrasting and often conflicting identifications. The primary object, still most often the mother, is inevitably experienced as, on the one hand, nurturing and soothing and, on the other, as frustrating and persecuting. Conscience is formed in identification with the nurturer; the superego in identification with the aggressor. There is a principle of reciprocity at work in the human psyche: for love received one seeks to return love; for hate, hate (the talion law).

Memorates—personal experience narratives of encounters with the supernatural—that recount individuals’ personal revelations, primarily through the Holy Ghost, are a pervasive aspect of the communal religious experience of Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In accordance with current emphases in folklore studies on narrative and belief, Tom Mould uses ethnographic research and an emic approach that honors the belief systems under study to analyze how people within Mormon communities frame and interpret their experiences with the divine through the narratives they share. In doing so, he provides a significant new ethnographic interpretation of Mormon culture and belief and also applies his findings directly to broader scholarly folklore discourse on performance, genre, personal experience narrative, belief, and oral versus written traditions.

In God Doesn't Whisper, Pastor Jim Osman examines the assumptions, practices, and Scriptural citations of those who promote Hearing the Voice of God theology. This book provides a thorough examination of the Scriptures often used to promote the practice of listening for the voice of God. What is the still small voice? Does God speak through signs? What about open doors, dreams, and "feeling led"? What is the biblical model for decision-making? Scripture is clear: God Doesn't Whisper.