We discover life as much with our hearts as it with our heads. As a result, we find that personal experiences, relationships, and stories provide more effective media for investigating spiritual realities than any essay or scholarly treatise. That is precisely the gift that the ten contributors in this book are giving us. Five of these contributors discuss how they have used faith to help others while five discuss how they have used faith to help themselves.

Faith based upon real-world experiences serves to elevate belief above the quarrelsome and impassioned arguments that too often mark our discussions about mere religion. A gift we can give to each other is to provide frank descriptions of our own personal convictions and how we came to believe what we hold to be true. Our 10 contributors give us this window to view how they were lead to help others or themselves.

HELPING OTHERS: Many of us wish that we could lead lives of service, and would prefer one day to leave the world a better place because we were in it. We may find no prescription in the journeys of these five individuals for how we can actually serve fellow human beings, but we will at least be encouraged by their clear and ringing testimonies that life at such a level is not only possible, but, when we are under the right influences, such a life of service becomes irresistible.

Perhaps reading the accounts of these people’s faith will, itself, open a place and provide in your heart room for some of that compelling urge to service that has become so strong in theirs.

HELPING THEMSELVES: Many of us are on a quest for personal redemption of one kind or another. Abuse, compulsive behaviors, trauma, bad parenting, peer pressure, fear of death and a thousand other social pressures serve as albatrosses around our necks trying to drag us down to chaos and destruction.

The concluding chapters provide opportunity for five contributors to describe how they discovered upward pathways towards the light through dark forces and circumstances in their lives.

This is absolutely one book you must read. It will make you laugh, it will make your cry, it will give you inspiration.