Gifts for the spiritual seekers in your life

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 19, 2003 by Peter Feuerherd

Christmas came early for me when, right after Thanksgiving, the good people at NCR sent me a box full of books on spirituality, a cornucopia for the soul.

We live in what might be a golden age for spirituality writing. All you need do to see this is to take a trip to your local chain bookstore, where spirituality books--having pretty much taken over the "religion" slot, now out of favor--compete on relatively equal terms with books on other obsessions such as sex, finances and "American Idol."

This assignment couldn't have come at a better time. Perhaps spirituality books provide a respite particularly during times of transition, a sense that I feel strongly this Christmas, living in a country that seems tired of a future seemingly filled with the prospect of permanent war.

Personally, I am living my own transitions. I have charted out a new career, largely due to circumstances, as a fulltime freelancer, an exciting venture yet one akin to walking a tightrope without a safety net provided by a regular paycheck from a steady employer. As I write this, my mother is dying, and I found myself frequently contemplating the contents of these books while sitting by her bedside. No other activity that I know of can focus your attention more on matters of the spirit. Dealing with the prospect of change and death means a greater effort to cling to the verities of the spiritual masters.

Of course, there are bad spirituality books out there, including bestsellers that conjure up scenarios of Christians being sent off airplanes and out of their cars to the premise of eternal Rapture. But I will deal here only with the good Christian stuff, targeted, ff you will, to the gift-buying needs of the literate and spiritual NCR-reading audience this season.

Serious soul-searching

There is some serious spirituality coming out of the evangelical world, which includes more than loony television preachers asking the Lord's help in sending certain Supreme Court justices to their eternal rewards.

One source for that evangelical spirituality is Philip Yancey, author of Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church (Doubleday, $12.95). Yancey is a regular columnist for Christianity Today and has earned acclaim in the evangelical world for his spiritual writing, but is little known in the Catholic realm. That's too bad, for Catholics--especially in this season of ecclesial discontent--have much to learn from Yancey.

It's good to be reminded that Catholics don't have a monopoly on being disillusioned with a church.

Yancey describes growing up in Georgia where he learned at his evangelical church the wonders of the Bible, inspired preaching and hymns that brought him closer to the Almighty every Sunday. Yet it also, in those turbulent days of the '60s, spread the message that blacks were not welcome and that God had a special place in his heart for racial supremacy,

"I came to realize that the church had mixed in lies with truth," Yancey notes early in his book.

Soul Survivor tells the stories of 13 luminaries who brought Yancey out of this parochial vision of Christianity. They include people Yancey has interviewed, including the Catholic psychiatrist and social activist Dr. Robert Coles and Fr. Henry Nouwen, the late spiritual writer, as well as those he has met only through literature or newsreels, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Russian authors Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

These are fascinating profiles--Nouwen's struggle with his homosexually and needy personality is particularly intriguing--yet Yancey's writing comes most alive in talking about his own spiritual journey navigating between the rigidity in which he was raised and the loosey-goosey approach to doctrine and morality promulgated by some Christians of a more progressive bent.

"Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals. How can I flit together my religious past with my spiritual present?" Yancey asks, and this book provides a gateway to an answer. It would be a great present for a seeking young adult in your life.

Another book from the evangelical world is Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings (Orbis, $15). I didn't know much about Jordan before reading this collection, but I came away with the sense that here was one true saint of the American South.

Jordan, who died in 1969 at the age of 57, is perhaps best known for being a founder of the Habitat for Humanity movement. But that would be to soft-pedal his legacy.

His founding of a utopian Christian interracial community in Americus, Ga., was a courageous example of simple Christianity in a world frequently wracked by Klan violence. These writings provide an example of how evangelical preachers such as Jordan take the scriptures seriously, He rewrote the scriptures in a way that spoke to people of his times and still does today

For example, in Jordan's "Cotton Patch" version of the New Testament, he provides a particularly American view of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, substituting the noose for the traditional Christian cross. A gift of Jordan's writings would be a subtle hint for a preacher who needs a little more zip in his scriptural interpretations.