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Liturgical Press

Everyday Annunciations

On Learning to Say Yes

Susan H. Swetnam

Everyday Annunciations SEE INSIDE
Everyday Annunciations
SEE INSIDE

ISBN: 9798400800672, 00672

Details: 136 pgs, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 3/8
Publication Date: 08/22/2024
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A spiritual guidebook and memoir for navigating life’s challenges, with a call to trust in God’s grace, and say “yes.”

How are we to understand the surprises life brings, the events and upsets that challenge what we believe about ourselves and our purpose? In Everyday Annunciations, Susan Swetnam encourages readers to imagine how their own upheavals might function as “everyday annunciations”—invitations to partner creatively with God in new ways.

Reflecting on six Renaissance paintings depicting Mary’s response to her own annunciation, Swetnam unflinchingly acknowledges the difficulty of regrouping when life changes radically. Drawing on Mary’s example, wisdom figures both historical and contemporary, Scripture, and powerful personal narrative, Everyday Annunciations offers constructive hope for those struggling to find a way forward when life catches them by surprise.

Susan H. Swetnam is the author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning In the Mystery's Shadow: Reflections on Caring for the Elderly and Dying. A retired Idaho State University English professor, she now works as a massage therapist with hospice patients, cancer survivors, caregivers, and the bereaved, and is a music minister in her home parish. Visit her at susanswetnamwriter.com.

ISBN: 9798400800672, 00672

Details: 136 pgs, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 3/8
Publication Date: 08/22/2024

Reviews

"Susan Swetnam enters a labyrinth of grieving when she’s widowed at fifty-four, and through her skillful writing brings the reader along every step of the way. This intensely personal experience offers hope to many who endure incalculable loss. Her stepping stones are Renaissance paintings that depict the Annunciation, the ultimate 'yes' to an unknown script. The author is brutally honest about the shock of interrupting an imagined life’s trajectory, and luminously clear about how Mary’s path might accompany. She alerts readers to 'Gabriel surrogates' and reaches the delightful point of saying to Mary, 'Oh girlfriend, I get what you’re feeling.' After twenty years, tragedy turns to treasure and desert to garden. Lucky the reader who gets to come along for the transformation."
Kathy Coffey is a contributor to Give Us This Day

"Susan Swetnam helps us be on the lookout for the tiny Annunciations that punctuate—and occasionally puncture—our lives. Stepping into paintings of the Annunciation, from the familiar Fra Angelico fresco to Lorenzo Lotto's clearly troubled Mary, she gives us ways to explore our own reactions and emotions when we find ourselves facing a call to change course in unexpected ways. As someone on the cusp of retirement, and who works with young people as they imagine their futures, I appreciated the many lenses Swetnam offers us to see the new seeds God might be sowing."
Michelle Francl-Donnay is the author of Prayer, Biblical Wisdom for Seeking God and a contributor to Give Us This Day

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