Featured Book
Bruce Davis, PhD, is a spiritual psychologist, author, and international retreat guide whose work explores the meeting place of psychology, spirituality, and the heart.
Since the publication of The Magical Child Within You in 1975, his books have explored themes of inner healing, sacred silence, joy, awareness, and the contemplative life. Bruce lived for twelve years in Assisi, Italy, where he and his wife, Ruth, founded the Assisi Retreat Center.
His decades of meditation, pilgrimage, and relationship with the spirit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare continue to inspire his writing today.
Books by Bruce Davis, Ph.D
Unveiling the Heart of Awareness
Contemplative Meditation on the Journey of Awakening
Underneath the waves of daily thought is our ocean of being. As the world pulls on our attention, occupying our awareness, there is the ocean of our awareness without busy thought to explore and receive. There is the great silence within our heart. This is the essence of the contemplative path.
Simple Peace
The Spiritual Life of St Francis of Assisi
This a book about the inner life of St Francis. More than a story of the life of Francis, this book gives the inner life and development of one of the world's most famous Saints. It includes his struggles with his own humanness, his passion for living a life for his soul and his compassion for the marginalized people of society.
The Love Letters of Saint Francis and Saint Clare
The Journey of Two Great Saints Soaked in Love, That Changed the World
The Love Letters of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi is a work of historical fiction. The journey these two great saints discovered eight hundred years ago lifted the church and promises today to lift all who embrace their heart felt path. The Love Letters is the love story of Francis and Clare. The mystical journey they embraced transforms how we see our spiritual journey including our purpose, our relationship with one another, nature and all of creation. To read the Love Letters of St. Francis and St. Clare is to fall into the hearts of these two saints only to see our own hearts and our potential to become instruments of true peace and joy.
Monastery without Walls
Daily Life in the Silence
This book speaks to the mystic within us. It affirms our place in the sacred silence of solitude and inner reflection, showing how even everyday life is filled with opportunities to live fully in the world - as if it were a holy monastery. Here we learn to live, within the limits, as well as the spirit of everyday life and how to appreciate our most human self as the path to explore the divine. Here we encounter a world that is clearly available to us, a world filled with nothing less than the gift of sacred silence within the monastery without walls.
The Calling of Joy
Unfolding Your Soul in Your Life
This book is a calling to find the part of us that is more than what we do, how much we have, and what we think. It is a calling to our inner river, our passion, our well of being, our truth. Joy does not come by accident or coincidence. It does not come from hard work or simply good luck. Joy is remembering, trusting, being, rediscovering our inner resources. Joy is creativity, tears, and laughter. Joy is our guide through life's many choices.
The Magical Child Within You (2nd edition)
Inside Every Adult is the Magical Child to Discover
The Magical Child Within You was one of the first books published in the 1970’s exploring the “inner child”. It has been published in nine languages as the importance of honoring the inner child in adults has grown around the world.
My Little Flowers
Reflections of Mary
Love has no introduction. Love appears. Love just is. And despite our attempts to manage Her, She wins. If we withdraw, if we surrender, if we call out, or if we are silent, She is, as we are prepared to know Her. Ordinary or Holy, everywhere we turn love faces us. Again and again She is here.
Articles by Bruce Davis, Ph.D.
The Gift of Silence In silence we can hear our own thoughts. Perhaps more beautiful we can hear the world without the crowded stream of our thoughts. Visiting silence can be an adventure, a pilgrimage, a life changing journey into peace and quiet. We can be quite busy and loud in our attempts to make a more peaceful world. Maybe the peace we seek is not so complicated. Maybe the quiet we want can begin with turning down the noise we routinely live with. Real peace and quiet can.…Read more
Mindfulness Is Giving Birth To Heartfulness Meditation As more and more people are paying attention to the present moment they are finding a harmony where before they were just on their way to doing what is next. As their awareness takes notice of the little moments of the day instead of being in a rush, their inner world and outer world seem to be talking to one another in the silence. Time, nature, our self appear to be beating as in an interconnected, omnipresent heart. One simple moment is as a grain of sand connected to a living ocean. Simple mindfulness and the world of heartfulness is.… Read more
Spiritual But Not Religious In an ideal world being spiritual or religious would mean approximately the same. But with so many people identifying with being spiritual but not religious (see recent NY Times article) a statement is being made how far religion has separated itself from its spiritual roots. Many, many people have quietly marched out the door into the fresh air of no church. Will they give the pews a second chance? Are ministers, priests, rabbis listening to the young and college educated who are on the.... Read more
Pope Francis, Bring Us The Future Future Church As the Catholic Church, and religion in general, slowly come to terms with the past future --meaning making up for past mistakes, hypocrisy, and unequal treatment -- we should begin the discussion of the future future. What should the Church look like if it really is going to be relevant in the 21st Century? What should the Church be teaching if it is going to get the respect of modern young people, the leaders of today and tomorrow? Granted there is lots of work still to do with.... Read more
From the Page to the Heart
Explore the contemplative life that has inspired Bruce’s writing
through meditation, pilgrimage, and the sacred landscape of Assisi.