Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation

Shannon turns the focus she placed on beading in A String and A Prayer: How to Make and Use Prayer Beads (with coauthor Eleanor Wiley, 2002) to other crafts that can be vehicles for spiritual exploration and development. In eight chapters, the author, an interfaith minister and spiritual director, describes how the act of making things can foster in the maker feelings of calm, comfort, community, and connection with others and the divine. But as she is quick to point out in her introduction, this is not a “how-to” craft book intended to guide the reader to finished products suitable for sharing or sale. Rather, the goal is to help readers tap into the process of creativity that Shannon finds so deeply connects her to the divine. To that extent, the book is a success, with ample adaptations of established crafts to spiritual ends. Also very satisfying are interviews, woven in the text, with artists who describe how their own work informs their spirituality. The book’s 40 illustrations disappoint; they are rough sketches, where actual photographs of crafted objects would have been more inspirational. (May)