Selected as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2023 by Spirituality and Practice
‘This is an amazing book that I couldn’t put down once I started it.’ -Richard Schwartz, Ph D, developer of the Internal Family Systems model
‘You were like this once. What did you do to get better?’ A day out from a mental institution, a woman devastated by flashbacks from childhood trauma poses this question to her big brother. Within a few weeks, she took her own life. This book is the answer that her brother wished he could have offered.
Spiritual director and professor Frank Rogers had been there. As a young adult, he too was tormented by trauma suffered in the same family. Wracked by depression, he was on the cliff edge of suicide. From intense despair, he set off on a quest-for answers, for sanity, for a credible God to see him through. Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is at once a narrative of psychological transformation and a spiritual autobiography that details the survivor’s journey. Rogers shows how he found recovery through a combination of reflective retreats, therapy, creative expression, and an extraordinary application of imaginative meditation that spiritual seekers and practitioners will find utterly fascinating. The ensuing discovery evolved into the uniquely self-restorative process known as the Compassion Practice.
Frank Rogers’ account reveals that a compassionate sacred presence sustains this wounded world, and that this presence can be known, even in the sewers of life’s most damaging traumas.
One of the few male accounts of childhood sexual abuse and fewer still that charts a spiritual course for the transformation of trauma.
‘Like all good memoir, Cradled in the Arms of Compassion has a robust narrative engine-the reader is led along, page-by-page, with questions, curiosities, and a desire to see what ‘happens next.” -Spirituality and Practice
İçerik tablosu
Part I
San Mateo, CA-Age 8 3
Upland, CA-Age 35 9
Claremont, CA-Age 57 33
Part II
Presbyterian Seminary, NJ-Age 27 55
Part III
Foster City, CA-Age 10 99
Upland, CA-Age 35 105
Part IV
Whitethorn, CA-Age 36 139
Claremont, CA-Age 38 165
Claremont, CA-Age 40 185
Part V
Claremont, CA-Age 42 203
Santa Rosa, South San Francisco, and Foster City, CA-Age 43 225
Upland, CA-Age 46 233
Part VI
Eureka, CA-Age 46 243
Claremont, CA-Age 46 247
Claremont, CA-Age 46-47 263
Lincoln, OR-Age 50 301
Part VII
South San Francisco, CA-Age 57 319
Claremont, CA-Age 57 323
Claremont, CA-Age 58 329
Half Moon Bay, CA-Age 60 335
Afterword: Synthesizing the Journey 339
Author’s Apology 345
Acknowledgments 347
Yazar hakkında
Frank Rogers Jr., Ph D, is the Muriel Bernice Roberts Professor of Spiritual Formation and Narrative Pedagogy at Claremont School of Theology. He’s a spiritual director, speaker, retreat leader, and the author of Practicing Compassion, Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, and The God of Shattered Glass: A Novel. He focuses on spirituality that is contemplative, creative, and socially liberative. He is the cofounder of the Center for Engaged Compassion (centerforengagedcompassion.com) and lives in Southern California with his wife, Dr. Alane Daugherty, with whom he shares three sons.