Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

A great book to get in better touch with your inner self. Don't let the easy read fool you. Take time and reflect.

Mold and water damage throughout book!!! I’m writing this review to say - don’t take your chance and buy used. Just buy new! Can’t wait to read the book. Took one star off since h have to go through the hassle of returning and buying again and waiting for shipping.

John Ortberg--a very, very funny pastor, speaker, and writer--also has a serious side. He writes, "As long as I keep pretending, my soul keeps dying."So when is the last time you've drilled down deeply to understand what makes your soul tick--and why should you?Ortberg says that "one of the most important words in the Bible is soul. We throw that word around a lot, but if someone were to ask you to explain exactly what the word soul means, what would you say?--Why should I pay attention to my soul?--Hasn't science disproven its existence?--Isn't the soul the province of robe-wearing, herbal-tea drinkers?--Isn't `soul-saving' old-fashioned language that ignores concerns for holistic justice?--Won't it mean preoccupation with navel-gazing? Will I have to go to Big Sur or look some stranger in the eyes? Will I have to journal?"Who's not a fan of John Ortberg and his genuine appreciation for Dallas Willard? When I reviewed one of my favorite books,  The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People , I noted that Ortberg asked his publishers to title that book, "Dallas for Dummies." LOL!So...in February when I read the first chapter of Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You, I planned to enjoy, but move quickly through the 17 short chapters (less than 200 pages). Not!Instead...I've lingered slowly through the last 17 weekends...a chapter every Saturday or Sunday morning. Whew. Good stuff. Quotable stuff. PowerPoint-worthy wisdom. And always good for a half-page read to my wife, Joanne, who also appreciates Ortberg and Dallas Willard. Most weekends, I read her funny stuff, like this:The Soul Without a Center Is Easily Thrown"We were with friends recently at kind of an open-air street fair, and at one spot there was a mechanical bull that tries to buck people off. We stopped to watch, but nobody would climb on the thing and give it a try. The man operating the bull said, `Watching isn't nearly as fun as riding. Who's going to be the one to get on the bull?' So somebody in my little group said to me, `Why don't you go?' I never took the rodeo class when I was in seminary, but nobody else would go, and I wanted to see something."So I told the remote-control-bull operator that I wanted to ride. He took one look at my middle-aged body and asked, `Are you sure?' That pretty much guaranteed that I would not back down."`There are twelve levels of difficulty on this bull,' he explained. `It might not be all that easy, but the key is you have to stay centered, and the only way to do that is to sit loose. People try to clamp on too tight. Don't do that. You have to be flexible. If you think you can be in control of the ride you'll never make it. You have to follow the bull. You have to keep moving. Shift your center of gravity as the bull moves.'"I got on the bull and it started slow, and then it started moving faster and jostling around, and I was holding on real tight. Then I remembered his advice, so I loosened up, and it kept moving faster and jolting and bucking and jumping. I was hanging on sideways. My arms were flailing around all over the place. I just hung on and finally the bull slowed down and it stopped, and I was still on the bull. It wasn't pretty but I made it. I imagined how surprised the operator of the bull would be that I had triumphed. I looked over at the man who was operating the bull, and he looked over at me. Shaking his head, he smiled and said, `That was level one.'"Level two lasted maybe a second. The bull won."LOL! Ortberg reminds us that life never stays at level one. "It gets complicated. Stuff happens." This book will help you in level two and beyond.Along with the humor--and it oozes with Ortberg's special brand of clergy comedy--the pastoral pokes are memorable and needed. He quotes Dallas Willard:"You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God."And then this from Thomas Kelly:"...We have seen and know some people who have found this deep Center of living, where the fretful calls of life are integrated, where No as well as Yes can be said with confidence."There's so much more. I'd made notes for my "Top-10 List of Ortberg Insights on the Soul"...but it's time to quit. (You will read his book, right?) And speaking of top ten lists...I've decided that if Stephen Colbert doesn't cut it as the new guy for the CBS Late Show in September, I'll launch a grassroots campaign to put John Ortberg in that chair. Wouldn't that be something!

Excellent!!!!!

This book was very eye opening and thought provoking. I will likely read it again in a year or so.

Great book to lead a deepening process for individuals , small groups and churches. there is also a video study guide on vimeo with the same title. Ortberg brilliantly brings the dimension of the soul in a secular world where the soul has been mostly relegated to music, food, cars or energetic individuals.Ortberg draws insights from DallasWillard's life wisdom that human beings consists of four domains: will (decision making), a mind (thoughts and emotions) body and soul. I have added another domain - that of relationships. According to Ortberg the human soul s our capacity to hold all the dimensions together and the soul always seeks integration between our domains.Ortberg takes with an easy read his reader on a journey: What is the soul? The struggles of the soul; and what your soul needs. This journey leads to deeper insights into the importance of creating time and space where soul care can be developed as a regular practice. The strength of the book lies in developing integral theology of what spirituality in the 21st century can look like. I think and experienced that it connects well with modern busy people.Drawing on a few passages in the Bible, concerning water and looking well after our personal gardens, it provides powerful metaphors to lead others in considering what is real deep change.Although I have great respect for Dallas Willard as a teacher, I thought, at times, that Ortberg drew too much on Willard. Other christian writers like Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating and Richard Foster have also contributed as well as the older christian mystics have all made some valuable contributions. But albeit, it is Ortberg's spiritual journey and t will be unfair to criticize another man's sojourners.The book lacks a bit of practical advice as to how to develop spiritual practices - especially in the Third section on What the soul needs. This is the part that christians in the modern world strongly needs to change - our habits are mainly determined by materialistic needs and the ticking of the clock. Rhythms of rest and simplifying our lives are key words for majority of people whose lives are wrecked by too many immediate concerns and lives that spin out of balance.Never the less, it brought some wonderful insights forward and made me think deeply about what transformation really is. After All, transformed people transform people.

Must buy

Je regrette qu'une seule chose avec ce livre - qu'il est terminé. Il me fait lire le Psaume "Le Seigneur est mon Berger" d'une bien autre manière. Pour les autres, je ne souhaite pas gâcher la surprise.Petits points d'humour et "reality check" ici et là.Ce livre est le seul que je n'ai pu lu d'un seul trait. J'adore. En plus, je le vois très bien utilise dans le cadre d'une etude des jeunes, ou pour les personnes athées qui se demande après tout, c'est quoi la religion. Préparez vous à des surprises agréables.

Ortberg ist Psychologe und Theologe....das merkt man dem Buch an. Ich kann es weiterempfehlen und möchte motivieren, sich auf seine Gedanken einzulassen.

ビデオを見ながら一緒に読むと、とてもわかりやすくグループディスカッションにも役立ちました！

Must read for every human