Rod Dreher

Vivir en el asombro es una invitación a volver a abrir los ojos. A descubrir que el mundo no es un escenario plano y silencioso, sino un lugar cargado de sentido, misterio y presencia divina. En estas paginas, Rod Dreher narra como Occidente fue perdiendo su capacidad de asombrarse, como se desencanto, y muestra, con ejemplos concretos y profundamente humanos, que ese encantamiento no ha desaparecido: simplemente hemos olvidado el sentido de la maravilla y la conciencia de lo divino.Apoyandose en la historia, la antropologia cultural y la neurociencia, bebiendo de la sabiduria de los monjes de la Iglesia antigua, y a traves de testimonios reales milagros inexplicables, encuentros con santos y angeles, y hasta combates espirituales contra el mal el autor nos recuerda algo esencial: la realidad visible no lo es todo. Dios sigue hablando, actuando y saliendo a nuestro encuentro, aunque hayamos aprendido a ignorar sus señales.En su recorrido, Dreher se pregunta por que el cristianismo moderno resulta tan insipido y por que tantos jovenes se han alejado de la fe. Su respuesta es provocadora y esperanzadora a la vez: la vision sacramental, vibrante y encantada de la Iglesia del primer milenio sigue siendo verdadera.

Vivir en el asombro es una invitación a volver a abrir los ojos. A descubrir que el mundo no es un escenario plano y silencioso, sino un lugar cargado de sentido, misterio y presencia divina. En estas paginas, Rod Dreher narra como Occidente fue perdiendo su capacidad de asombrarse, como se desencanto, y muestra, con ejemplos concretos y profundamente humanos, que ese encantamiento no ha desaparecido: simplemente hemos olvidado el sentido de la maravilla y la conciencia de lo divino.Apoyandose en la historia, la antropologia cultural y la neurociencia, bebiendo de la sabiduria de los monjes de la Iglesia antigua, y a traves de testimonios reales milagros inexplicables, encuentros con santos y angeles, y hasta combates espirituales contra el mal el autor nos recuerda algo esencial: la realidad visible no lo es todo. Dios sigue hablando, actuando y saliendo a nuestro encuentro, aunque hayamos aprendido a ignorar sus señales.En su recorrido, Dreher se pregunta por que el cristianismo moderno resulta tan insipido y por que tantos jovenes se han alejado de la fe. Su respuesta es provocadora y esperanzadora a la vez: la vision sacramental, vibrante y encantada de la Iglesia del primer milenio sigue siendo verdadera.

The opening lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri launched Rod Dreher on a journey that rescued him from exile and saved his life. Dreher found that the medieval poem offered him a surprisingly practical way of solving modern problems.Following the death of his little sister and the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dreher found himself living in the small community of Starhill, Louisiana where he grew up. But instead of the fellowship he hoped to find, he discovered that fault lines within his family had deepened. Dreher spiraled into depression and a stress-related autoimmune disease. Doctors told Dreher that if he didnt find inner peace, he would destroy his health. Soon after, he came across The Divine Comedy in a bookstore and was enchanted by its first lines, which seemed to describe his own condition. In the months that followed, Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dantes great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition. Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights, How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing. Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness. It worked for Rod Dreher. Dante saved Rod Drehers lifeand in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.

Après son brillant essai sur le « pari bénédictin », Rod Dreher développe une réflexion aussi puissante que féconde autour du soft totalitarisme occidental. Pas dinterdiction officielle dopinion, pas

