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 RECLAIMING THE BODY IN CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY, edited by
Thomas Ryan. Paulist Press. 179 pp.
$16.95.
Reviewed by RACHELLE LINNER, a librarian
and writer who lives in Boston.
THE EDITOR of this volume, Father
Thomas Ryan, is a practitioner and
teacher of the Prayer of Heart and Body.
He poses a direct, blunt question to
readers: “We have a body. Will we give
it its due place in our spiritual lives?”
This book, and in particular his two
fine essays (“Toward a Positive Spirituality
of the Body” and “The Body Language
of Faith”), offers a solid
foundation for anyone interested in
practicing a holistic spirituality.
A relatively short book, Reclaiming
the Body can seem, at first,
to attempt too much in too
few pages, ranging from the
experience of the feminine
in yoga to the integration of
personal spiritual discipline
with social justice to the
need to “include and celebrate”
all of creation in our
spirituality so as to reverse
“our present estrangement
from the earth.”
Though its themes and
five authors (men and
women, lay and ordained, Protestant
and Catholic) are diverse, it becomes
apparent that the book is really about
one subject, the Incarnation. Its wide-ranging,
thoughtful essays explore the
implications of this central, distinctive
theological statement. “God’s earthy,
fleshly embodiment,” Jim Dickerson
argues, “radically challenges the
Church’s destructive practice of compartmentalizing
and separating the
spiritual life from the physical life.”
Dickerson’s essay, “The Political and
Social Dimensions of Embodied Christian
Contemplative Prayer,” is prophetically
critical of “mainstream, institutionalized
Christianity [that] is currently
living in and through an age of
accommodation and complicity with
the culture and government...and the
spirituality it promotes and practices is
a reflection of this compromised state
of affairs.”
Dickerson offers this critique from 31
years of involvement with Washington,
D.C.’s ecumenical Church of the
Saviour and Manna, Inc., a nonprofit
committed to affordable housing and
community development, which he
describes as an “imperfect attempt” to
understand and imitate “the politics
of Jesus’ spirituality.”
There is a spirit of prayerful receptivity
in Reclaiming the Body that
encourages readers to reflect on their
own experiences of body and spirituality.
Casey Rock, a certified
yoga teacher with a
master of divinity degree,
models this in her essay “Voices From the Mat,” a
reflection of how yoga “fosters
tranquility, cultivates
forgiveness, and promotes
the feminine.” Writing
about a conference on yoga
and Christianity, she notes
that men have a “propensity...
for making a formula
out of their experience,”
whereas women “learn and share from
each person’s story.”
It is appropriate, therefore, that the
book’s tone is set, early on, by a story
Father Ryan tells about a family he met
while lecturing in Nova Scotia. The
husband had retired early because of
a cardiac condition; the wife had multiple
sclerosis. They lived with their
son and, temporarily, her unmarried
brother, a carpenter who was recovering
from a fractured leg. “As I sat and
talked with them, what came out was
that they were all experiencing renewal
in their relationships with one another...
occasioned by what each one
was living in their bodies.”
Now that he was home, the husband
was able to help his wife. The woman
and her brother had had limited contact
for some years, and she was delighted
to be with him and have her
son get to know his uncle. “Others
might look at their situation from outside...
and say, ‘How sad!’ But they
looked at it from inside of it and said,
‘How wonderful!’”
Just so, this book invites the reader
to enter bodily experience—their own
physical bodies, the body that is the
Church and the body that is the
earth—and to praise the “master craftsman”
who “could make such a marvel
as the human body.”
You can order RECLAIMING THE BODY IN CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY from St.
Francis Bookshop.
REMAINING CATHOLIC: Six Good
Reasons for Staying in an Imperfect
Church, by the Rev. Martin Pable,
O.F.M.Cap. ACTA Publications. 128
pp. $9.95.
Reviewed by the REV. LAWRENCE M.
