Books for Sale by Scott and Kathy Sparrow

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Sacred Encounters with Jesus
by G. Scott Sparrow

Ave Maria Press, $12.00

Nihil Obstat -- Rev. Glen Gardner, J.C.D., Censor Librorum
Imprimatur -- Most Rev. Charles V. Grahmann, Bishop of Dallas

Back cover copy:

"Sacred Encounters with Jesus is a discerning and comprehensive account of how people still experience Christ today. What is surprising to me is that no one has previously taken the trouble to collect and explain the meaning  of these experiences. This facinating book conveys a wealth of both religious and psychological wisdom."  Foreword, Morton Kelsey

"In this book, Dr Sparrow presents a variety of remarkable experiences in which individuals believe that Christ came to them in waking visions or deep, unforgettable dreams.  Taken together, these experiences raise the possibility that some people will readily accept and others will summarily dismiss -- that Jesus can be experienced as directly and as personally today as when he walked the earth two thousand years ago."

"G. Scott Sparrow Ed D, is a spiritual mentor, psychotherapist, fly fishing guide, and writer who has previously published two books on experiences with Jesus and Mary. He received his doctorate in counseling from the College of William and Mary and has maintained a private practice in professional counseling for twenty years. He lectures and teaches on meditation, mystical experiences, and dream work methods, and lives in Arroyo City, Texas.

From a review of Dr. Sparrow's earlier work on Christ encounters, I Am with You Always, from National Catholic Review:

"An exciting book for those who delight in hearing people express their own experiences of God in their own words. Most of the contributions have all the trademark ingredients of the gospel: strangeness, unorthodoxy, exhilaration, transformation and, most important, a focus not on the institutional church but on its central reality: the risen, living Jesus Christ."-- Bill Peatman



Sacred Encounters with Mary
by G. Scott Sparrow.

Ave Maria Press, $12.00.
 

Nihil Obstat -- Rev. Glen Gardner, J.C.D., Censor Librorum
Imprimatur -- Most Rev. Charles V. Grahmann, Bishop of Dallas

Back cover copy:

"Mary brings to us an awareness that we desperately need -- a nourishing spirit of self-sacrificing love. If embraced more widely it might help reverse the tide of hatred and bloodshed spilling into many regions of the world today. The major apparitions of Mary always precede or coincide with regional or worldwide upheavals. As Janice Connell has said, 'When the Blessed Mother appears, great things happen on earth and in heaven.'

"Dr. Sparrow recounts experiences in which individuals have felt the presence of Mary either through light, visions, voices, or simply an overwhelming feeling of love. He suggests that by appreciating the various forms in which the Blessed Mother manifests to us, we may enter more deeply into a personal relationship with God.

Venture Inward: "Sparrow has made Mary accessible in a way she has never been before. He also articulates a synthesis of spirituality, psychology, and metaphysics which is rather profound and reminiscent of both Jack Kornfield's A Path with a Heart and William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience.

"This book keeps unfolding and deepening, like a loving relationship which is cultivated over time. It is obviously the fruit of the author's earnest and intelligent search for God."

Booklist: "As a non-Catholic, Sparrow did not find the search an easy one, but the power and kindliness he encountered at last made a believer of him -- if not in a specific religious tradition, at least in the reality of the feminine force called Mary."

Library Journal: "... Sparrow, a psychotherapist and Methodist who has had visions of Mary, retells the stories of some 50 encounters with Mary by other people. He interprets these messages as challenges that lead toward conversion on a personal level and provide comfort.... Recommended for public libraries."

Publishers Weekly: "Sparrow, a Protestant psychologist, takes a personal approach to understanding the importance of Mary in the lives of Christians today. His own visions of Mary led him to collect and interpret over 50 accounts of encounters with the Holy Mother.... Sparrow (I Am with You Always: True Stories of Encounters with Jesus) has written another provocative book that will appeal to many pilgrims on their spiritual journeys."