En 1974, el escritor y disidente Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publicó, en vísperas de su destierro, un mensaje final dirigido al pueblo ruso, que llevaba por título "¡Vivir sin mentiras!", en el que proclamaba que la mejor respuesta al totalitarismo sovietico no era otra que el afecto y la fidelidad a la verdad.El periodista y escritor Rod Dreher, autor del aclamado La opcion benedictina, hace en este libro de altavoz a Solzhenitsyn y otros muchos disidentes de Europa del Este que nos alertan del peligro no tan lejano de que Estados Unidos y el resto de Occidente esten abocados a un totalitarismo "blando", basado mas en la manipulacion psicologica que en la violencia abierta.Dreher desvela algunos de los principales rasgos de este nuevo totalitarismo, en el que la tecnologia y el consumismo nos llevan a un estado de "vigilancia empresarial", y nos pone delante las historias y experiencias de estos disidentes --sucedidas hace no tanto tiempo, pero caidas en el olvido-- para ofrecer consejos practicos sobre como identificar y resistir el totalitarismo en nuestro tiempo."Mientras una revolucion cultural apunta a la institucionalizacion de una tirania de cliches ideologicos, Dreher renueva el gran llamado de Solzhenitsyn a vivir sin mentiras. No puedo imaginar un libro mas oportuno ni urgente, o uno con un mensaje espiritual, politico y cultural mas duradero".--Daniel Mahoney, coeditor de The Solzhenitsyn Reader

En un mundo como el actual, que sería semejante a aquel que vio el fin del Imperio romano con la llegada de los bárbaros, es necesario actuar del mismo modo que lo hizo en su día san Benito de Nursia al alejarse de Roma y dedicarse a, en palabras del filosofo Alasdair MacIntyre, "la construccion de nuevas formas de comunidad dentro de las cuales pudiera continuar la vida moral, de tal modo que moralidad y civilidad sobrevivieran a las epocas de barbarie y oscuridad que se avecinaban".Esta es la tesis central de la presente obra, uno de los textos que mas polemica ha suscitado en la ultima decada en Estados Unidos y posteriormente en otros paises de Europa y que, dada su audaz propuesta, generara tambien un amplio debate entre los lectores de habla hispana."El libro religioso mas discutido e importante de la ultima decada". David Brooks, The New York Times"Dreher no es un periodista de investigacion y menos aun un visionario, sino un sobrio analista que desde hace tiempo ha seguido, de un modo atento y critico, la situacion de la Iglesia y del mundo, conservando sin embargo una mirada tierna de niño".Georg Ganswein, prefecto de la Casa Pontificia y secretario del papa emerito Benedicto XVI

LOccident est « désenchanté », fermé à lidée que lunivers est bercé de surnaturel et de métaphysique. Lhomme quitte les églises parce que la foi est devenue sèche et sans vie. Mais lhomme est toujour

When a big city writers small-town sister is diagnosed with cancer, her untimely death teaches him about life, faith and community. When she was diagnosed at age forty with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Philadelphia journalist Rod Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthies funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations: Mardi Gras, L.S.U. football games, and deer hunting.

Our churches are beset by challenges. From the outside, they are beset by a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, theyre being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down spirituality. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Those who notice are often frightened, and wonder what went wrong and what they can do about these trends.The Benedict Option is a guide for Christians under siege - a strategy that draws on the authority of scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture. In this visionary book, Dreher urges todays faithful to be new St Benedicts, building up local churches, creating new schools and taking up practices that can help them face todays world with confidence.Horrified by the moral chaos following Romes fall, St Benedict - a sixth-century monk - retreated to the forest and created a new way of life. He built enduring communities based on order, hospitality, stability and prayer. His spiritual centres of hope saved not just Christianity but Western civilization.The Benedict Option is both manifesto and rallying cry for Christians who, if they are not to be conquered anew, must learn how to fight on culture war battlefields like none the West has seen for fifteen hundred years. Its for all mere Christians - Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox - who can read the signs of the times. Neither false optimism nor fatalistic despair will do. Only faith, hope, and love, embodied in a renewed church, can sustain us. These are the days for building strong arks for the long journey across a sea of night.

