Raw faith: Nurturing the Believer in All of Us

Spiritual Life, Winter 2000 by Jordan, Reg

Raw Faith: Nurturing the Believe in All of Us. By John Kirvan. Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2000. Pp. 192. Paper. $ 12.95.

In Raw Faith, a companion volume to his God Hunger, John Kirvan explores a centuries old spiritual tradition-it is called apophatic-that is centered in the pursuit of an unknown and unknowable god. It stretches from the world of Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, through the Cloud of Unknowing in the fourteenth, to Simone Weil and Henri Nouwen in the twentieth. Kirvan's is a highly personal journey that he and the reader take in the "good company" of the great "apophatic" mystics-Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. In fifty theme-centered meditations and prayers, readers are given an opportunity to understand better and more deeply their own journey by reflecting on the faith experiences and insights of those why have traveled this way before.