Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists about Suffering

A thoughtful, down-to-earth look at helpful ways to lessen human suffering.

This book takes you on a lively, sometimes light-hearted, journey through nine Buddhist practices that can bring "blessed relief" to a wide range of human suffering—and teaches you skills to reduce suffering in the long term for yourself and others.

The practices help you:

Loosen the grip of suffering

Engage and question limiting views, thoughts and opinions

Deconstruct ten common assumptions

Be present in each moment

Survive emotional storms

Develop peaceful communication skills

Deepen communication with your partner

Appreciate mortality and the preciousness of life

Cultivate compassion

As you read the chapters and engage in each practice, you will work with your own stories of suffering—stories in which you have felt abandoned, deprived, subjugated, defective, excluded or vulnerable—and you will learn how to release yourself from suffering by investigating it with curiosity and kindness.