Préface inédite de lauteur et introduction dYrieix DenisVoici un essai décisif, peu consensuel, fruit dune intuition tenace : les chrétiens vont devoir prendre de fermes résolutions, intérieures et pratiques, pour resister aux fleaux de la modernite. En effet, comment vivre sa foi dans un monde secularise devenu de plus en plus hostile a lEvangile ? Ceux qui minimisent le phenomene participent a son acceleration, affirme lauteur avec lucidite, sans regrets ni resignation. Depuis son poste dobservation, ce pere de famille, chretien fervent et journaliste renomme (The American Conservative), scrute et enquete : quelles sont les racines de la fragmentation de nos societes occidentales ? En quoi la sexualite et la technologie destabilisent lEglise ? Pourquoi les sacrifices, la liturgie et la priere constituent les cles dun reveil ?Rod Dreher perçoit lurgence, non pas dune nouvelle croisade, mais de la conversion des ames, pour le bien de tous ; avec Jacques Maritain il invite a etre larmee des etoiles jetee dans le ciel . [...] lessai religieux le plus important et discute de la decennie. David Brooks, THE NEW YORK TIMES Un livre etonnant [...] Patrick J. Deneen,FIRST THINGS Une vision perspicace et optimiste pour les chretiens [...] Mollie Ziegler Hemingway,THE FEDERALISTTraduit de langlais (Etats-Unis) par Hubert Darbon

Préface inédite de lauteur et introduction dYrieix DenisVoici un essai décisif, peu consensuel, fruit dune intuition tenace : les chrétiens vont devoir prendre de fermes résolutions, intérieures et pratiques, pour resister aux fleaux de la modernite. En effet, comment vivre sa foi dans un monde secularise devenu de plus en plus hostile a lEvangile ? Ceux qui minimisent le phenomene participent a son acceleration, affirme lauteur avec lucidite, sans regrets ni resignation. Depuis son poste dobservation, ce pere de famille, chretien fervent et journaliste renomme (The American Conservative), scrute et enquete : quelles sont les racines de la fragmentation de nos societes occidentales ? En quoi la sexualite et la technologie destabilisent lEglise ? Pourquoi les sacrifices, la liturgie et la priere constituent les cles dun reveil ?Rod Dreher perçoit lurgence, non pas dune nouvelle croisade, mais de la conversion des ames, pour le bien de tous ; avec Jacques Maritain il invite a etre larmee des etoiles jetee dans le ciel . [...] lessai religieux le plus important et discute de la decennie. David Brooks, THE NEW YORK TIMES Un livre etonnant [...] Patrick J. Deneen,FIRST THINGS Une vision perspicace et optimiste pour les chretiens [...] Mollie Ziegler Hemingway,THE FEDERALISTTraduit de langlais (Etats-Unis) par Hubert Darbon

Rod Dreher vivia uma depressão severa. Perdera sua irmã, sentia-se deslocado em sua cidade-natal, sofria fisicamente com os efeitos do estresse... Os médicos foram diretos: ou ele encontrava a paz in

O autor de A opção beneditina, best-seller do New York Times, usa como fundamento a sabedoria dos sobreviventes cristãos da perseguição soviética para alertar os cristãos ocidentais sobre os perigos

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Already the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade." David BrooksIn this controversial bestseller, Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. From the inside, American churches have been hollowed out by the departure of young people and by an insipid pseudoChristianity. From the outside, they are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. Keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House may have bought a brief reprieve from the states assault, but it will not stop the Wests slide into decadence and dissolution. Rod Dreher argues that the way forward is actually the way backall the way to St. Benedict of Nursia. This sixth-century monk, horrified by the moral chaos following Romes fall, retreated to the forest and created a new way of life for Christians. He built enduring communities based on principles of order, hospitality, stability, and prayer. His spiritual centers of hope were strongholds of light throughout the Dark Ages, and saved not just Christianity but Western civilization. Today, a new form of barbarism reigns. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Politics offers little help in this spiritual crisis. What is needed is the Benedict Option, a strategy that draws on the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture. The Benedict Option is both manifesto and rallying cry for Christians who, if they are not to be conquered, must learn how to fight on culture war battlefields like none the West has seen for fifteen hundred years. Its for all mere ChristiansProtestant, Catholic, Orthodoxwho can read the signs of the times. Neither false optimism nor fatalistic despair will do. Only faith, hope, and love, embodied in a renewed church, can sustain believers in the dark age that has overtaken us. These are the days for building strong arks for the long journey across a sea of night.

