{"id":431,"date":"2010-11-19T09:15:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T09:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/11\/spiritual-memoirs.html"},"modified":"2010-11-19T09:15:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T09:15:12","slug":"spiritual-memoirs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/11\/spiritual-memoirs.html","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Memoirs"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span>In an email exchange with someone who happened upon this blog, I found myself recommending a series of spiritual memoirs. I thought other readers might benefit from the list:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith<\/a>, by Kathleen Norris. My all-time favorite. Norris grew up in the Dakotas but moved to New York City for college where she abandoned the faith of her youth. As an adult, she moved back home and started considering Christianity again. Beautiful writing as well as good stories and reflections on the breadth of the faith.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Girl Meets God<\/a>, by Lauren Winner. Winner is now a professor at Duke. She writes of her conversions, first to Orthodox Judaism and then to Christianity, in prose that is accessible and interesting.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Those are the two I’d recommend hands down. Then…<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

Blue Like Jazz<\/a>, by Donald Miller. Miller is a Christian who addresses various doubts and objections to the faith–both his own and others. I really liked his perspective and approach of telling stories to explain what he believes and how he tries to live out those beliefs.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Traveling Mercies<\/a>, by Anne Lamott. She’s funny, quirky, and some would say on the fringes of Christianity. But still a story of God’s work in her life told in a very accessible way.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A Severe Mercy<\/a>, by Sheldon Van Aucken. This book was published over thirty years ago, and it has stood the test of time. Van Aucken tells the story of two atheists who fall in love and both become Christians and then discover she has cancer. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Finally, I will recommend three other spiritual memoirs that I’ve reviewed here before. The links will take you to the reviews:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Take This Bread<\/a> by Sara Miles<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Girl in the Orange Dress<\/a> by Margot Starbuck (not quite a review, but a glimpse at one of the themes of the book, that God is with us and for us)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A Maze of Grace<\/a> by Trish Ryan<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an email exchange with someone who happened upon this blog, I found myself recommending a series of spiritual memoirs. I thought other readers might benefit from the list: Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, by Kathleen Norris. My all-time favorite. Norris grew up in the Dakotas but moved to New York City for college…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-what-im-reading"],"yoast_head":"\nSpiritual Memoirs - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/11\/spiritual-memoirs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual Memoirs - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In an email exchange with someone who happened upon this blog, I found myself recommending a series of spiritual memoirs. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}