Spiritual Living

By Graham Christian -- Library Journal, 1/15/2007

Faith Expanded

This issue of LJ marks the second appearance of the expanded "Spiritual Living" column, which we launched last spring as a one-time supplement to the May 1 issue in the awareness that the field of religious/spiritual publishing, as well as the phenomenon of religious/spiritual readership, is a lively and growing part of contemporary American life. We hope that our broadened scope of subject and selection for this new column will both reflect that impressive growth and serve the collection development needs of librarians across LJ's readership. The new column will include special features—interviews, in-depth treatments, question-and-answer sessions—that we hope will offer you substantial added value.

Many different trends are evident in today's religious publishing biz. For years, the religious tome most likely to cross our desks was the faintly spiritualized memoir—the author's life or, more likely, the author's hapless friends' lives, as a series of object lessons. While this species has not disappeared altogether, we see other outlooks rise in frequency and importance. Perspectives once viewed as denomination-specific or even outré have entered the mainstream, as neo-pagan and non-Christian writers (e.g., Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama) have become more and more popular.

Meanwhile, traditional Christians have made their presence know, reshaping U.S. society and fueling a burgeoning market in books written from a strict biblical perspective. Often, these books address life's everyday issues—e.g., child rearing, money management, and relationships—helping to expand the definition of spirituality. With Christian Bookseller Association authors like Joel Osteen crossing over to mainstream publishers and religious imprints popping up everywhere, we can see just how much religious/spiritual publishing now encompasses.

One thing publishers, writers, and readers alike are still attempting to come to terms with is the long heritage of 9/11: after an initial burst of books explaining Islamic perspectives, what next? Perhaps not just more books explaining Islam but more books addressing followers of Islam, who are starting to speak out about what it means to be both Muslim and American. Muslim Americans exploring their roots will certainly want to revisit Rumi, the foundational mystic of Sufism and a perennial favorite among non-Muslims, offering a view of Islam not freighted with current tensions. Also interesting is the newly urgent search for roots among Jews and especially among Christians.

The last several years have seen, in this column, many refreshed interpretations of home rituals, ancient prayers, litanies, breviaries, calendars, and saints' lives—a sure sign of curiosity mingled with anxiety. This season, we've seen several titles with surprising implications: An evangelical rehabilitating the Virgin Mary? A Presbyterian "flirting with monasticism"? Many of today's religious writers are willing to navigate waters once considered hostile as they redefine their own practices and traditions—just as others are choosing to confirm those traditions and bring them to bear on every aspect of life. This is perhaps the phenomenon to watch in the coming years—pastors, rabbis, and seekers leaving their zones of comfort to explore rich, new territories.

Barks, himself a poet, is one of the great contemporary popularizers of the 13th-century Sufi mystic poet Rumi, now certainly jockeying with Rilke for top position as the people's poet. Rumi's verse speaks ecstatically of the love of God; he eludes easy categorization, which is doubtless why he appeals to so many both in the Islamic world and in the West. These translations are not new but are newly disposed to fit a calendar year, and the intensity and strange majesty of Rumi is not thereby diminished.

This latest from Collins is a counterpart to his Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas and Turn Your Radio On. Touching on history with a light hand, Collins briefly explores Easter eggs, the Easter bunny, dressing up for Easter, and, most especially, the stories behind hymns and gospel songs associated with the holiday, treating the likes of Fanny Crosby and Frances Ridley Havergal with respect and candor. His selections run up almost to the present day with "Ten Thousand Angels Cried," which was recorded by LeAnn Rimes. Collins's books are clearly—and effectively—aimed at the gift-book market and are suitable for most collections.

Das, a Western-born Buddhist, longtime student and teacher of Eastern religions, and lama in the Tibetan Buddhist order and the founder of Dzogchen Foundation in Massachusetts and California, hopes to persuade all of us that we can both locate and ultimately become bodhisattvas in this life. The ten "practices" along the way include generosity, ethics, patience, and the like, and this book is a full-length effort to show us how these practices are to be accomplished, as much for the sake of the world, which needs the "active compassion" of bodhisattvas, as for ourselves. Das writes with fluency and charm, and this book should be of strong interest to practicing Buddhists. Recommended for most collections.

Huber has been a Zen teacher for many years, but this does not feel at all like a Zen book. Huber's works—generally self-published—have always featured simple, doodle-like illustrations and a "handwritten" look, like a glimpse into a private journal—recalling the cards of Ashleigh Brilliant or a noodle-shop menu from the 1970s. This volume focuses on self-development—breaking bad habits and forming good ones—and the warmth of Huber's style and advice reinforce her message that self-acceptance, rather than self-punishment, is more likely to result in the changes we seek. For most collections.

