Grounded

Finding God in the World - A Spiritual Revolution

By: Diana Butler Bass

Narrated by: Diana Butler Bass

The headlines are clear: Religion is on the decline in America as many people leave behind traditional religious practices. In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed book Christianity After Religion, Diana Butler Bass argues that what appears to be a decline actually signals a major transformation in how people understand God. The distant God of conventional religion has given way to a more intimate sense of the sacred with us in the world. This shift is at the heart of a spiritual revolution that surrounds us - and that is challenging religious, political, and social institutions.

Grounded explores this cultural turn as Bass unpacks how people are finding new spiritual ground by discovering and embracing God everywhere in the world around us: in the soil, the water, the sky, in our homes and neighborhoods, and in the global commons. Faith is no longer a matter of mountaintop experience or institutional practice; instead, people are connecting with God through the environment in which we live. Grounded guides listeners through our contemporary spiritual habitat as it points out the many ways in which people experience a God who animates creation and community.

©2015 Diana Butler Bass (P)2016 Tantor

BEST CONTEMPORARY BOOK ON SPIRITUALITY!!!

Words cannot capture the profound beauty of this insightful book by Diana Butler Bass. The most practical & hopeful spiritual & ethical antidote ever for the recent Christian cultural formation & political power-building whose history Kristin Kobes duMez has narrated in JESUS & JOHN WAYNE.

Bass puts words to my heart thoughts

The perspective of a horizontal rather than a vertical God and worship forms will likely resonate with many who have given up on organized religion but not on living into the meaning of “God with us”.
Listening to Grounded inspired me to write this poem going into the new year:
Happy Through The Years
T’was not just
a twist of fate
Nor was it
a moment too late
that into the earth rife with darkness and sin
The Light of the World
beamed right in.
Love with a face
Walking grace
Inviting all
into God’s embrace.
May I remember
beyond the confettied
end to December
Through the resolutions broken
that love is not
a one-and-done token.
Kind words just
to loved ones spoken
But to be lived into
all the year through.
For happy-all-my-days
in all my life’s ways
there’s the Big Ask
to love my enemies, too.
Loving my way into
2023 Year New
Hoping that you
in joy
will, too.

Audiobook Revolutionary

A great audiobook read well by the author herself. I would recommend this to any seeker.

The Spiritual Revolution Coherently Expressed

Having embarked on this path at 17, leaving the Evangelical world of my youth and traversing the wild guided only by the heartfelt knowing that God is love and eventually blessed with an unexpected revelation confirming my inner guide; this book thrills me as it reveals to me, in my 71st year, that the revolution is underway and beginning to sink deep roots. The author's gift of being able to express its reality in Christian terms while simultaneously including all feels like the fulfilment of all things hoped. No matter where you may believe yourself to be in relation to the Spirit, if there is even a hint of curiosity, go with it. You will not be disappointed.

Beautiful, moving.

A touching and deeply resonating work on the spiritual migration of recognizing the god who is *with* us.