<p>Eight hundred years ago, Albert of Jerusalem gave the hermit-penitents of Mount Carmel a way of life to follow. Since then, this rule has inspired and formed mystics and scholars, men and women, lay and ordained to seek the living God. In <em>The Carmelite Tradition</em> Steven Payne, OCD, brings together representative voices to demonstrate the richness and depth of Carmelite spirituality. As he writes, Carmelite spirituality seeks nothing more nor less than to &#39;stand before the face of the living God&#39; and prophesy with Elijah, to &#39;hear the word of God and keep it&#39; with Mary, to grow in friendship with God through unceasing prayer with Teresa, to &#39;become by participation what Christ is by nature&#39; as John of the Cross puts it, and thereby to be made, like Therese of Lisieux, into instruments of God&#39;s transforming merciful love in the church and society.'</p><p>The lives and writings in <em>The Carmelite Tradition</em> invite readers to stand with these holy men and women and seek God in the hermitage of the heart.</p><p><em>Steven Payne, OCD, of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, is a member of the Carmelite Friars&#39; formation team at the Monastery of St. John of the Cross near Nairobi, Kenya, and director of the Institute of Spirituality and Religious Formation (ISRF) at Tangaza College, a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi. He is the past editor of ICS Publications and of </em>Spiritual Life<em> magazine and the author of several works in philosophy of religion, theology, and Carmelite spirituality. He is a member of the Carmelite Forum and of the Carmelite Institute in Washington DC, of which he is a past president. </em></p>