A Home for the Heart: Creating Intimacy & Community in Our Everyday Lives

The author of Finding Joy addresses the human need for intimacy and a sense of belonging, explaining how to establish, maintain, and deepen intimate relationships with our friends, family, colleagues, teammates, and neighbors. $20,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Psychologist, Quaker, social activist, and author of Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the Twelve Steps, Charlotte Kasl has written a guide for creating intimate relationships--with oneself, one's partner, and one's community. Borrowing from both Buddhism and her own Quaker beliefs, Kasl suggests that only when we actively connect with all beings will intimacy occur and deepen. "Love is the energy at the center of all life," she writes; the sense of belonging to something larger than the self is, Kasl argues, fundamental to the human experience.

Addressing many common fears, Kasl asks readers to examine their interactions with both people and things. What, for example, is your relationship to money, food, and time? Do your values match your spending? What can personal longing teach in terms of true fulfillment? Kasl offers Q&A exercises intended to help underscore her suggestions for restoring balance.

This isn't new ground, but it's still vitally important. A Home for the Heart reminds us that fulfillment is to be found in the whole mosaic of human connections. Written in Kasl's inimitably kind and concerned voice, this book is a fitting companion for those who seek to bring a larger vision to their stressful lives.