Full Circle

An Outside-the-Box Memoir of Personal Spiritual Transformation

Juan-Lorenzo Hinojosa is today a well-respected Catholic lay leader in the United States, but as a young man he was morally lost until he had a personal mystical experience of God. In fact, Hinojosa still uses the term “Holy Mystery” to reference, in one term, the limits of human concepts, our own reverence, and the real-ness of the holy. At its core, this is a story about vocation, what Frederick Buechner aptly described as “the place where one’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.” Hinojosa’s family and work life did not come to fruition without struggle, wrong turns, and false starts. This is the story of how he learned to discern the call to his true mission in life. He says, “We can experience our call in the form of intuition, synchronicity, circumstances, and felt knowledge. These often are connected to and shaped by our individual religious/spiritual traditions. If we are responsive to the guidance we receive and engage the actual realities of our lives in our response, we will fulfill the potential of our lives.”

This book is co-written with Hinojosa’s adult daughter Raven, who provides the biographical vignettes she has heard from her father over the years to help him tell his story. Father and daughter share a deep appreciation for the spiritual dimension of reality. The structure of the book is somewhat unusual. It has first-person expositions and essays written by Juan-Lorenzo and third-person biographical vignettes about his life recounted here by Raven — the two complementing each other to tell the story of Juan-Lorenzo’s “quest for transformation.”

About the authors

Juan-Lorenzo Hinojosa, a first-generation immigrant from Bolivia, has dedicated his life to service through the worlds of business, education, and ministry. With a Ph.D. in theology focused on Christian spirituality, he has taught at the Oblate School of Theology, St. Edward’s University, the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and Notre Dame University. His entrepreneurial gift has expressed itself in the founding of his own business, a number of ministry training centers and programs, and an international not-for-profit mission organization. Juan-Lorenzo is married, has five children and nine grandchildren, and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Raven Hinojosa is a healer and a writer with a B.A. in Religious Studies from Tulane University who for a time was an aerialist. She has published numerous articles on Neo-Pagan spiritual practice, metaphysics, and divination. She is co-founder of the wellness company Body Beauty Mojo. This is her first book.