VENTLINE, D.Min., a priest of the Archdiocese
of Detroit. A licensed psychotherapist
and longtime religion writer for The
Detroit News, he is founding director of
Care of the Soul (www.careofthesoul.org).
“IMPERFECT PEOPLE, imperfect
Church” could sum up Martin Pable’s
book that lists six reasons for remaining
Catholic. With a preface, six chapters
and a conclusion, the author, a
Capuchin priest and retreat director at
St. Anthony’s Retreat Center in Marathon,
Wisconsin, presents readers with
reasons to remain Catholic or consider
returning to the Church.
Listed are the benefits: finding happiness
and union with God in partnership
with others rather than in
isolation (community); connecting to
the original community of Jesus (tradition
and history); encountering Christ in the world through the seven
sacraments (sacraments); assurance that
the Church has a solid tradition of
teaching and developing doctrine
down through the ages (Scripture); collaboration
of leaders and the faithful in
building and bonding a community
with a mission worthy of living out
(stewardship and mission); and reconciling
voices among people who are
imperfect members comprising the
Church (saints and sinners).
From the Church’s own history and
the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
Pable pulls points that buttress his six
reasons for remaining Catholic. These
are coupled with his own personal stories,
along with tales of converts from
other denominations, including Protestant
pastors and teachers like former
Presbyterian seminary teacher Scott
Hahn (Rome Sweet Home, Ignatius,
1993) and Jeff Cavins (My Life on the
Rock: A Rebel Returns to His Faith (Ascension
Press, 2000, revised 2002). The
conversion of Alex Jones and his
African-American Pentecostal parishioners
is also told to demonstrate the
long history of Catholicism’s roots.
The Catholic Church has encountered
severe scrutiny from the media
this past decade, and some Catholics
have left the Church and others are
thinking about leaving. Like the good
pastor he is, Pable asks Catholics to
consider again before departing this imperfect
Church and to remember this: “The Church is made up of human,
sinful persons: therefore, it is always
in need of purification, renewal and
even reform. Until the end of time, the
Church will never be fully what Christ
intended it to be. It will always be a ‘pilgrim
Church,’ traveling along on the
road to holiness but often veering off
course and then returning to the road.”
While giving good reasons for remaining
Catholic, the author provides
a primer on Catholicism as he traces
the Church’s history, outlines each of
the sacraments and reminds readers of
a Church that is human and sinful.
Pable concludes with a quotation
from Sahara Desert contemplative
Carlo Carretto, a critic of the Church’s
complacency and clericalism, who still
maintained his love and loyalty toward
the Church: “I shall never leave this
Church, founded on so frail a rock;
because I would be founding another
on an even frailer rock: myself.”
Although I started the book unsure
if there were convincing reasons why
Catholics should remain in the Church,
in the end Pable sold me on his six
reasons.
You can order REMAINING CATHOLIC: Six Good Reasons for Staying in an Imperfect Church from St.
Francis Bookshop.
PADRE: The Spiritual Journey of Father Virgil Cordano, by Mario T.
García. Capra Press (155 Canon View
Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108,
phone 805-969-0203, www.capra
press.com). 233 pp. $17.95.
Reviewed by PAT McCLOSKEY, O.F.M.,
editor of this publication.
THIS ENGAGING and well-written biography
of an 87-year-old Friar Minor
in California touches on most of
the key issues affecting the Catholic
Church and American society today.
Mario García, professor of history
and Chicano studies at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, has known
Father Virgil for many years and eventually
coaxed him into 40 hours of
audiotaped interviews, the basis for
this biography.
In the Acknowledgments section,
Father Virgil writes, “I pray that you,
the reader, as you read my story may
also reflect upon the meaning of your
own journey and discover, as I have,
why we should be grateful for our past,
how to be aware of the meaning of the
present, and reasons to be hopeful for
the future.”
García describes Cordano as “a shining
example of everything that is good
about the Catholic Church.”
