The Healing Path: A Memoir and Invitation

Finding our way along the healing path does not consist of striving for some far-off goal that we may or may not attain but is rather a way of a discovering a secret hidden deep within our hearts.

James Finley, Ph.D.

What life experiences have drawn you to the healing path?  

In The Healing Path: A Memoir and Invitation, CAC faculty member James Finley dives deep into the contemplative wisdom gathered over a lifetime of spiritual direction, psychotherapy, and close study with Thomas Merton’s mystical path. Offering his own life as a case study of emerging consciousness, Finley reflects on his traumatic personal experiences, including childhood and adolescent abuse, a dysfunctional marriage, and the loss of a great spiritual partnership. These experiences serve as guideposts of spiritual transformation that illuminate new roads towards greater wholeness and healing.  

Order a copy of The Healing Path from CAC’s online bookstore. Interested in going further? Join James Finley and Brian McLaren for The Healing Path Online Gathering on May 10!

Reviews for The Healing Path: 

“To read this book is to receive the transmission of one of the great living mystics of our age. James Finley inhabits the sacred territory he maps for us in these luminous pages —a landscape drenched in love, rooted in the sacred ordinary, where our most devastating wounds become portals to the divine encounter. James’ story is riveting, his insight transcendent, his invitation truly life changing.” —Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Caravan of No Despair 

“James Finley has pursued the contemplative life seriously—inside and outside of the monastery—and part of that through the healing of his own wounds. That combination allows him to bring a whole, wonderful balancing act to theology and spirituality. James Finley is a healer. I believe his poetic words will help many people on their healing journey.”
—Richard Rohr, CAC founder and author of The Universal Christ