CATALOG DESCRIPTION

Author: L.L. Barkat
Website: llbarkat.com
Contact info: llbarkat [at] yahoo [dot] com

5.5″ x 8.5 ”
174 pages
paperback, $15.00
978-0984553112
Available through Amazon and Ingram

May 2010

RELIGION/Christian Life/Spiritual Formation

Market/Audience

• General readers
• Spiritual directors
• Spiritual formation and psychology professors
• Pastors
• Small group leaders

Summary

Through days and nights of L.L. Barkat’s year of daily outdoor solitude comes an irresistible voice calling readers to spiritual practice. This memoir-style book tells a unique story, but also invites readers to a 12-week course of personal growth, exploring such themes as prayer, Sabbath, silence, gratitude, hospitality, etc. Readers will find various options for discovery and participation: free writing, writing response, physical and mental play, and blogging (or alternatives).

• memoir-style weaves together spiritual practice themes
• includes exploration of effects of divorce and alcoholism settings on child development and later personhood
• includes seamless 12-week course for personal discovery and communion with God

Author Information

L.L. Barkat is the Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry (the makers of Every Day Poems and WordCandy) and Staff Writer for International Arts Movement’s The Curator. She has also served as a popular speaker for a New York ministry and Managing Editor for TheHighCalling.org, sponsored by the Foundations for Laity Renewal.

Other Titles from this Author
Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing (T.S. Poetry Press, 2011)
Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places (InterVarsity Press, 2008)
InsideOut: poems (International Arts Movement, 2009)



Publicity

• Author featured as Who’s Next, in Christianity Today (print and online)
• InCourage.me
• TheHighCalling.org
• International Arts Movement
• Holy Experience
• BibleDude.net
• FaithFictionFriends
• The Wellspring
• Author was a speaker for a NY ministry and has also appeared at venues such as Jubilee, Geneva College, Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference, and International Arts Movement
• Author has written for numerous publications including Kyria, Christianity Today online, Discipleship Journal, TheHighCalling.org, Curator Magazine
• Author has experience with podcast and radio appearances

Endorsements

L.L. Barkat invites us to chase spirituality in much the same way a child chases the tail of a kite…by finding the beautiful balance between what’s just beyond reach and what’s entirely ours for the taking. Her words are full of hope, joy, wonder— our fingers touch the edge of pages and our hearts cross the borders of eternity. And, really, where else could such a journey begin but in our own yards?

— Holley Gerth, Senior Writer and Editorial Director, Dayspring, and Co-Founder InCourage

Mix Richard Foster and Annie Dillard in a blender, and you’ll pour out God In the Yard, a cool smoothie of hope on the topic of spiritual practice.

— Ginger Kolbaba, Editor, Christianity Today’s Kyria

Like punctuation in a sentence, this wonderful book puts a comma, perhaps a semi-colon, even a period in our lives. It causes us to pause, that we might discover and recover ourselves, God, others, and aspects of this amazing world in which we live. L.L. Barkat’s wise words move us more deeply into matters of consequence.

— David Naugle, professor of philosophy, Dallas Baptist University, and author of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans 2008).

This is a book of meeting. A thoughtful, intentional exploration of what it means to live out spiritual disciplines in a modern context, by a writer with a poet’s eye, arresting language and keen mind. If one is willing to do the practical exercises, these pages hold the possibility of even more than encounter. They offer the hope of real transformation.

— Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (Zondervan, 2011)



Press Release
Take a spiritual journey without leaving your backyard…

Also Available

Facebook Fan Page features bloggers who journal through the 12-week course. Follows sponsored national book journeys (readers sign up to receive book for one month, then sign it with a personal note and pass it to the next reader).

Excerpt

Read an excerpt of Chapter One.

Chapters

1 Woods • invitation
2 Rules • the way
3 Look • contemplation
4 Weep • celebration
5 Sky • gratitude
6 Open • prayer
7 Gone • presence
8 Cycle • sabbath
9 Poetry • silence
10 Me • self care
11 With • submission
12 Home • hospitality
Epilogue

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Wonder – discussion questions