Finding Peace Here and Now

How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness

by: Eric A. Clayton

• Format

  Paperback

  ISBN

  9781587436574

  Dimensions

  5.5 x 8.5

  Pub. Date

  May 2025

  SRP

  $18.99

  Carton Quantity

  48

  Number of pages

  224

  Buy

About

These days, everyone is looking for peace. But too often we look in all the wrong places.

In Finding Peace Here and Now, award-winning Catholic author Eric A. Clayton shows readers that we should be looking inside ourselves. He reveals that peace starts within by discovering and embracing who we are meant to be in God.

Using Saint Ignatius of Loyola as a guide, Clayton offers stories, meditations, spiritual reflections, and practical tools to lead us along a path of inner peace that we can then trace outward, so we can bring peace to other people and challenging situations. This book will resonate with readers who are familiar with the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as well as those learning about them for the first time.

In the end, readers will not only navigate their own personal journey to inner peace and a love of self, but also discover how those journeys are tied to better loving and serving neighbors and working for global justice--all for the greater glory of God.

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Endorsements

"In this timely book, Eric Clayton, a gifted and talented writer, mines the five-hundred-year-old Ignatian tradition to meet the demanding needs of peace today. He takes us on a spiritual journey that both inspires and challenges readers to reimagine how we relate to ourselves, to our God, and to one another. Speaking to everything from inner calm to social justice, Clayton's book offers practical tools for any peace seeker in a quest that touches all aspects of our lives."

James Martin, SJ, author of Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone

"Eric Clayton's authentic voice emerges in Finding Peace Here and Now. If you are overwhelmed by the suffering and complexity in the world, this book offers inspiration and tools to turn our desire for peace into reality by looking at concrete ways we can live as peacemakers in our daily lives. Clayton reminds us that while we cannot change the world, we can allow God to animate our actions, empower us to use our gifts, and begin the work of peace today."

Becky Eldredge, Ignatian-trained spiritual director, award-winning author, and founder of Ignatian Ministries

"The gifts of Ignatian spirituality--discernment, integration, self-examination, justice--are in short supply in the church today. Now more than ever, we need teachers who can cast a vision for a maturing Christian faith. Eric Clayton is one of those teachers. Here, he turns his attention toward that elusive word we all want but don't know how to get: peace. Not only does Clayton show us how to nurture peace within ourselves, he also shows us how to use it to protect others. This book is both salve and sword."

Shannon K. Evans, author of The Mystics Would Like a Word: Six Women Who Met God and Found a Spirituality for Today

"Eric Clayton provides a spiritual road map to finding and fostering peace within our hearts and in the world. A skillful storyteller, Clayton melds personal experiences with the wisdom of the Ignatian tradition, revealing that to be a healing presence we must act justly and seek the magis that lies at the heart of our very being--uniting ourselves with God and neighbor so that all may be one. Packed full of prayer prompts and grounds for reflection, Finding Peace Here and Now is the book our world (and your spirit) needs now!"

Sister Colleen Gibson, SSJ, pastoral associate and cohost of the Beyond the Habit podcast

"Eric Clayton is among the brightest and most trustworthy lights of a new generation of lay interpreters of Ignatian spirituality. Finding Peace Here and Now pulses with Clayton's keen gift for storytelling, bridging experiential and theological insight by way of imagination, gently inviting us to probe our own stories for gestures, big and small, of God's unceasing delight in us. To embrace the 'downward mobility of Christ' is to learn how to savor, in light and shadow, the sacred beauty of our own humanity."

Christopher Pramuk, Regis University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination

"Braiding together deep research and personal insight, Eric Clayton expertly guides us on a twofold path toward both internal peace and peace in the world around us. Newcomers to Ignatian spirituality as well as those who have practiced it for years will find fresh and engaging inspiration and consolation in these pages. In an age when peace feels especially hard to come by, Clayton assures us that there is wisdom and guidance to be found in our most cherished traditions and, if we listen closely enough, within ourselves."

Cameron Bellm, speaker and author

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