Executive editor for Bibles at Oxford University Press, Kraus here does for the eager and innocent church group or individual reader precisely what every seminarian and reference librarian hopes never to do again, that is, address the question "Which Bible should I read?" Kraus's answer is rightly multifaceted, offering a quick and accessible overview of the 25 translations most used now. Kraus intelligently addresses questions of level of discourse, as well as the vexed question of inclusive language. He compares differing translations of selected passages, commenting on the differences with ideal clarity. By the way, his answer, like any librarian's, is in effect, "It depends…." Highly recommended.

Piercy, perhaps best known for her poetry collection The Moon Is Always Female, as well as her strongly feminist novels, here gives her attention to the festival of Passover. Her charming book mixes reminiscence, recipes, prayers, and advice so as to offer a guide to all Jews, frum (devout) or not, an opportunity to experience the Passover seder. At the seder, she says, we express our "desire for connection: to what is eternal or to our history or to our people or to those, animal or vegetable, with whom we share this earth." For most collections.

The publication of a book like this may signify the triumph of angel spirituality or perhaps the beginning of the end—although some may insist that the end came with Angel Dogs. This book is lavishly illustrated and as methodical in its treatment of angels as the subtitle promises. Angels are brought into relation with colors, visions, healing, essential oils, astrology, and much more. Some readers will find Raven's syncretistic joining of many traditions suspect and her confident assertions about what angels do for us all hard to believe, but many others will find comfort and strength in this little book. Buy where interest in angel spirituality is strong.

This beautiful book comprises two parts. The first is a collection of illuminated versions of 22 traditional Hebrew letters, accompanied by the artist's own reflections on the spiritual meanings of the letter, grounded in the context of Psalm 145 ("Praise the Lord, O my soul…"). The second part is the artist's Magen Davids series, a group of paintings inspired by sacred words or symbols. More than mere illumination, something more like mandalas or meditative instruments, these striking images should appeal to Jewish and non-Jewish readers and admirers of art alike. Highly recommended.

This book is a rather unusual venture for Continuum—it is nothing less than a simplified version of Schaberg's more scholarly and demanding Resurrection of Mary Magdalene. In response to the explosion of popular interest in the story of Mary of Magdala in the wake of Dan Brown's popular novel and the movie based on it, Continuum and Schaberg clearly decided that there was a market for a popular version of her book. Gone are most of the scholarly citations, but what remains is more than enough for many readers and reading groups to get a glimpse of what current biblical scholarship and feminist inquiry are really like. For most collections.

This acclaimed work, crucial to Buddhist history, was the work of the 16th-century Chinese monk So Sahn (Sosan Taesa), both a spiritual leader and an effective warrior and general. Never before translated into English, this version comes to us through a Korean intermediary published in the mid-20th century. It is a collection of sayings and precepts, many of them with commentary: "To empty your mind, simply reflect deeply right into it." Given the West's abiding fascination with Zen, this new translation should awaken substantial interest. For most collections.

This little book is in fact the third redaction of the Swedenborg Foundation's new translation of 18th-century scientist and mystic Swedenborg's beloved classic, Heaven and Hell, first published in Latin in the late 1750s and subsequently in most of the world's languages. Swedenborg's confident descriptions of the afterlife, based on his own visionary experiences, exerted an influence on thought in the West well out of proportion to the size of his following—both the James family and Jorge Luis Borges were ardent students of his work. Swedenborg's cosmology is entirely unlike that of any other Christian mystic, and this handy volume, based on a new translation, should provide an excellent introduction to this work of both spiritual and intellectual interest. Recommended.

Any occasion to renew one's acquaintance with St. Teresa of Avila (1515–82) is a cause for celebration: who could have imagined that a Doctor of the Church would have been such good company, in her remaining writings, to so many? Admired and studied by theologians, literary critics, feminists, and the devout, Teresa wrote this memoir at the direction of the Spanish Inquisition, and it mixes her account of her own life and career in the Church with advice on the spiritual life. Starr's translation is the first new translation into English for 40 years and the first by a woman, and its easy fluency captures Teresa's conversational enthusiasm most effectively. Highly recommended. [See Q&A p. 84.—Ed.]

Former editor of CCM magazine and the author of Christian Culture Survival Guide, Turner launches a new series with NavPress under its TH1NK imprint with these two charming titles aimed at teens and youth. There are not many writers, Christian or otherwise, who would dare to put the words Jesus and masturbation between two covers; fewer would admit to the deed, and perhaps only one would concede that the Scriptures are silent on the subject and that his young readers will have to come to their own conclusions. This is Turner's gift—to speak the almost unsayable thought on behalf of young Christians and find occasion for laughter and joy. Turner is much better news for the church—any church—than the Campus Crusade ever was. Highly recommended.