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Jon M. Sweeney

@jonmsweeney.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1.3K following 2.1K posts

Author The Complete Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart…etc. Coming Dec. 1, A Year with the Classics. Vermonter. Dad. Cat and dog lover. Catholic married to a rabbi.

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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 5h
The book of Ephesians taught Christians to assume demons were in the air, causing violent storms. By the 16th century, Protestants split from Catholics over the efficacy of sacramentals, i.e. church bells, to combat the demons. Then came science and lightning rods first went on churches in 1756.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 8h
I salute my translator friends everywhere, on this, the feast day of St. Jerome.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I grew up in a religious tradition that taught, We pray in our time; the answers come in God's time. When I was 13 I prayed often for more body hair. I wanted to be seen as a man and not just a boy. Now I know that God's answer came in my late 50s in the form of hair in my nose and ears.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Lord shall cover thee with his feathers. Ps. 91:4, kjv
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ads for other books, once common on back covers, were designed for rail travel. Entice the passengers across from you.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Well said. This was my experience of the book too. drb.ie/article/when...
drb.ie
When More is Less - Dublin Review of Books
This colossal volume of Heaney’s poems ‘almost disguises the fact that he is a poet by entombing his lyric in a mass of annotation, exegesis and “uncollected” poems’.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
As you can tell from my review, I like this new book very much. www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews...
spiritualityandpractice.com
Ninety-Nine by Amira Mittermaier | Review | Spirituality & Practice
Listening to Muslims about who God is, what God does.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Graham Greene once said that the marks of a Christian civilization were 'the divided mind, the uneasy conscience.' In that case, we must indeed be post-Christian.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Oh Rosie
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
About 2 months from now. #MKE “We're so glad to welcome former Milwaukeean, author, and editor Jon M Sweeney back to the store to celebrate not one but two new releases” boswellbooks.com/event/2026-1...
boswellbooks.com
Jon M Sweeney, author of A Year with the Classics and Meister Eckhart
Boswell Book Company - 2559 N Downer Ave, Milwaukee, WI
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Wouldn't it be great if, every year, we were all anointed with oil, had it rubbed into the palms of our hands, like a priest at ordination, reminding us that we have holy work to do?
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
There’s no rule that says a copyright page in a book has to be boring. This is a Rohrschach test. Can you see it?
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Let them love in the same way as one is hungry and thirsty. -Simone Weil (Notebooks, v1)
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The thin bible paper, flex hardcover, and ribbon marker were genius for this classic, matching form to content—since editor Edith Hamilton considered Plato almost part of the Christian revelation.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Write today as if you are surrounded.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Let your question be a prayer." William of St-Thierry
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"The greatest danger to the monk's life of prayer is the possibility of becoming too attached to his work. The basic principle: if a monk can support himself on a dollar a day, he shouldn't work for two dollars." Thomas Merton, lecturing to the novices on Cassian
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm loving these early mornings, as the excess of summer slows, and the coming coldness turns my mind to other things.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sending love today to everyone who loved Phyllis Tickle. This is the 11th anniversary of her death.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“Children...begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.” Kathleen Norris
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We’ve had a crazy bumper crop year on our three apple trees. This is the latest batch I have picked to give away. Taking them to synagogue tonight for break the fast.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is necessary history. My review of 'A Protest History of the United States,' now in pb. www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews...
spiritualityandpractice.com
A Protest History of the United States by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall | Review | Spirituality & Practice
How struggle for change has defined the United States from the start.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
...Without a word / prayer elevates the heart... (poet Jeffrey Yang, "Starfish")
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A great addition to tonight’s Kol Nidre service.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Today’s find at the Vermont antiquarian booksellers fair.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Let everything happen to you. (Rilke)
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Reposted by Jon M. Sweeney
Shell @mmd11.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies!
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Arrivals
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
God is not what you think from ‘Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets’
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The separation between asceticism and mysticism is an unfortunate modern development. -Thomas Merton A Course in Christian Mysticism
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I miss Boston, ordering a lahg regulah and being fully and completely understood.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
These 3 bios all happened to arrive today. Three great women of letters.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Vatican document affirms interreligious dialogue as 'journey of hope' for humanity www.ncronline.org/vatican/vati...
ncronline.org
Vatican document affirms interreligious dialogue as 'journey of hope' for humanity
A new Vatican document, the result of a collaboration among three dicasteries, affirms Vatican II's landmark 1965 teaching on the church's relationship with the Jewish people and those of other faiths...
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I am told that most African languages use the same word for guest as for stranger.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
What’s the book you’ve most often loaned and not had returned? Mine: Life Work, by Donald Hall
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
O Lord...I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. Ps. 131
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Today is the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. This is where it happened, on Mount La Verna.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Thomas Merton on Evagrius: "Apatheia is the victory of the soul over all the devils (i.e. all the passions). Note that apatheia is not mere insensibility. It is compounded of humility, compunction, zeal, and intense love of God."
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Then (from 'Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart')
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
These idiotic AI-generated email fraud messages that every book author receives everyday, now, are unfortunate because if someone were to write genuinely interested in a book of mine I would never know, because every email is now deleted immediately. #authors #books
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
“This warm and wise book invites its readers to meet Eckhart as an equal and a friend with whom we can intimately speak, whose heart and mind we may be drawn into.” —Dr. Rebecca Stephens, Chair of the Eckhart Society, author of 'Grounding the Soul' 📖 Available Dec. 7
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Readers have always determined the books that succeed. Don Quixote first appeared in 1605, by an unknown and penniless author, published in a cheap edition full of typos.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I found this in the Sheed & Ward papers at Notre Dame: Gary Wills letter to his editor in 1961: "I gather from Frank [Sheed] that [Evelyn] Waugh was in one of his more bilious moments when he wrote the review of my book. Well, if one plays with a cactus plant, I suppose one is bound to get pricked."
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Stanislaus Joyce journaling about his son James: “Catholicism he has appreciated, rejected and opposed, and liked again when it had no power over him.”
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I hope I can be forgiven by my fellow Catholics for choosing to ignore the feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross - the triumph of it, the supposed historical find, how it was used to buttress empire, and the vilifying of the Jews in the process (who supposedly hid the cross until Helena found it).
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Shana tova
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I was in our offices in Woodstock, Vermont that day and someone had a radio on, against office rules. When the news alert came on, she told us, and everyone gathered around that radio. As things unfolded, people began to cry. Before noon we said let's all go home.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Without Charles Dickens and H. K. Browne, there would’ve been no Walt Disney.
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"So welcome what comes of the dark" From 'Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets'🙏❤️
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Jon M. Sweeney @jonmsweeney.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
For all the beguines out there. I love this.
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