Except for six and a half years (mostly
for graduate studies), Cordano has
lived since 1934 at Mission Santa Barbara
as a student, professor of Scripture,
head of its Mission Theological
Seminary, guardian of the friary, pastor
of the mission’s parish for 18 years and now head of its public relations
office.
A Father Virgil Cordano
Chair in Catholic Studies
was recently established at
UC Santa Barbara, where he
has taught courses over the
years. In recent years he has
been very active in adult
education classes, plus many
civic, ecumenical and interfaith
initiatives.
“If I could go back and
re-do my novitiate,” says
Cordano, “and for that
matter my entire seminary
training, especially in light
of the changes of Vatican
II, I would stress a better
comprehension of the God
who loves us.”
Many will resonate with
his later observations: “I
grew spiritually thanks to
some very painful changes”
and “Nothing is more
important than spiritual growth. That’s
the whole purpose of life.”
The book concludes with 19 pages of
selected writings—reflections and
prayers for various occasions within
Father Virgil’s very rich and fruitful
life.
You can order PADRE: The Spiritual Journey of Father Virgil Cordano from St. Francis Bookshop.
MAY CROWNING, MASS, AND MERTON: And Other Reasons I Love Being Catholic, by Liz Kelly. Loyola
Press. 192 pp. $13.95.
Reviewed by STEVEN R. McEVOY, a part-time
student in religious studies and theology
at St. Jerome’s University at the
University of Waterloo in Ontario. A
Catholic, Steven used to be on the staff of
The Navigators of Canada, a nondenominational
campus ministry, and was responsible
for student and staff development.
THIS IS A fascinating little volume, part
meditation, part biography and part
theology. Liz Kelly opens up to us her
life and her faith, which can help us
understand our own faith and tradition
better. She examines the
things, traditions, places and
people that are a source of
encouragement, challenge
and trial to her faith, and
allows us to see Catholicism
in a new light.
As she states in her prologue: “One: It’s hard. Being
Catholic has taught me
about balance and prudence
and the deep joys of daily
discipline and commitment....Two: It’s hard. Sometimes
it is painful to be Catholic, not
because rules and regulations so often
associated with being Catholic are so
restrictive, but because the love of
heaven leads us to fearless expansiveness....”
Yes, being Catholic can be hard but,
as Kelly shows us, it has much in the
way of consolation and rewards to
make the hardships worth the effort.
Kelly has separated her book into
five roughly equal parts that examine
different aspects of the Catholic tradition:
Objects With Meaning, Those
Who Journey With Us, Devotion in
Practice, Truths That Bring Grace and
Rhythms of the Faith.
In each of these areas she examines
different elements and examples of
people, places, things, beliefs and practices
that are means of grace in our
lives.
In the first section, as she examines
such elements as the crucifix, holy
water, incense, the rosary and kneelers,
she helps us to focus our faith on what
matters most. She states: “I don’t think
heaven needs my burning candle any
more than it needs holy water or incense.
Sacramentals are for us, because
we are sensory beings, and symbolism
and sacramentals help infuse the spiritual
into other planes of our experience—physical, emotional, mental.”
In exploring these items she points
to the grace inherent in each to draw us
closer to God. They are not as ends in
themselves, but means to an end.
Looking at the lives of some of those
who journey with us in this quest for
faith and a life in God, Kelly shares
examples of saints and people of faith
whose stories can be a source of challenge,
inspiration and encouragement
in our own
journey with God. In writing
about Pope John Paul
II, Kelly says: “This picture is
famous now, Pope John
Paul II and his would-be
assassin, sitting together in
intimate conversation two
years after the incident. The
Holy Father leaning toward
the man with gentle attention....
He was unafraid of
the vulnerability created by
living in forgiveness, of sitting in total
love with the enemy.”
Later, while reflecting on the communion
of saints, Kelly reminds us of
our own call to be saints: “Most saints
did not have easy lives. Many were persecuted
and martyred. They were an
odd lot, many of them outcasts who
experienced every kind of human suffering
and weakness. And many of
them began as ordinary folks like you
and me.”
