Streams of Contentment

Overview

For the first time, author, speaker, psychologist, and spiritual guide Robert J. Wicks opens a window into his personal life, relating stories of the people and places that have shaped his spiritual perspective in youth and early in his professional career. Streams of Contentment takes as its focus Wicks's experiences as a New York City boy spending summers on his uncle's farm in the Catskills. He highlights the resonance between life in the country and the insights of spiritual writers on gratefulness and ...

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Overview

For the first time, author, speaker, psychologist, and spiritual guide Robert J. Wicks opens a window into his personal life, relating stories of the people and places that have shaped his spiritual perspective in youth and early in his professional career. Streams of Contentment takes as its focus Wicks's experiences as a New York City boy spending summers on his uncle's farm in the Catskills. He highlights the resonance between life in the country and the insights of spiritual writers on gratefulness and mindfulness, concluding: "The crucial calling for me now is to be content with who and where I already am."

With characteristic charm and insight, Wicks offers a simple prescription for finding contentment: have low expectations and high hopes, recognize that a little silence and solitude is no small thing, and discover the surprising power of humility. He also includes thirty brief reflections and simple practices for discovering contentment. In fifteen poignant, sometimes humorous, and always instructive lessons, Wicks builds on the insights first developed in Riding the Dragon to demonstrate how contentment is found through simplicity, gratitude, and compassion.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
When Wicks (Riding the Dragon) fishes the stream of contentment, he lands memories of summer visits to his uncle’s farm in the Catskills. Looking back, this city boy realizes that much of what he knows about life came from his rural relatives; thus, with this exploration of the nature of contentment, he starts from a personal foundation. Crucial to him now on his spiritual journey, he says, is to be happy with who he is and where he is. The first part comprises lessons and stories related to finding gentle contentment; each brief chapter ends with a pithy précis. The second part guides the reader on a 30-day retreat to the country; each day offers theory followed by a “simple practice.” Do not expect new trail marking or eloquent storytelling. Many of Wicks’s narratives are composites, but he borrows the wisest stories from such raconteurs as James Herriot and Anthony de Mello. Wicks, a psychologist and spiritual guide, is a professional listener, not teller, so his storytelling includes baggy prose (“This statement may seem surprising at first, but when one thinks about it for a while, it becomes clear”), vague pronouns, and clichés (“We can act out of our true identity”). The author needs, and deserves, harder editing. (Oct.)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781933495606
  • Publisher: Ave Maria Press
  • Publication date: 11/11/2013

Meet the Author

Robert J. Wicks, who received his doctorate in psychology from Hahnemann Medical College, is on the faculty of Loyola University Maryland. Dr. Wicks has taught in universities and professional schools of psychology, medicine, social work, nursing, and theology. He has authored over forty books, including Riding the Dragon and Crossing the Desert.

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