Light for the Way: Seeking Simplicity, Connection, and Repair in a Broken World

These stimulating essays and interviews from the first 50 years of Sojourners magazine, collected by poetry editor Berger (Who Killed Donte Manning?), seek “sabbath rest, contemplation, solitude, simplicity, and communal resilience” in today’s world. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr meditates on silence as a conduit to a truer, fuller spirituality that embraces contradictions, “not knowing,” and mystery. Unpacking the complexities of scripture and prayer, Margaret Atwood considers the “paradoxical” implications of the beatitude about the meek inheriting the earth to question biblical ideas of power, control, and social status. Less famous writers also pull their weight; pastor Mihee Kim-Kort movingly discusses how learning to live “fully and authentically” in her queerness allowed her to embrace being a part of God’s creation, while virtue ethicist Christopher Carter interrogates such challenges as the structural racism woven into the food distribution system. Taken together, the pieces offer a wide-ranging and imaginative exploration of how religion’s eternal truths raise questions in unexpected arenas of modern life. The result is a thought-provoking interrogation of what Christian spirituality means today. (Jan.)