Nancy J. Nordenson

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Selected Works

1. Books
Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul
With thinking as spiritual practice, mind meets soul and both are bound together.
2. Essays
Nothing Can Separate
Editor's Choice Creative Nonfiction in the premier issue of Relief journal
3. Medical Writing
Freelance Medical Writing Services
A decade of medical/health writing experience

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Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul

Endorsements for Just Think


"Nancy Nordenson joyfully invites us to dust off our mental cobwebs and open our minds and hearts to new possibilities for living and thinking. Nothing is mundane or ordinary. A used airline ticket stub, family photos, rocks and shells are among the familiar objects in a busy day that become taking off points for her thoughtful reflections on life's big questions. She gently nudges us into our own fresh world of mental and spiritual growth and guides us along the way to become wiser in leading lives of significance and service."
--Donna Erickson
Executive Producer and Host of PBS's Donna's Day and author of Fabulous Funstuff for Families


"This could become a little classic of practical spirituality... Long on wisdom, compassion, and insight, Just Think is a delight to read and ponder."
--Victoria Moran
Author of Creating a Charmed Life


"Well written and practical, Just Think is an invitation to think big. It's a compelling call to fully engage your mind in order to fully embrace life. A must read for everyone."
--Dr. Kevin Leman
Psychologist and author of The New Birth Order Book


"A page-turner is a book that holds the attention and motivates a reader to whip through page after page with bated breath. It's usually associated with 'fast' reading. Nordenson's book is in a rare class of 'slow' page-turners. So rich with quotations from many sources and her own finely crafted aphorisms and analogies, her pages make me want to 'just think' for awhile but yet hasten on to find the next treasures. Here is an excellent mind worth following as close as you can and sentences worth pondering as long as you can."
--Doug Newton
Senior Editor, Light and Life Magazine


Just Think is a lovely, lyrical book that calls us to 'think in order to live more abundantly.' Nancy Nordenson writes for all women of faith, including those with little formal education. Her book provides invaluable guidance on a host of topics: how to grow in wisdom, how to see and appreciate beauty, how to balance faith and reason, and how to become equipped for creativity. Her insights will help readers live life more richly and worship God more fully."
--Katherine Kersten
Columnist, Senior Fellow for the Center for the American Experiment


"Just Think is a book that offers up the wisdom of the ages along with Nancy Nordenson's encouraging spin on living life thoughtfully in the here and now. It's a book I recommend to anyone who believes life is not just for existing, but growing with the gifts we've been given!"
--Joan Steffend
Host of Home and Garden TV's Decorating Cents

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Table of Contents


Introduction

1. A Mind for Life

A Mind in Love With God
A Matter of Integrity
Thought in the Realm of Abundance
The Principle of Return
Courting a Powerful Thought


2. The Needed Balance
Of Faith and Reason
Of Mind and Heart

3. Forward Movement
I Was Younger Yesterday
Moving to What’s Next
Evidence of the Journey
Prepared Paths
Leaving Ignorance Behind

4. Breadth of Life; Fullness of Thought
The Well-Stocked Mind
Consider All This
A World Too Small
In the Game
As Iron Sharpens Iron
Eyes Wide Open
The Books by Your Bed

5. Accommodations for Thought
Of Kitchen Sinks and Fire Escapes
Solitude
Cerebral Privacy
Props for Thought
Environmental Affairs
What Is It Worth?
To Everything a Season

6. Mental Readiness
Steel Before Paint
Ingredients in Advance
Great Expectations
Captured on Paper
Into Words
A Daily Prism
A Preference for Knowledge

7. Befogged
Clarity
Melancholy
Boredom
Emotion
Barreness

8. Self-Knowledge
I Am
A Student of One’s Life
A Penny for My Thoughts

9. Truth
A Sometimes Skeptic?Part 1
A Sometimes Skeptic?Part 2
The Challenge
Facts Transformed

10. Questions and Answers
Prelude to Answers
The Blue Book Exam
Getting to the Answer
Primed With Knowledge
Unexpected Discovery
Brooding
Finding

11. Stretch and Strain
A Willingness To Be Perplexed
The Simple, the Complex
To See the Whole

12. Lifelong Learning
A Right to Learn
Pursuing Self-Education
Our Absent Teachers
Gathered Together
The Round Table of Counsel

13. Rhythm: Work and Rest
Sustained and Productive
Swimming Under Water
Saving the Best Strength
Beachcombing
Rejuvenation

14. Action
Knowledge Lived
To Choose the Way
Contributions of Excellence
A Link in the Chain

15. The Conclusion of the Matter
The Pursuit of Wisdom
Reunion
Thinking With Your Face Toward the Light


© 2003. All rights reserved. Nancy J. Nordenson.



Partial Bibliography


Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Mature Mind by H. A. Overstreet
The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan
Dorothy L. Sayers. A Careless Rage for Life by David Coomes
Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke by Elizabeth Alden Green
A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly
Mariette In Ecstasy by Ron Hansen
The Mystery of the 99 Steps by Carolyn Keene
A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Mind on Fire by Blaise Pascal
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Christy by Catherine Marshall
Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams
“O” Is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton
The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion
The Skull beneath the Skin by P. D. James
An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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