When a National Review colleague teased writer Rod Dreher one day about his visit to the local food co-op to pick up a weeks supply of organic vegetables (Ewww, thats so lefty), he started thinking about the ways he and his conservative family lived that put them outside the bounds of conventional Republican politics. Shortly thereafter Dreher wrote an essay about crunchy cons, people whose Small Is Beautiful style of conservative politics often put them at odds with GOP orthodoxy, and sometimes even in the same camp as lefties outside the Democratic mainstream. The response to the article was impassioned: Dreher was deluged by e-mails from conservatives across Americaeveryone from a pro-life vegetarian Buddhist Republican to an NRA staffer with a passion for organic gardeningwho responded to say, Hey, me too!In Crunchy Cons, Dreher reports on the amazing depth and scope of this phenomenon, which is redefining the taxonomy of Americas political and cultural landscape. At a time when the Republican party, and the conservative movement in general, is bitterly divided over what it means to be a conservative, Dreher introduces us to people who are pioneering a way back to the future by reclaiming whats best in conservatismpeople who believe that being a truly committed conservative today means protecting the environment, standing against the depredations of big business, returning to traditional religion, and living out conservative godfather Russell Kirks teaching that the family is the institution most necessary to preserve.In these pages we meet crunchy cons from all over America: a Texas clan of evangelical Christian free-range livestock farmers, the policy director of Republicans for Environmental Protection, homeschooling moms in New York City, an Orthodox Jew who helped start a kosher organic farm in the Berkshires, and an ex-sixties hippie from Alabama who became a devout Catholic without losing his antiestablishment sensibilities.Crunchy Cons is both a useful primer to living the crunchy con way and a passionate affirmation of those things that give our lives weight and measure. In chapters dedicated to food, religion, consumerism, education, and the environment, Dreher shows how to live in a way that preserves what Kirk called the permanent things, among them faith, family, community, and a legacy of ancient truths. This, says Dreher, is the kind of roots conservatism that more and more Americans want to practice. And in Crunchy Cons, he lets them know how far they are from being alone.A Crunchy Con Manifesto1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.4. Culture is more important than politics and economics. 5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardshipespecially of the natural worldis not fundamentally conservative. 6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.7. Beauty is more important than efficiency. 8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.9. We share Russell Kirks conviction that the institution most essential to conserve is the family.

Have you ever felt implicit pressure to go along with something you believe not to be true?Since Live Not by Lies was originally published in 2020 with a warning for America, many have seen in Europe and other Western nations an acceleration of soft totalitarianism in our societies. Whether it is the effects of cancel culture online because of progressive voices marginalising conservative opinions, or the unprecedented restrictions of civil liberties in response to Covid-19, people feel coerced to go along with the approved narrative on whatever topic, even if, secretly, we may believe the truth is somewhat different.Rod Dreher believe this represents a creeping soft totalitarianism, where safety is seen as paramount and technology is increasingly employed in its pursuit. As we sleepwalk through the erosion of our freedoms, we hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state that restricts our ability to make decisions about our own lives. In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism in the former Soviet bloc and who see similarities today in the West. He draws on the experience of brave dissidents - some, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, known worldwide, but many others whose quiet heroism is revealed here for the first time - who offer practical advice for how to identify this trend and resist it. Live Not By Lies aims to wake us and equip us for the long resistance.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Benedict Option draws on the wisdom of Christian survivors of Soviet persecution to warn American Christians of approaching dangers.For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of "soft" totalitarianism cropping up in America--something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance: SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation. JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true. ACT: Take action to protect truth.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism cant happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

