Experiencing Spirituality: Finding Meaning through Storytelling

Kurtz and Ketcham (The Spirituality of Imperfection) return after a long absence with a compendium of stories and wry life truths drawn from a variety of cultures and wisdom traditions. They quite deliberately organize their material loosely by theme, in chapters bearing such titles as "experience," "wonder," "wisdom." But they encourage the reader to dive in at random rather than read in a linear, front-to-back fashion. Readers who are conversant with brief wisdom tales from Hasidism or Zen will find many familiar ones here. What's new, though, is the sourcing and contextualizing found in the unobtrusive footnotes, which demonstrates the breadth and depth of resources the authors have drawn from. The earlier book is the more insightful; some readers may wish for a bit more from two well-known figures than their curation of familiar tales. But this will likely find an enthusiastic reception among people in addiction recovery programs and will be a good addition to public library shelves as well. Agent: Linda Loewenthal, David Black Agency. (May)