Remembering Faithfully Forward: The Daily Niebuhr Family Meditation-Contemplation Reader

Daily Meditation readers abound; some, thankfully, endure. Rare are spiritually grounded and contemplative invitations that feature four generations of earnest family teachers, preachers, activists, journalists, and controversial prophets. In various life conditions, threatening and challenged by sickness and despair, herein are eight Niebuhrs’ faithful wrestlings. They bequeath bristling morsels and compelling insights, creatively compacted into more than four hundred entries and reference leads for further consideration. Thus, deeply influenced by the patriarch and matriarch, Gustav Sr. and Lydia, arise Reinhold’s steadfast reflections on grace-grounded justice and its principles; the caringly layered meanings of the love of neighbor and God from his brother, H. Richard; the dedication to render the faith intelligible to postmoderns held by his son, Richard Reinhold; and the decisive and insightful journalism by, in turn, his son, Gustav Jr., on Lincoln being duly lobbied for mercy to indigenous peoples. And that’s not all—the indispensable reminiscences of Reinhold’s educator sister, Hulda, and his wife, Ursula, as well as the unearthed grace-based Serenity Prayer of his daughter Elisabeth, corporately express rare gleanings of the Niebuhr clan’s virtual school of warm contemplative action.