2016 Christopher Award WinnerFrom acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the citys neighborhoods, including Pontchartrain Park, the home of Wendell Pierces family and the first African American middle-class subdivision in New Orleans. The hurricane breached many of the citys levees, and the resulting flooding submerged Pontchartrain Park under as much as 20 feet of water. Katrina left New Orleans later that day, but for the next three days the water kept relentlessly gushing into the city, plunging eighty percent of New Orleans under water. Nearly 1,500 people were killed. Half the houses in the city had four feet of water in themor more. There was no electricity or clean water in the city; looting and the breakdown of civil order soon followed. Tens of thousands of New Orleanians were stranded in the city, with no way out; many more evacuees were displaced, with no way back in. Pierce and his family were some of the lucky ones: They survived and were able to ride out the storm at a relatives house 70 miles away. When they were finally allowed to return, they found their family home in tatters, their neighborhood decimated. Heartbroken but resilient, Pierce vowed to help rebuild, and not just his familys home, but all of Pontchartrain Park. In this powerful and redemptive narrative, Pierce brings together the stories of his family, his city, and his history, why they are all worth saving and the critical importance art played in reuniting and revitalizing this unique American city.

In 2018, at the end of a speech Rod Dreher gave in Genoa, an artist gave him an engraving by his own hand. In broken English, the artist explained that he was in his studio that afternoon when the Holy Spirit told him that he should come hear Rod Dreher, and give him a particular drawing of an obscure medieval saint. None of this made sense to Dreher until two years later, lost in depression and confusion, the saint - a Tuscan hermit named Galgano - appeared in Drehers life again under circumstances that did not at all seem coincidental, sending Dreher on a search for Gods will for his life. A lifetime of experiencing mystical events and collecting stories from others has solidified Drehers Christian faith, and convinced him that God reveals himself to us all the time - but we in the modern West have lost our capacity to sense Gods presence. How did this happen to us, but not to other peoples in the world? Can it be reversed? If so, how?LIVING IN WONDER tells the story of how the West became "disenchanted", and gives practical advice - based on history, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience, as well as the testimonies of monks of the ancient Church - on how to regain ones sense of wonder and awareness of the divine. Told through real-life stories of people who experienced miracles, visitations by saints and angels, and in some cases wrestled with demons, this book will open your mind to the reality that the material world is not all there is, and that God is not as silent and as elusive as you might think. You just need to learn how to see with clear eyes.Join Rod Dreher as he explores why contemporary Christianity seems so empty, and why so many young people are walking away from it. He argues that the enchanted sacramental vision of the church of the first millennium is still true, only hidden, and that the experience of God is something that can happen to anyone - if they are willing to take the risk.

En un mundo como el actual, que sería semejante a aquel que vio el fin del Imperio romano con la llegada de los bárbaros, es necesario actuar del mismo modo que lo hizo en su día san Benito de Nursia al alejarse de Roma y dedicarse a, en palabras del filósofo Alasdair MacIntyre, "la construcción de nuevas formas de comunidad dentro de las cuales pudiera continuar la vida moral, de tal modo que moralidad y civilidad sobrevivieran a las épocas de barbarie y oscuridad que se avecinaban". Esta es la tesis central de la presente obra, uno de los textos que más polémica ha suscitado en la última década en Estados Unidos y posteriormente en otros países de Europa y que, dada su audaz propuesta, generará también un amplio debate entre los lectores de habla hispana. "El libro religioso más discutido e importante de la última década". David Brooks, The New York Times "Dreher no es un periodista de investigación y menos aún un visionario, sino un sobrio analista que desde hace tiempo ha seguido, de un modo atento y crítico, la situación de la Iglesia y del mundo, conservando sin embargo una mirada tierna de niño". Georg Gänswein, prefecto de la Casa Pontificia y secretario del papa emérito Benedicto XVI.