The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006

The Best American Spiritual Writing

by Philip Zaleski (Editor), Peter J. Gomes (Introduction)

Philip Zaleski, an acclaimed writer and the editor of the series, has once again assembled an outstanding collection of thirty-five pieces that range far and wide in subject matter and style. In “The Cellular Church,” Malcolm Gladwell takes a look at the pastor Rick Warren, and Mary Gordon’s “Moral Fiction” explores the place of value judgments in literature. Michael Chabon describes his childhood fascination with the darkness and “silliness” that pervade the world of the Norse gods, and Katherine Paterson, an award-winning children's book writer, describes how faith plays a role in her work. Miles Hoffman and Wendell Berry both decry the loss of soul, the former speaking of modern music and its dire need for a miracle, and the latter of modern agriculture, which has strayed perilously far from its roots. The range of the volume is immense, stretching from Edward Hoagland’s discussion of America's social breakdown to Helen Tworkov’s analysis of the inherent conflict between feminism and Buddhism to Corby Kummer’s deliciously simple recipe for kosher almond cake.

The poems, too, run the gamut of human experience, with contributions from such distinguished poets as Mark Doty, Charles Martin, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Louis Simpson, C. K. Williams, and John Updike. The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006 is sure to please not only lovers of spiritual writing, but also those who long for writing that illuminates a vast range of issues beyond our immediate line of sight.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Religion

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2006

About the author

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Z...

Excerpts from The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams available here:

http://chronicle.com/article/Oxfords-...

http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=...

Reviews

[Malbadeen · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes life starts getting all freaky deaky on you and you long for the days when you sat in a little room and sang, "read your bible pray everyday and you'll grow, grow, grow and you'll grow, grow, grow, etc" and then you got your little cookie and you learned a verse and you went to bed early so Santa clause wouldn't see you and you died the Easter eggs so the bunny could hide them.
So then you go to your shelf and you pull down "spiritual" stuff and you try to forget about the freaky deakyness of the world and you hope that for a few minutes you wont care about the absurdity of things and you cross your fingers that you will believe in absolute truth and other antiquated ideas like that and then all of a sudden you realize you keep referring to yourself as "you" and then you start laughing at yourself and making fun of yourself.
and that leads you to the realization that you are living a life wherein you are not only afforded the luxury to call yourself "you", but also to laugh at you calling yourself you and you feel guilty that you are so focused on you and so you open your book again and you hope that this ladies experience with prayer pulls you out of yourself for a second.
and then you go to work and ruminate about it all a little more while siting at your keyboard pretending to be doing a job that is as absurd as thinking you can reactivate your spirituality by reading about someone else's spirituality.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a collection of devotional material, but reportage on issues and aspects surrounding religion. My favorites were "The Kosher Conversion", "Are You There, God?", and "The Lost Buddhas of Bamiyan". I'll be looking for these collections from other years at used bookstores.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any collection of essays, stories, and poems that bills itself as "Best Spiritual Writing" is bound to be uneven. Peter Gomes' introduction makes it clear that "spiritual" and "religious" are not contradictory terms and in this collection there are both pieces about organized religion and more individualistic forms of relating to God, Nature, the Cosmos, or whatesver we want to call transcendent realities.
Among many good selections, I thought there were four or five that were outstanding. Two were originally published in THE NEW YORKER and included "The Big Tent", by Peter Boyer, about the relationship between Evangelicals and more mainstream churches, and the other was "The Cellular Church" by Malcolm Gladwell. Both of these were about institutional Christianity.
Three other pieces I thought were insightful were "Music's Missing Magic" by Miles Hoffman, a long comment on trends in classical music over the past two centuries, Wilfred McClay's "The Secret of the Self", prompted by the question of what picture of ourselves get chosen for obituary notices, and George Steiner's "Ten (possible) Reasons for the Sadness of Thought" which ruminates on what modern science and philosophy have to tell us about how our minds function, much of it very mysterious.
I haven't even mentioned other good pieces by such writers as Wendell Berry, Mary Gordon, Rochelle Gurstein ("The Tragic Fate of John Ruskin"), Rick Bass, Thomas Lynch, and the late John Updike. A fine collection, worth a 2nd and 3rd reading.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This years selection was mixed. The most inspirational essay was the intro by Lopez, who talked about reverence: that feeling of “immersion in the profound mystery of life.” Other notables include:
Christopher Bamford, The Gift of the Call which uses some lyrical imagery to define a call to religion which I felt as the call to beauty and love;
David James Duncan, The French Guy about St. Francis of “make me a channel of your peace…” fame, my favorite hymn, which was funny and charming and makes me want to read more of him besides the River Why;
Oliver Sacks, Speed, about time and how people with neuro disorders experience time and space differently;
Kenneth Woodward, The Passion’s Passionate Despisers, about giving the movie fair treatment, specifically against the charge that it was anti-semitic, stating it was not about Jews, but about Christ, and it was unfairly crucified.

