Good Words

In Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gives a fresh reading of the lives of the desert fathers and mothers, Christian contemplatives who lived in fourth-century Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. Their lives, of course, carried the fundamental challenges of our own—how to live in community? How to seek God? This wise and gentle treasure includes an appendix of sayings. New Seeds Books.

Prayer Is a Place: America’s Religious Landscape Observed, by Phyllis Tickle. America’s chronicler of religious publishing records not only observations of the industry’s changes over the last decade, but also parts of her own religious journey in her characteristically warm and clear voice. Doubleday.

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews. The teenage narrator of this novel, Nomi Nickel, is stuck in a small, conservative Mennonite town in Manitoba as her family slowly disintegrates. Nomi’s wry and raw observations pull one in and don’t let go, as she tries to make sense of love and abandonment, sin and hypocrisy, and beautiful lies that sometimes save us. Counterpoint.

The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea, by David Dark. With a palpable love for God and country—but only in that order—this analysis of our peculiar, polarized times sorts through the tangle of sacred and profane in American culture (including politics, film, music, literature, and media) with both affection and searing insight. Westminster John Knox Press.

Vietnam vet Robert Lupton came back from that war a changed man. He left his business career and dedicated his life to serving America’s urban dispossessed. Lupton wrote Renewing the City with the book of Nehemiah in one hand and 40 years’ experience as an inner-city activist in the other. A must-read for anyone who “seeks the peace of the city” in which they find themselves. InterVarsity Press.

For a case study on how religious institutions undergo radical change, read The Way We Were, Sister Joan Chittister’s personal, historical, and sociological analysis of how Catholic religious life changed after Vatican II and what all religious institutions need to know about leadership for the future. Orbis.

War and Faith in Sudan, by Gabriel Meyer with photographer James Nicholls. Don’t worry if you don’t know that the Nuba Mountains are in Northern Sudan or if you aren’t current on Khartoum’s oil politics. Read this book. Celebrate Christmas Eve Mass under the stars with the Nuba Catholic community. Meet the lay evangelists from the Apostles of Jesus congregation. Meyer’s writing is crisply journalistic and shot through with poetry. Nicholls’ photos are akin to religious icons. And don’t miss Anne Lamott’s foreword. Eerdmans.

Resin, by Geri Doran. Doran’s poetry maps the fragility of the human connection and the irreducible fact of grief. From the communal ruptures of Chechnya and Rwanda to the personal dislocations that attend loss, Resin weighs frailty against responsibility, damage against the desires of the heart, and the particulars of place against the mysteries of the Spirit. Louisiana State University Press.

In Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, pastor and professor Eugene Peterson—author of the popular bible translation The Message—anchors our free-floating spirituality with scripture and theological discussion. Spiritual theology, Peterson says, is the attention “we give to living what we know and what we believe about God.” In other words, it’s about God, not us. Eerdmans.

Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, musings on spirituality and the paradox of faith, appealed to a wide swath of Gen Xers, as did his Searching for God Knows What. Fans who want in on the beginning of Miller’s journey should pick up Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road, the searching tale of his road trip from Texas to Oregon with his buddy Paul. Nelson Books.

Former Sojourners associate editor Joyce Hollyday’s On the Heels of Freedom tells the fascinating story of missionaries who risked their lives to establish schools and churches among former slaves throughout the South. The book’s subtitle says it all: The American Missionary Association’s Bold Campaign to Educate Minds, Open Hearts, and Heal the Soul of a Divided Nation. Crossroad.