Disciplines for Christian Living: Interfaith Perspectives, Thomas Ryan, CSP (Paulist Press), 274 pp.
Reviewed in Cistercian Studies Quarterly (32.3), 1997

Paulist Fr. Thomas Ryan is Director of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism in Montreal, Quebec, and editor of Ecumenism, an international quarterly. His latest book is the fruit of a sabbatical spent in India. While studying the Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions at various ashrams, monasteries, and centers, he repeatedly heard the complaint that Christianity no longer seems able to teach its adherents the techniques and methods which make it a discipline for daily living. His book is an effort to remedy this, to set forth some practical disciplines for Christian living, drawing on the rich tradition of Christian spirituality as well as on the disciplines of the other great world religions.

The disciplines Ryan suggests are based on friendship and family life, the tradition of Sabbath observance, exercise and play, prayer, fasting and service. He successfully mines the great religions of the world for their treasures; an Islamic ability to make any place a place of worship, the Buddhist understanding of awareness, the Jewish sense for Sabbath rest. His chapter on cultivating the presence of God is excellent, as is his section on satyagraha or doing the truth in love. Religious will be humbled by is chapter on how rigorous a discipline family life can be.

Ryan has a marvelous capacity to draw on his own personal experience for concrete examples. His book is well written and insightful. It convincingly shows how Eastern religious thought and practice can deepen our own. Most of all, it is practical.

Thomas P. Rausch, SJ, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045