Andrew's Quest for the Perfect
Christmas Gift
Co-authored with Kathy Sparrow
WPBooks, 2005

    The inspiration for  Andrew’s Quest for the Perfect Christmas Gift came to me a few days before Christmas. I had awakened around 5:00 a.m.and was stitting on the side of the bed when suddenly, an idea came to me out of nowhere, as though it was someone else’s thought. I clearly heard the words, “The perfect gift.” In the moments that followed, an amazing story unfolded without any assistance from me, and I marveled at its simple beauty.
    Andrew’s Quest is the story of  nine-year-old Andrew MacClean, who awakens in the middle of the night to the sound of someone singing. When he goes downstairs to investigate, he discovers a boy about his own age near the Christmas tree. Alarmed at first by the presence of an intruder, Andrew soon finds that the boy’s kindness affects him in a wonderful way. The stranger finally says that he must leave, but reassures Andrew that he will return when Andrew has given the perfect gift! Andrew sets about to fulfill the strange request in hopes that his success will insure his new friend’s return.
    Andrew’s search brings him closer to understanding each of his family members’ deepest hopes and dreams as they give him some idea about what a perfect gift would mean to them. On the basis of what they tell him, Andrew is able to accomplish the mysterious boy’s request, thus setting the stage for the stranger’s return.

   "Andrew’s Quest for the Perfect Christmas Gift is a magical, mystical visit Into the dreamy world of a sensitive child, and also a reminder of what is truly important. By story's end the reader, whether child or adult, will feel that he/she has also learned some valuable lessons of the heart."
Ruth White
Author of the 1997 Newbery honor book, Belle Prater's Boy,
and its sequel The Search for Belle Prater

 $16.95 paper



Healing the Fisher King: A Fly Fisher's Quest
WPBooks, 2005
Read an excerpt and reviews

    In the tradition of A River Runs Through It, the book, Healing the Fisher King: A Fly Fisher’s Quest, is the story of one man’s journey to the familiar waters of his childhood -- the Lower Laguna Madre of deep south Texas. Lured by a desire to catch a giant spotted  seatrout -- but directed by a dream that points to his home waters as the setting for healing and transformation  -- Sparrow takes his eight-year-old son on a journey from Virginia to south Texas that proves more difficult than he imagines. 
    He discovers that the unresolved pain in his life -- stemming, in part, from his parents’ divorce and now his own -- is also alive in his son. As they spend the first days fishing together, Sparrow and his son spiral into a dark place that is confusing and disturbing. The author draws upon the legend of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail  in order to arrive at a way to address his son’s needs, as well as his own.
    As he begins his fly fishing search for the mysterious fish so aptly named named cynoscion nebulosis -- “starry nebulae” -- he soon discovers that his quest for a great fish mirrors his lifelong yearning for communion with God.  He is led throughout by radiant dreams, his knowledge of spiritual traditions, and a willingness to face his own past with ruthless honesty. 
    Against a backdrop largely failed fly fishing experiences, Sparrow makes progress toward understanding his lifelong resistance to living from his heart.  This resistance sets the stage for an eventual encounter with death through the agency of a stingray’s painful wound. Becoming infected with Vibrio vulnificus, a deadly bacteria, he eventually realizes that he has a choice -- to live fully, or to die.

    "There’s something about life that wants us to give it our all. Dr. Scott Sparrow’s heart-expanding book, destined to become a classic among spiritual autobiographies, shows us how both tragedies and miracles arise in life to make sure we fulfill our responsibility to be all we can be." Henry Reed, Ph.D. Author of Dream Medicine

$21.95



On the Mother Lagoon:
Fly Fishing and the Spiritual Journey
by Kathy Sparrow

$16.95

"Those moments between casts, when the fly gracefully glides through the air. Those moments between breaths, between thoughts. Those moments between fish caught and released. Those moments between visions and inspirations. Those are the moments where I come closer to knowing my Self. Big "S." The times when my self, little "s" is but a mere memory...
 
     "It's the union, the yoga, that drives us both outward and inward. It is in the practice, the doing, where we perceive perfection, the mastery. The road to mastery is long, and everchanging. To reach our goals, and come to know something of our Big "S's", we continue to sit in stillness, observing the breath going in and out. We continue to cast, and perfect our presentations. And with our lines tight, and our rods bent, we come closer to knowing God,  and acknowledging our Creator's presence not only within ourselves, but in our fellow anglers, and those delightful creatures that agree to dance with us on the end of our lines."