Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, by Kathleen Norris
In this well-written, interesting volume, Kathleen Norris takes the timeless words of Christian vocabulary such as grace, perfection, belief, doubt, and Bible (just to name a few) and defines them in the light of her own experience and struggle to reconnect with her faith.
Drawing on her own spiritual journey back to Christianity as an adult, Norris explains how certain words erect barriers to faith, and how imaginative re-appropriation of these words can tear the barriers down.
Each essay is very short, which makes the book easy to read in short bursts. While I also read long stretches, it's the perfect book to put on one's nightstand and read a chapter or two each night.
While I found the "definitions" in her "lexicon" interesting, the most useful thing to me was her method --the way she allowed herself the freedom to roam freely around a word, finding a way to appropriate it creatively and intelligently into her spiritual vocabulary.
PUBLISHER: Riverhead Books; ISBN: 1573227218; (February 12, 1999)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
