Books & Resources
Jerry’s Books
New Book!
Now more than ever, people are painfully divided politically, religiously, and culturally. And yet, there is a commonality in our faith traditions that can help us turn away from polarization and create a greater sense of community in which our differences are honored.
The Peacemaker’s Path brings together wisdom from the world’s major religious traditions, including Bahá’í, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native American spiritualities, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism, showing that we have much more in common than what divides us.
Through daily readings that explore the tenets, teachings, writings, and prayers of these diverse faith traditions, you will gain new insight, understanding, and connection with people from different religious backgrounds. Each day offers a reflection, scripture passages from the world’s religions, questions to contemplate, a call to action, and a closing prayer.
May we realize the tremendous importance of building bridges of peace in our own lives, our communities, and our world. Loving our friends is easy; loving the “other” will bring shalom.
Like a multi-faith guru, Jerry Zehr weaves together in a seamless tapestry the wisdom of the world’s religions to help you become your own sherpa on the path to peace. Through wonderful illustrations from the political world, religious traditions, and folklore, along with the combination of holy writings from multiple faith traditions, this book is a resource you will want to return to over and over. At a time when our divisions seem to tear us apart, this book offers the secret to the unity and peace we need.
Rob Fuquay
Sr. Pastor, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, IN
Author of The God We Can Know, Which Way, Lord? A New Reformation, and The Passion Play:Living the Story of Christ’s Last Days
Is there a line Thomas won’t cross to achieve success? Drugs, money, sex, faith, and truth intersect in this intriguing novel.
Blurring the Lines tells the story of Thomas, a driven young actor struggling to break into the entertainment industry in LA. Thomas’ Amish heritage and his overwhelming desire to succeed continuously collide. His success, his survival and his soul, are at stake as he struggles to determine his life’s purpose.
5.0 out of 5 stars A nose for good storytelling
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2019
This cautionary tale has plenty of action and interesting characters. The writing flows. It takes more than a passion for the theater, a strong determination to chase after one’s dreams, and the thrill of winning a poker game to find one’s way in this troubled world. These characters get themselves in some serious trouble along the way.
Reading this book reminds me how it’s okay to have more questions than answers. We all make poor choices at times but learn from them. One takeaway from Chapter 13 captures the essence of the main character Thomas: “It seems we sometimes get so consumed with all the lights and glitter in life and those things are so shallow. If you’re not grounded and feeding your soul, you feel empty.” How true indeed!
KrisSpor
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2012
Jerry Zehr’s Blurring The Lines is an interesting, thought-provoking beautifully written novel. Jerry Zehr digs deep into the social fabric that makes America, along with the way that religion, of any kind, affects the way we see the world and live in it. Thomas leaves home to try and make his way in California as an actor. Coming from a sheltered background Thomas isn’t prepared for the big city or the people there. Unlike others authors Jerry Zehr shows that the fall from grace is not all at once, but a slow process that happens one choice at a time. Through it all Thomas makes some real good friends and learns who he is as well as who God is. Blurring The Lines is truly written from the heart of author Jerry Zehr.
Andrew Cort, author of THE DOOR IS OPEN
5.0 out of 5 stars Surprising Twists
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2012
‘Blurring the Lines’ was a great deal of fun to read. It mixes spirituality with romance, danger, and a coming-age-story in a way that us full of surprises. Remember the astonishing supernatural twists that appeared so suddenly and matter-of-factly in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and just made you ‘stop’? Well this is the author’s first novel, and it may not be up to the level of a Garcia Marquez, but it kept bringing me the same kind of sudden, unexpected, ‘stops’. One minute we’re illegally importing drugs and worrying about detectives and jail-time and threats of murder, and the next moment we’re meditating on floating globes in innerspace and seeing into the future. I liked this story far more than the typical story that is all horror, or all romance, or all thriller, or all new-agey, or whatever. Life is many-faceted, and so is this book.
Other Resources
Sacred poetry from twelve mystics and saints, rendered brilliantly by Daniel Ladinsky, beloved interpreter of verses by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz
In this luminous collection, Daniel Ladinsky—best known for his bestselling interpretations of the great Sufi poet Hafiz—brings together the timeless work of twelve of the world’s finest spiritual writers, six from the East and six from the West. Once again, Ladinsky reveals his talent for creating profound and playful renditions of classic poems for a modern audience.
Rumi’s joyous, ecstatic love poems; St. Francis’s loving observations of nature through the eyes of Catholicism; Kabir’s wild, freeing humor that synthesizes Hindu, Muslim, and Christian beliefs; St. Teresa’s sensual verse; and the mystical, healing words of Sufi poet Hafiz—these along with inspiring works by Rabia, Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, Mira, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Tukaram are all “love poems by God” from writers considered “conduits of the divine.” Together, they form a spiritual treasure to cherish always.
New York Times Bestseller
The renowned and beloved New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world’s religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.
Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques.
Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.
Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions—even those whose truths are quite different from hers. The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God—a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.
In this fascinating volume, theologian and philosopher Richard Hooper reveals the common spiritual threads of the world’s great religious traditions.
Hooper organizes hundreds of sayings attributed to Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and Lao Tzu thematically and assembles these parallel sayings into four columns for easy reference. Culled from more than fifty ancient Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist texts, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao Tzu includes topics such as, “The Great Way, “Suffering,” and more.
Each topic includes an insightful introduction that sends a powerful message that will be welcomed by all who seek the truth within, and within their own spiritual
tradition.
The first edition of the Interfaith Prayer Book was released in 2001. It proved to be immensely popular for use both at interfaith gatherings and for personal reflection, having found its way into hospitals, motel rooms and college classrooms as well as places of worship all around the world. That edition contained a selection of prayers from six religious traditions; Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and Bahá’í. This Expanded Edition adds prayers from eight additional traditions; Native African, Native American, Zoroastrian, Taoist, Confucian, Shinto, Jain and Sikh.
Its aim is to further enrich our devotional practice, to share a taste of our planet’s diverse spiritual heritage and to deepen our sense of interfaith connectedness. Nothing brings us closer to God or closer to each other than prayer.
“A Rainbow for the World” is a manuscript which invites, the reader to experience the beauty and truths of 20 different faiths. Written by the Director of the World Interfaith Network, Rev. Dr. Stephen Albert plus 20 other Spiritual Leaders from 20 different faiths, the book beautifully draws the reader in to explain the depth and feelings of people from a variety of world faiths. Since there are over 10,000 distinct faiths in the world, it might be easy to misunderstand what each faith teaches or how similar they might be to their own faith. Just as a Rainbow is not complete without the FULL SPECTRUM of colors, we are not complete without the FULL SPECTRUM of the many faiths, races, skin tones, cultures, creeds, etc. The book also provides the reader with a “World Rainbow Meditation” which they can read and listen to on YouTube at the same time. We invite the reader to REBOOT themselves into a new humanity of Love and Respect and experience a healthier world which works for everyone.