I guess I'll stop complaining about the overlap with other Dewey categories. If you want a discussion of a specific denomination's more or less current status, this is probably where you'll go, and if you're me, you'll gravitate towards the memoirs describing people's current experiences with said denominations.
That's why I picked up Still, the latest installment of Lauren Winner's extended live-tweeting of her every life experience. Sorry not sorry if that sounds a little catty.... after all, I could have called her a "spiritual reality show," as did a commenter on another blog.
But I do feel that she writes as if a mid-faith slump has never happened to anyone else, even while discovering (who knew?) that it's a well-known phenomenon. After all, the famous phrase "the dark night of the soul" was coined by St. John of the Cross in the 16th century. (I myself prefer Douglas Adams' take on the experience, "the long, dark teatime of the soul," which I have experienced just about daily from 3-5 pm.)
Only the idea of writing a book to complain about how the life of faith (or any life at all) turns out to be a bit of a slog is a little rich from someone 36 years old. I am here to tell her that she does not yet know from slog, but also that said slog turns out to have its bright spots.
So that's why the book I'll actually finish (eventually; busy season at work right now) is by someone less like me, someone from whom I feel like I can learn something: Sara Miles. I loved Take This Bread, especially because I read it during a time when I was giving a lot of dinners and lunches to groups of people in the name of Jesus. Thus, the idea that food=love=gospel was a point of connection between me and someone I might not normally have found a lot of connection with.
Miles' new book is called Jesus Freak, so actually, I'm in pretty much no matter what happens next. But the fact that it opens with her annoying her food pantry colleagues by laying hands on someone as she prays is definitely a bonus point....
And, in case you are wondering what all this has to do with "Christian Denominations," well, in some ways your guess is as good as mine, but both authors are in the service of the Episcopal church, so I suppose that's why they landed here instead of anywhere else in the 200s.
