The Best Spiritual Writing 2010

It can be easy to dismiss the word “best” on the cover of anything these days. The term has been devalued, slapped on too many CD covers and kitchen appliances, erasing its former profound linguistic value. Zaleski’s compilation of spiritual writings, however, restores “best” to its rightful exceptional place. The book’s selections range from poetry and short fiction to memoir and essay, hailing from a variety of authorial and cultural sources. Just as literary form varies, Zaleski wisely recognizes, too, that spirituality can be defined almost infinitely, encompassing a vast range of belief and even nonbelief. Poems from the Atlantic or the New Yorker command attention in addition to longer treatises on “The God of the Gaps” and Buddhist enlightenment. John Updike sits next to Orthodox Judaism while the Dalai Lama spends the night in suburban New York. A Kazakh healer chats with Seamus Heaney, and secularization theory is next in line. It is a curious literary party at first glance, but the diverse forms, voices, topics gradually coalesce into something bigger and more elegant, something spiritual and extraordinary: the Best. (Jan. 26)