Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

This is one of the most courageous books I have read ever. It confronts the failure of many Christian evangelicals and congregations to truly mature with joy. Scazzero blames the failure on our refusal to allow God to deal with our emotions, saying that spiritual maturity is impossible without emotional maturity. He details how our theology can negate the validity of our emotions and how that theology has allowed many of us to perpetuate the flawed emotional habits that we learned from our families of origin. Not only that, he makes an eloquent case for Christians to incorporate reflection and other spiritual disciplines we tend to associate with monasticism into our personal walk to allow space in our lives for true integrated emotionally healthy spirituality to emerge in each of us. He emphasizes that we are the objects of God's lavish love, indeed that we have been adopted into His family. Then he provides the counterpoint quoting Richard Rohr: "Life is hard. You are not that important. Your life is not about you. You are not in control. You are going to die." This book has teeth and Christians who want to grow should consider reading it.


Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality 2006

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Combine themes from Orwell's 1984 and Madeline L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time with the rules of FaceBook or some elaborate social video game world and you might find yourself in the contrived future of Fforde's book. There, a person's worth is determined by their ability to perceive colors. The world is enhanced for everyone by manipulating pigments to dye foods and flowers. The pigments are harvested from found metallic fragments left behind by a mysterious ancient civilization best described by Risk and Monopoly maps. This is a story for people who enjoy an extended metaphor or a complex logic puzzle. The most intriguing novelty from my point of view is the road made of organoplasma - a substance that grows and injests people and other items not made from bronze. Of course, there is the requisite love story, villains, and twists that predictably keep a reader engaged. A fun read.

Fforde, Jasper, Shades of Grey. 2009

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

A wise Hebrew king once decided to explore folly, madness, riches, and work in order to figure out the essence of wisdom, the best way to organize a mind, the most satisfying approach to life. His conclusion was to remember the Creator. Elizabeth Gilbert's quest was motivated by similar questions. It took her to Italy, India, and Indonesia and on the way she allowed herself to be confronted and to confront pain, anger, shame, and brokenness. In the end she is much healthier and happier and she has arrived at an approach to life that feels full. Her writing is courageous and intimately authentic - I resonate with many of the situations, emotional dilemmas, and, what's more,  I understand how to enter the spiritual world and linger there. However, I have quite different spiritual boundaries and, remembering my Creator, I prefer not to empty my mind through meditation but rather to allow Him to transform it. Another author, George Otis, Jr., explored the similarities of spiritual experiences between the various religious traditions. He is a theologian and his book, apologetic -in the formal theological sense of the word. I lean towards Otis' bias, rejecting the notion that every tradition contributes desirable, positive spiritual value and careful not to issue spiritual invitations to serpents or other familiars no matter how they purport to transport one to another place or state. There is a spiritual hiding place that, while not at all "safe" to first access is filled with peace and there, in Him, I hide in plain sight. I would love to go to lunch with Elizabeth Gilbert. An honest person, a New Yorker, an authentic seeker after truth, she and I would have an interesting respectful conversation. 

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love. 2006. Penguin Books.