Reviews of Writing the Sacred Journey
Andrew makes clear from the start that she is no holier-than-thou ascetic. She is too earthbound, too much in love with the flesh-and-blood of everyday life. And yet she admires, with deep affection, Christianity and the Christian tradition. Jesus has become a model for her, and she does her best to emulate him in her work as a freelance writing teacher and spiritual director. But she hasn’t much patience for the shortcomings of the institutional church. What interests her is the Christian story, and she attempts to make sense of a chaotic world through the medium of story. Raised a Methodist in upstate New York, she moved to Minneapolis when 18. Fifteen years later, she is still there, stoking a sense of community within a circle of writers, liberal theologians, and others. Modest in the best sense of the world, her book affords a nuts-and-bolts look at the spiritual life and a meditation on what it means to be human and to live a faith-based existence in an increasingly inhospitable, messy world. June Sawyers Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –Booklist
Elizabeth J. Andrew is a subtle and courageous spiritual memoirist. Her candid and compelling ability to share the hard won secrets of her artistry with fellow writers is borne out in this fine book.
-Lawrence Sutin, author of A Postcard Memoir
Writing the Sacred Journey will appeal to readers of varied backgrounds. Its author draws deeply from her own tradition, yet she is wary of “the language ruts of religion,” and invites her reader to tap those “primary, organic experiences of sacredness prior to (and often alongside) the inculcation of a religious tradition.” The particulars of her own story sparkle with depth and authenticity. This will be a book you return to again and again.
-Julie Neraas, Spiritual Director, Presbyterian minister, Professor in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN.
This book is excitingly good and I can’t wait to have it in my hands.
-Mary Rose O’Reilly, author of The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
In her dual roles as teacher and companion, Elizabeth J. Andrew offers powerful gifts to the writer–and also the reader–of spiritual memoir. She engagingly integrates challenge with reassurance and “how to” with “why?” Her versatile approach functions as an implicit form of spiritual direction, to use a classic phrase, that is wide open to multiple world views and life experiences.
-Mary Bednarowski, author of The Religious Imagination of American Women, New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America, and American Religion: A Cultural Perspective
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