She also reminds us that our service
is to be done for God: “Like many of
the saints of the church, [Blessed] Pier
Giorgio [Frassati] seemed to lead two
lives, not contradictory lives, but one
that people observed and one that was
hidden.” So too our lives should bear
silent witness to the work of God in
and through us.
Through these examples and many
more that Kelly presents, she shows a
faith that is rich, vibrant and challenging.
This book’s greatest strength is
the devotion in which it was written
and its aim of finding peace in the journey
of life. Peace ultimately can come
only from God, but we have a gracious
God who has given us many tools to
help us along our path. This book is
one such tool, for it reveals to us many
other tools that God has provided.
You can order MAY CROWNING, MASS, AND MERTON: And Other Reasons I Love Being Catholic from St. Francis Bookshop.
SUSTAINING HEART IN THE HEARTLAND: Exploring Rural Spirituality, edited by Miriam Brown, O.P. Paulist
Press. 183 pp. $18.95.
Reviewed by MARION AMBERG, a freelance
writer for this publication and many
others.
WHEN I FINISHED reading this book,
I was ready to move back to the farm—not because I longed to pick rock or
walk the bean fields of my youth, but
because of the ingenuity and fortitude
of the farmers and rural ministers profiled.
The Spirit is blowing—both on
the land and in people’s hearts.
Edited by Sister Miriam Brown, O.P.,
this book was written by an ecumenical
team of six—a Catholic sister, two
Presbyterian ministers, one United
Methodist minister, a farmer who is a
Catholic lay minister and a rural Extension
agent. It is the culmination of
many years of dialogue on rural spirituality.
The project was initiated by the
Churches’ Center for Land and People
in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin.
The book, which is divided into
three parts, examines the soul of rural
spirituality, explores the intricate network
of rural and small-town relationships,
and prods rural churches to “fight the good fight” for family farms.
Written for people involved in rural
ministry (a must-read for any city-slicker
pastor who gets assigned to a
rural parish), the book’s most informative
and inspiring chapters are on
alternative farm movements and grassroots
organizations, such as CSAs
(Community Supported Agriculture)
and Beginning Farmers programs.
Biblical stewardship of the land
(dominion, not domination) is a recurring
theme. More and more farmers
are choosing life—not only for the land
but also for us—and are producing food
that is chemical-free. Deciding to respect
the earth as “holy ground” isn’t
always easy. One farmer, afraid of what
neighbors might say if he went organic,
pulled his empty herbicide and pesticide
tanks behind the tractor for several
years. He eventually came clean when
he saw that nature’s way really worked!
Said a farmer’s wife about their stewardship
conversion: “It’s become common
to say ‘farming is a business,’
but...we look at things spiritually. We
need to take care of what we have for
future generations.”
Rural ministry isn’t just urban ministry
with cows and crops added. Conflict
often arises among people who
know each other personally, and it
takes guts to take a stand. When one
Nebraska pastor learned that “big pork”
(mega-hog facilities) was coming to his
area, he took to the pulpit, boldly declaring
morality and solidarity. He lost
both parishioners and financial support.
But farmers organized and learned
that corporate farming doesn’t own
the power. Then they began speaking to
other communities faced with a similar
threat.
While I found some of the suggestions
for rural pastors and lay clergy a
bit fluffy and elementary (but then I’m
farm-raised and often travel to rural
areas on magazine assignments), the
book is loaded with resources and
Web sites. For example, the Rev. Karl
Goodfellow, a United Methodist minister,
founded Safety Net Prayer Ministry,
an organization that recruits
people to pray for individual farmers
during the hazardous harvest season. A
“Lectionary of the Seasons” and
“Prayers and Rituals for Sustaining
Heart” round out the book.
Sustaining Heart in the Heartland does
just that. Rural clergy of all faiths, people
new to rural or small-town life and
even former farm kids will find this
book good food for thought.
You can order SUSTAINING HEART IN THE HEARTLAND: Exploring Rural Spirituality from St. Francis Bookshop.
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