Spiritual Reflections on Biblical Senses

While the complete title of this book might be clumsy, it expresses what is contained between the covers. Spiritual refers to the need to nourish the human spirit. The forty spiritual exercises in this book begin with a short Scripture passage, which illustrates the topic of the chapter, and end with a Psalm response, a few verses from a psalm that mentions the topic of the exercise. The traditional five senses--tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, and smelling--are presented by E. E. Cummings in his famous poem "i thank You God for most this amazing" to include breathing; thus this book contains six senses (subtitle). Tasting is done by the tongue; touching is done by the hands and skin; hearing is processed by the ears; seeing occurs through the eyes; smelling is done by the nose; and breathing--in Cummings's list--is a function of both nose and lungs. By using biblical authors' experiences of the senses, readers are invited to reflect on the meaning of the biblical text in its context and apply the reflection to their own spirituality using a meditation/journal question, thus raising awareness to make connections between a biblical text and one's life and enhance spirituality.