Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings

Tickle (The Great Emergence), popular lecturer and founding religion editor for Publishers Weekly, continues to influence the landscape of religion writing in America with her essays, lectures, poetry, and fiction. All of these forms can be found in this career-spanning collection selected and curated by Sweeney. From musings about finding the sacred in everyday life, to informed speculations regarding future trends in the Christian Church, to poignant tales about her family and advice on how to raise faith-filled children, the short essays of the collection shine the brightest; each is infused with Tickle's particular effusiveness and zeal. She can manage in just a few paragraphs to convey a breadth of insight that one can savor for hours. Much of the work concerns her farm in Lucy, Tenn., where Tickle still makes her home. These pastoral essays display Tickle's astute eye for the pressing concerns of our globalizing, suburbanizing culture, and how people of faith should confront these momentous changes. Whether one is a veteran Tickle fan or coming to her work for the first time, this collection will delight all readers who, like the author, are not afraid to ask big questions. (July)