New books tell the stories of Popes Benedict, Francis
It's unprecedented in publishing history for two books tracing the spiritual roots and biographies of two living popes to be published within the same month, let alone within the same...
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Brian D. McLaren, Mary Oliver and W.S. Merwin address the world of the spiritual
"The Great Spiritual Migration" by Brian D. McLaren, Convergent, 288 pages, $21 That Brian McLaren's roots in conservative Christianity once ran deep, makes his a powerful voice calling for a...
Religion and politics, saints and more
"Getting Religion" by Kenneth L. Woodward, Convergent, 464 pages, $30 It's become clear, after digesting dozens of titles from the "spiritual" bookshelf, that the shortest route to stirring the soul...
Spiritual book roundup: ‘Buechner 101’ and more
Buechner 101 by Carl Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Center, 170 pages, $15.99 Maybe once a generation, or once every few generations, someone is born with gifts literary and sacred in...
Spiritual books: ‘Circle of Grace’ by Jan Richardson, more
Circle of Grace by Jan Richardson, Wanton Gospeller Press, 182 pages, $16 Blessings, an ancient literary form, "illuminate the link between the sacred and the ordinary," Jan Richardson writes in...
Spiritual book roundup: ‘Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,’ more
Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Schocken, 320 pages, $28.95 "When religion turns men into murderers, God weeps." So begins this urgent and authoritative exploration...
Mary Ellen Sullivan, who wrote a blog on joy, dies at 56
On the day she was wheeled into surgery for recently diagnosed ovarian cancer, Mary Ellen Sullivan wrote words that would become her clarion call, words that ring with the insistent...
Spiritual roundup: ‘Augustine: Conversions to Confessions,’ more
Augustine: Conversions to Confessions by Robin Lane Fox, Basic Books, 688 pages, $35 Rare is the spiritual character whose life story is deserving of nearly 700 pages of inquiry. But...
Spiritual roundup: ‘Sabbaths 2013’ by Wendell Berry, more
Sabbaths 2013 by Wendell Berry, Larkspur, 36 pages, $28 There are rare few times in the unfolding of our quotidian lives when we hold something in our hands and know,...
Gift guide: Books for the soul
It's a glorious expedition to survey the spiritual landscape of this year's books for the soul, to pluck the ones with richest deepest resonance. Poets and scholars, a pundit and...