Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life

This writer takes us on a unforgettable journey across many different places of worship. It's not the belief system he has that's important it's the purity of BELIEF for its own sake. The sheer joy of faith and joy of living this man has is written all across the pages of this work. Anyone who wishes to undertake a pilgrimage should read through this book. This man has a real talent and grace when writing about faith and life.

I read this book about a pilgrimage while I was on one of my own. I went to Spain and walked a sizeable part of the Via de la Plata - a route of the Camino de Santiago. I had previously walked another route nine months before. This book chronicles a journey, via a beat up truck, to different retreat centers, monasteries and convents by the author. His feelings and emotions are erudite, he wears them on his sleeve, and this is one of the first rules of memoir writing: be willing to bare all. And Slattery does this as he confronts his deceased father, his fears, his past and present. At times he longs to give up and return to the comfortable minutia of everyday life, a test common to pilgrims. One can see as the pages turn the metamorphosis that he goes through. This is a book, above all, about contemplation, retrospection, determination and hope. He has been living his life partly dead, but through grace finds ressurection. He is not dogmatic, though he is a devout Catholic. He is not preachy, but humble. He is many times poetic, many times candid. I would be surprised if, no matter your religion or spiritual views, you do not find yourself at the end of this book with almost as many bookmarks as there are pages.

Before I go to sleep at night I read Grace in the Desert. I travel to the monasteries between the lines on the pages. Through the palpable silence, I feel the sacred space creep into my own bones. I too, am healed by the journey. I am deeply grateful to Dennis Slattery for his profound psychological insights, for his nomadic spirit, and for the poet who so eloquently lives in his soul.

As a mother and a psychologist my pilgrimages are not accomplished on extended retreats or treks, but in the folds and unexpected flows of a busy day. Like many, I turn to spiritual literature of many ilk to aid me in interrupting my preoccupations and orienting me to meditation and prayer. What joy this summer when I found myself riding the wake of Dennis Slattery's Grace in the Desert:Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life, a lyrical story of his months spent at different spiritual retreat places. Far from any monastery myself, his intimate prose and sustained narrative reflections allowed me to slow down. They oriented me to the soulful pilgrimage that is available to all of us at any moment if we are ready to forego numbing routine, habitual rapidity, empty diversion, and consumeristic addictions. By placing his feet on the path of the pilgrim and his pen to paper, Slattery shares his gift of pilgrimage: a solo journey becomes food for the community. Leading the way, he invites us in his wake to the realms of spirit and soul for which we thirst.

Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery's new release, Grace in the Desert, is more than a tale of intent pilgrimage. His is a story of psychological risk, focused attention, and openness to the presence of the Divine in all of life. He asks us to accompany him through the vulnerable places; through the humility required in encounters with creatures other than ourselves, and into the fearsome places of solitude and silence. This work is lovely in its ingenuous invitation to confront the past through FULL involvement in the present. Beautiful, indeed.