Journeys of Breath Books in Order

The Journeys of Breath books are practical companions for readers who want to make more room for prayer, attention, and renewal in ordinary life. Rather than telling one continuing story, each book takes up a spiritual practice or season and gives it a shape readers can live with day by day.

The series begins with Breath Prayer, which turns to the simple rhythm of breathing. Paintner introduces short prayers meant for moments such as walking, working, cleaning, resting, and sitting in silence. The idea is not to master a complicated technique. It is to let a few words, joined to the breath, create a pause in the middle of a busy day.

Small practices are the point.

A Different Kind of Fast shifts the focus to Lent and the deeper hungers that can hide beneath distraction, overwork, control, and the need for certainty. Paintner draws on desert wisdom while offering practices such as lectio divina, contemplative walking, meditation, and creative ritual. It is a book for readers who want a reflective Lenten guide, but its questions about what truly nourishes us can travel beyond the season.

In Give Me a Word, the series returns to an old practice from the desert mothers and fathers. A reader listens for a word or short phrase that can offer companionship for a year. Paintner treats that word not as a productivity goal or a resolution to conquer, but as something to receive, test, ponder, and slowly grow into. Creative exercises and contemplative prompts help the practice stay connected to daily experience.

The fourth book, Practicing Resurrection, centers on the fifty days of Easter. It invites readers to linger with resurrection stories rather than rushing past Easter Sunday, using embodied and creative practices to explore renewal, wounds, abundance, surprise, and hope. Like the earlier books, it makes space for both reflection and action.

Across the series, the setting is everyday life: a kitchen, a walk, a quiet room, a church season, or a moment when the usual pace no longer feels sustainable. Paintner writes from a Christian contemplative tradition, especially the wisdom of monastic communities, while keeping the exercises open and grounded. Readers can expect poems, prayers, sacred reading, imagination, movement, and invitations to notice the body and the natural world.

These are books to move through slowly. A reader may begin with Breath Prayer for a daily practice, choose A Different Kind of Fast during Lent, turn to Give Me a Word near the start of a new year, or use Practicing Resurrection throughout Easter. Together, they offer a gentle rhythm for returning to what is life-giving.