Books for the Journey Home
Some stories need more room than a single reflection can give them. These books grew from hospital rooms, prayer, memory, pilgrimage, suffering, family, and the persistent discovery that grace has a way of meeting us exactly where we are.
Some stories are written because we have something to say. Others are written because life has given us something we cannot keep to ourselves.
My books have grown out of that second kind of writing.
They come from hospital rooms and quiet chapels, from memories of people I have loved, from the Catholic faith that has carried me through some of the darkest places of my life, and from the persistent discovery that grace has a remarkable way of meeting us exactly where we are.
If you have found your way to Food for the Way through one of my reflections, these books are an extension of the same journey.
They are written for people who have suffered, questioned, remembered, prayed, grieved, survived, or simply wondered whether God might still be present in the middle of an ordinary human life.
My books are available through Amazon in convenient paperback and/or Kindle editions.
7 Reflections From the Edge of Death
Reflections on survival, suffering, faith, grace, and discovering what matters when life is stripped down to its essentials.
There are moments when life divides itself permanently into before and after.
For me, one of those moments came during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I became critically ill with bilateral pneumonia and eventually found myself on a ventilator, in a coma, surrounded by machines and fighting for a life I did not even know I was fighting to keep.
There came a point when the people caring for me believed I was going to die.
I received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic Pardon. I was transferred for a final attempt at life-saving treatment.
Somewhere inside that extraordinary journey, the boundaries between memory, suffering, prayer, fear and grace became strangely thin.
7 Reflections From the Edge of Death grew out of what happened next.
This is not simply a book about surviving a medical catastrophe.
It is about what remains when nearly everything else has been taken away.
- Family
- Faith
- Memory
- Suffering
- The people who refuse to give up on us
- The astonishing gift of being given one more morning
If you have ever walked through serious illness, grief, uncertainty, spiritual darkness, or a season when you wondered whether your life could ever resemble itself again, I hope you will find something of your own story within these pages.
Available through Amazon. Paperback and/or Kindle options may be shown on the Amazon book page.
Nazareth in England
Fourteen Meditations with Our Lady of Walsingham
There is something profoundly beautiful about Walsingham.
For centuries, Christians have traveled to a little village in Norfolk, England, drawn by the story of the Holy House of Nazareth and the ancient devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham.
According to the tradition, the Lady Richeldis de Faverches was asked by the Blessed Virgin Mary to build a replica of the Holy House of Nazareth — the home in which Mary gave her fiat to God and where the Holy Family lived together.
It is an extraordinary thought.
Among all the magnificent places associated with Christianity, Mary points us toward a house.
A home.
Nazareth.
Not a throne room. Not a palace. Not a monument to human greatness.
A home where God entered ordinary human life.
Nazareth in England is a collection of fourteen meditations inspired by this ancient devotion and by the spirituality of Our Lady of Walsingham.
These reflections explore Mary not as someone who draws attention toward herself, but as the Mother who continually points beyond herself toward her Son.
Again and again, she seems to whisper the same invitation:
Come home.
Come home to Christ.
Come home to Nazareth.
Come home to the God who has made His dwelling among us.
The book is especially suited for personal prayer, Marian devotion, pilgrimage, quiet spiritual reading, and anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of Our Lady of Walsingham and the mystery of the Incarnation.
Available through Amazon and especially suited for Marian devotion, pilgrimage, personal prayer and quiet spiritual reading.
Choose the Book That Meets You Where You Are
The two books travel different roads, but both are ultimately about finding our way home.
7 Reflections From the Edge of Death
Start here if you are carrying questions about suffering, illness, grief, survival, caregiving, fear or the fragility of life.
It is also the better starting point if what first drew you to Food for the Way was my near-death story, Grandma’s table, or reflections about being given another morning.
Explore 7 ReflectionsNazareth in England
Start here if you are drawn to Mary, pilgrimage, Our Lady of Walsingham, the Incarnation or the spiritual meaning of home.
It is a more explicitly devotional book and works especially well for slow reading, personal prayer or returning to one meditation at a time.
Explore Nazareth in EnglandAvailable on Amazon
My books are available for purchase through Amazon, making them easy to order throughout the United States and in many international markets.
Depending on the title, paperback and Kindle options may be available directly on the Amazon book page.
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Faith Doesn’t Happen Somewhere Apart From Real Life
I have never been especially interested in writing theology as though faith happens somewhere apart from real life.
For me, theology has always been found around kitchen tables, beside hospital beds, inside old family photographs, in hymns remembered from childhood, in conversations with people we love, and in those unexpected moments when an ordinary day suddenly reveals something eternal.
That is the kind of writing I try to do.
I write about faith as it is actually lived.
Sometimes beautifully.
Sometimes painfully.
Sometimes imperfectly.
But always with the conviction that God is closer than we imagine.
My hope is that these books do more than tell you my stories.
I hope they help you recognize something within your own.
More About CharlesNot Ready for a Book Yet?
That’s perfectly fine. Begin with one of the reflections that grew from the same soil.
One More Morning
Why nearly dying changed the way I think about ordinary life, survival and the gift of simply waking up.
Read →The Safest Place I Knew
A hospital room, the edge of death and somehow finding myself back at Grandma’s kitchen table.
Read →Nazareth Was Never the Final Home
Mary’s journey from Nazareth, to the home of John, and finally toward the home for which every earthly home longs.
Read →Before You Buy Anything
Let Me Send You 7 Reflections First
If you’re new to my writing, you don’t have to buy a book to find out whether Food for the Way speaks to you.
I’ll send you seven reflections about faith, family, memory, suffering, hope and discovering grace in ordinary places.
Read them first. Then, if you’d like to walk farther with one of the books, they’ll be here.
Send Me the 7 Reflections
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The Books Are Only Part of the Story
At Food for the Way, I regularly publish reflections about Catholic faith, family, history, music, memory, suffering, hope, and those quiet moments in which the sacred suddenly becomes visible inside the ordinary.
If one of my books has brought you here, I hope you will stay awhile.
Read a reflection.
Remember someone you love.
Listen to an old song again.
Say a prayer you have not said in years.
And perhaps discover, as I continue to discover, that even after the hardest journeys of our lives, grace still leaves food for us along the way.
