The Wisdom of Accepted Tenderness: Going Deeper into the Abba Experience

Jesus, writes Father Manning, is the way to the Father; and the most fundamental sign of our growth as Christians is awareness of God as our Father, our Abba, our “Dad,” as Father Manning styles Him and as He is made known to us through Jesus and the Gospels. Father Manning shows how the heart of God is best defined by compassion and tenderness and how these knit us together through the full healing of our pain into a mature Christian community. “To live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness,” he writes, “is to let go of cares and concerns, stop organizing means to ends, and just ‘be’ in each moment of awareness as an end in itself.”