MSI Press Blog

  One of the quiet truths of Christian Unity Week is that Christianity doesn’t stand alone. It’s part of a much older, wider family — the Abrahamic traditions — that includes Judaism and Islam. Three faiths, three histories, three ways of seeking God… and yet so much shared ground. We trace our spiritual ancestry to the same stories. We honor many of the same prophets. We wrestle with the same questions about justice, mercy, and what it means to live a life that reflects the Holy. And like any family, we’ve had our share of arguments. Sometimes the disagreements have been painful. Sometimes they’ve been about identity, power, or fear. But underneath all of that, there’s a deeper truth: we quarrel in part because we’re close. Because we recognize something of ourselves in one another. Because our stories overlap, our scriptures echo each other, and our visions of a just world often align more than we admit. Christian Unity Week invites us to remember that unity isn’t only an i...

  Today's book excerpt comes from  An Afternoon's Dictation  by  Steven Greenebaum . This book has been in the Amazon top 100 among interfaith and ecumenical books on many occasions. PART ONE: THE CALL TO INTERFAITH CHAPTER TWO   “Religion is but a language for speaking to Me.” It’s hard to overstate how crucial this revelation was. In the 50 years of my life that preceded the revelation, that thought had never once occurred to me, now that it was laid in in my lap it made perfect sense. It made sense and answered a bucket-full of questions. The first and most pressing question it answered for me was this: if there were indeed one and only one “right” answer to the question of God and how to relate to God, why didn’t humanity know what that answer was? After thousands upon thousands of years, why were there so many differing answers? The ancient Greeks were no dummies. They’d gifted us Sophocles, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and so many other brilliant thin...

   The e-book edition of  Lamentations of the Heart  by Marti Wells-Smith is on Kindle countdown discount, beginning at 99 cents, from April 4 through April 11. Marti Wells-Smith's  Lamentations of the Heart Mingled with Peace and Joy  combines prose and poetry in a comforting missive for bereaved parents. Through its pages, one finds not only the resilience of the author but sources for anyone to develop needed resilience in the face of devastating life circumstances. When it came out, it quickly became one of Amazon's "hot, new releases." Description Lamentations of the Heart  soulfully combines contemporary free verse poetry and nonfictional prose to tell the story of one mother's grief following the death of her only child. The author interweaves scriptural passages with the inevitable struggles to accept and make sense of her new reality. All of it reveals the unending love for family that remains. Written to reach out to others who have experienc...