Building on the foundations of Teilhard de Chardin, this dynamic work elegantly explores the ongoing challenges of the next leap in human development. "I know of scarcely anybody," Bede Griffiths has said, "who goes to the heart of reality as profoundly as Beatrice Bruteau does." Here Bruteau develops a Trinitarian anthropology with the potential for healing our conflict-ridden planet by transforming us from riven and conflicting individuals, into open, sharing persons of the New Creation. In transcendent freedom, a profound communion consciousness gives birth to global, wholistic community. Bruteau's integral vision is as compelling as it is concrete. In this work of philosophical, theological, and psychological anthropology, she presents a cogent spiritual praxis that possesses the power to initiate a psychic revolution. "A new way of seeing," Teilhard has exclaimed, "combined with a new way of acting - that is what we need." This is precisely what Beatrice Bruteau offers in The Grand Option.

In The Grand Option, renowned author Beatrice Bruteau advances her healing vision for humankind. This collection of beautifully written essays encourages readers to seek personal transformation based on heightened consciousness and Christian spirituality. Bruteau contends that this transformation will produce a profound sense of personal freedom, thus enabling individuals to commune with the Divine and with each other. Bruteau’s Trinitarian anthropology brings with it the potential for transforming humanity from a collection of individuals in conflict to a community of wholly developed persons working toward a shared vision. Her message is as compelling as it is concrete. Using the disciplines of philosophy, theology, psychological anthropology, and feminist theory, she interprets New Testament texts in ways that speak to contemporary readers. Bruteau also explores the central Christian symbols of the Imago Dei, the Incarnation, and the Trinity, as well as issues such as global spirituality, transcendent freedom, and contemplative insight.

Radical optimism is our deepest response to the immense and threatening challenges of our contemporary world. In this profound exposition of the truths of an integrated life, Radical Optimism challenges the reader to confront difficulty with authentic spirituality. Meditation, the practice of silence, and the body of mystical experience are all effective forces that confound evil and give us the means to live a loving life. Beatrice Bruteau is both a brilliant synthesizer and an original thinker. She brings to bear her knowledge of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and science in this exploration of how to embrace the spirit of optimism in a world grown increasingly dark and desperate. "The deepest truth is our union with the Absolute, Infinite Being, with God. That's the root of our reality. And it is from that root that my optimism is derived," she states. This is a viewpoint that acknowledges evil, but puts it in its place. In Bruteau's view, evil is not simply the opposite of good, because goodness has the unique power to create, whereas evil can only react, distort, and destroy. It is the creative power of goodness that sustains us in our confrontation with evil. Radical Optimism describes the value of meditation, leisure, relaxing the body, and keeping silent for a period of time all within the context of the ordinary demands of life. There is a role to be played by imagination, mythology, and self-image in either promoting or interfering with our ability to "find our base and our center in the sense of eternity and wholeness." As the founder of an international network for contemplatives of all traditions, Bruteau is able to present her practical spirituality in terms that all readers can understand, no matter what their backgrounds. Radical Optimism also expresses the idea that our growing global interdependence cultural, economic, and ecological can help us to "sense the reality of each person within the unity of shared life" and thus be motivated to act in the interests of the larger community. Radical Optimism shows us who we really are a unique, precious, creative act of God and with this understanding we can find the way beyond evil and suffering."

How did a Jewish teacher, healer, sage and mystic become the vehicle for so much hatred and harm directed against his own people? "Dialogue is demanding and difficult. It is often painful. It entails deep listening, letting others define themselves and being willing to confront and transform deep-rooted prejudices in ourselves. It requires the courage to re-envision absolutely everything we tend to cherish and protect, and to relinquish our entrenched vainglorious ego attachments, our inflated sense of 'I, me and mine.' This challenge to grow beyond tribalism, to approach others in a fair and reasonable way, is an essential step in our human evolution." —from the Invitation to the Reader Judaism and Christianity have had a volatile relationship in their two-thousand-year history. Anger, rivalry, insensitivity, bloodshed and murder have marred the special connection these two Abrahamic faiths share. In the last several decades, scholars, activists, laypeople and clergy have attempted to expose and eliminate the struggles between Jews and Christians. This collaborative effort brings together the voices of Christian scholar Ron Miller and Jewish scholar Laura Bernstein to further explore the roots of anti-Semitism in Christian faith and scripture. In a probing interfaith dialogue, Miller and Bernstein trace the Jewish-Christian schism to its very source in the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew. Illuminating the often misunderstood context of Matthew’s gospel—a persecuted Christian minority writing some sixty years after Jesus’s death—this examination of a foundational Christian text discerns the ways in which the Jewishness of Jesus was forgotten and Jews and Judaism became Christianity’s foil. More important, it takes a renewed look at Matthew with contemporary retellings that present a new and better future of conciliation and compassion between the two faith traditions.

This book consists of papers presented at a conference organized and chaired by Edward K. Kaplan of Brandeis University, held at Adath Jeshurun Synagogue in Louisville, Kentucky in February 2002, sponsored by the Thomas Merton Foundation, plus additional material, including essays, journal entries, letters, poetry, news reports, and church documents. Some contributors are Jewish, others Christian. The topic is Merton's relation to Jewish friends and correspondents (prominent authors and rabbis) and his leadership in the context of an awakening on the part of the Christian Church to the grievousness of its long persecution and rejection of the Jewish people. The keynote presentation is by James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, who traces his own awakening under Merton's guidance as typical of his generation. In the middle of the book we have Merton's correspondence with Jewish colleagues and the complete interchange between Merton and Abraham Joshua Heschel during the time when Heschel was an invited observer/adviser at Vatican II. The history of the development of the Council's Declaration on the Jews, Nostra Aetate, is treated in some detail with news reports and other materials and the four versions of the Declaration itself carried in the appendix with analysis and commentary, plus important sequents up to the present time.

Merton is critiqued for too quickly shifting attention from the experience of the Jewish people themselves to the guilt (or otherwise) of the Christians; several papers debate this. Nevertheless he is presented as making a significant opening to reverent appreciation of Judaism past and present as he aspires to be--or claims to be--"a true Jew under myCatholic skin." His characteristically strong feelings are revealed in journal entries and letters and a transcription of a lecture to the Gethsemani monks. He discusses with his Jewish friends topics such as retelling tales, writing and translating poetry, and the spiritual experience of reading the Bible. Several essays deal with Merton and his Jewish parallels as spiritual teachers, prophets, and activists, "heretics of modernity."

The book draws to a close with the renewal issues of pluralism, of which Merton was a forerunner; Hasidism, to which he was attracted and which is becoming popular again now; and a transcription of an interview with Merton's friend Jewish Renewal leader, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.