[M.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the other books in this series, not everything contained within its pages is a gem. Many of the pieces in this year's collection didn't wow me, and one of them made me so angry in the first few paragraphs that I skipped over it. However, I find that the gems are so good, that it makes slogging through the dirt worthwhile, because I wouldn't have been able to read them anywhere else. The highlights this year include "Music's Missing Magic" by Miles Hoffman (although it's hard to think of this essey as spiritual writing, since it hardly mentions anything of that nature, it was one of the best reads in the collection), "Into the Wonder" by Alan Jacobs (a great piece on one of my literary idols, C. S. Lewis), and "The Church's Way of Speaking" by Robert Louis Wilken. These and many more pieces made reading this collection well worth my while.

[Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains some thought provoking essays, but none of them would I call "spiritual". I would say that the essays reflect a wide span of religious and humanitarian values. My favorite essay was on Moral Fiction written by Mary Gordon. Does reading fiction affect our decision making, our moral consciousness, or our ethical stance? Gordon makes a case that dealing with ambiguity, complexity and point of view as presented in moral fiction (for example, George Elliot's Middlemarch) does expand our capacity to understand complex human emotions and motivation and that is a good thing when approaching moral decision making. It slows down the impulse of simplistic black and white judgment and allows for a richer, more diverse set of criteria for evaluating a range of appropriate moral responses.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I might never read all of the essays in this book, which is very unlike me. Usually I slog through anything I've started, but some of the writing in this collection is pretty weak, especially after having been billed as the BEST. Liked the essay on the Afghanistan Buddhas (especially since another, undestroyed one was unearthed the week I read it), the one on the spirit behind the Sabbath, and the one on Billy and Franklin Graham. However, although the Best American Short Stories is one of my favorites every year, I think the spin-off series often lack the quality of the original.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven collection of essays, articles, and poems that bear, sometimes directly and sometimes tangentially, on spirituality or religion. The writings themselves are not inspirational or proselytizing works; nor is the focus on any one--or even any--religion in particular, but instead deal with topics such as music, the nature of thought, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and the strategems of a particular religious leader. Some works are well written and engaging; others are not. I ended up picking and choosing what seemed of interest to me.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third volume in this series that I have read since I have started to keep track. There is not much new I can say about these books. Wonderful essays - this time I really liked Thomas Lynch, Michael Chabon and Katherine Paterson. Also wonderful poetry - I could read Sam Hamill and V. Penelope Pelizzon again and again.

This series really is worth reading. They are especially good for finding out more ways to see God, think about religion and experience faith. I will be starting the volume from 2007 very soon.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

i loved all the different angles the entries came from; the 'spirituality', although some essays were 'religious', was all encompassing. some of the writings were very hard to get through, but some were truly goosebump-inducing inspiration. as a person going through her own spiritual treasure hunt, this book really spoke to me. i thoroughly enjoyed my journey through it.

[Katherine Pershey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best essay: the one by Katherine Patterson. Love.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many gems in the collection! My favorites Bass, Berry, Chabon and Harriman.