Beverly Peterson

Beverly Peterson has a passion for creating interactive opportunities for people to explore hearing God and experiencing His love more fully. It was out of her own personal relationship and experiences with God, that she wrote the curriculum for the “Heart of the Journey” class, which she and her husband taught for over ten years at their local church. The core message of this nine-week class focused on developing an intimate relationship with Jesus resulting in a heart and mind spiritually transformed into His image. Hundreds of participants successfully completed the class, many taking it more than once. They were encouraged to engage in spiritual practices that would allow them to make space to listen for God’s voice and draw closer to Him. The results of this class were so favorable, that the class content has now become a book by the same name. Beverly is a certificated spiritual director, offering spiritual direction for the past 18 years. For the past 25 years she has written, taught classes, and led retreats focusing on spiritual formation and the contemplative tradition. In an earlier career, Beverly taught students in grades Kindergarten through sixth grade for thirty-five years. She holds a lifetime teaching certificate and a master’s degree in Educational Administration. Part of Beverly’s training in spiritual formation included seven spiritual pilgrimages to locations where past significant, sacred events had occurred. Included in the pilgrimages were visits to a wide variety of cities throughout Italy and Spain. Additional pilgrimages took us to France, Switzerland, and the British Isles, including the Holy Isles of Iona and Lindisfarne, and finally two trips to Israel. While on pilgrimage, her desire was to meet God in iconic locations where the veil between and heaven and earth seemed so thin that one’s soul could almost touch heaven’s glory. Beverly and her husband live in San Diego, California, close enough to spend quality time with their adult married children and four delightfully energetic grandsons. When she is not writing, Beverly enjoys walking barefoot on the beach, spending time with family and friends, blowing bubbles and dandelions with her youngest grandsons, and slowly sipping a warm cappuccino, preferably in Italy.