The Cup Of Our Life

I recently was told about Joyce Rupp's 1997 bestselling, contemporary classic having sold more than 200,000 copies.  Her new edition continues a fifteen-year tradition of helping individuals and groups pray.  I find it very helpful.  

Now with a new preface and fresh design, The Cup of Our Life is available to anyone seeking a more intimate and disciplined life of prayer. Joyce Rupp, the bestselling Catholic woman writer today, illustrates how the ordinary cups used each day can become sacred vessels that connect readers with life and bring them into closer union with the Divine. She explores how the cup is a rich symbol of life, with its emptiness and fullness, its brokenness and flaws, and its many blessings. With daily devotions for six weeks, this book is ideal for individual usage as well as group usage in parish settings, religious communities, and small Christian communities.

One book review read: "I have found the cup to be a powerful teacher for my inner life," writes Joyce Rupp in this wonderful series of meditations. "The ordinariness of the cup reminds me that my personal transformation occurs in the common crevices of each day. The cup is an apt image for the inner processes of growth. The cup is a reminder of my spiritual thirst."

As anyone who has read any of her other books knows, Joyce Rupp is a gifted teacher who makes everyday spirituality dramatic, palpable, and transformative. Here she offers six weekly themes based on the cup, a rich symbol of life with its emptiness and fullness, its brokenness and flaws, and its gifts and blessings. Each day has a section that includes an essay, a wisdom saying, a scripture passage, an imagery exercise using a cup, prayers, questions for journaling, and a practice to be carried out during the rest of the day.

Rupp is a connoisseur of attentiveness, imagination, and prayer. For example, she draws a link between a cup brimming over and the following practice: "As I pour liquids of any kind into a cup, a glass or a bowl, I will smile inside as I remember how generous God is in filling my life with blessings."

Using her images and description, I believe I'm "The Chipped Cup," flawed and inadequate, but at least not broken.

Deacon David Pierce