Related Books: Tradition and Religion Today,  Comparative Religion

This third installment in the highly acclaimed Best Spiritual Writing annual series features a fresh collection of new writings that mixes religious traditions and spiritual topics, and offers new perspectives on age-old questions.

Publisher
Each year, this bestselling series offers stunning new insight on what we hold sacred. In this inspiring collection of the year's most distinguished literary voices—some familiar, some just emerging—editor Philip Zaleski brings together a rich array of essays and poems about faith, prayer, love, and divinity. Representing a wid spectrum of religious traditions, these writers speak from the soul about both the most profound and the everyday aspects of spirituality in our lives.

In this moving collection of the everyday and the eternal, you'll find:

John Updike * Annie Dillard * Pico Iyer
Gretel Ehrlich * William Gass * Philip Levine

The Best Spiritual Writing 2000 is a surprising, provacative look at what we trust, what we long for, and what we believe.

Publisher's Weekly  
This anthology easily lives up to the high standards set by the 1998 and 1999 editions, featuring essays, poems and a few genre-defying pieces that were originally published not only in religious periodicals, but also in literary journals and magazines such as Atlantic Monthly and Salon. While the spiritual orientations of the writers vary widely, certain unifying themes, such as death and a love of the outdoors, emerge. Christopher Bamford's "In the Presence of Death," James Van Tholen's "Surprised by Death," Ann Hood's "In Search of Miracles" and Richard John Neuhaus's "Born Toward Dying" all examine the spiritual transformation that terminal illness yields for the dying and those who love them. Deborah Gorlin's "Twice Woods Hebrew," Linda Hogan's "The Great Without," Robert Reese's "Rivers and Mountains" and Marjorie Sandor's "Waiting for a Miracle: A Jew Goes Fishing" are just a few that consider spiritual images and lessons found in nature. The book's timely preoccupation with these physical realities taps into a contemporary desire among evangelicals and Buddhists alike (both of whom are well represented in this book, along with Catholics, liberal Christians, Jews and skeptics) to elicit spiritual insights from everyday experiences and to understand the mind-body-spirit connection. Many essays amuse while they instruct particularly Mary Gordon's "Prayers" and Harvey Cox's "The Market as God"--while others evoke tears (see not only the essays on death but also Jim Schley's "Devotional"). All of the contributions challenge assumptions and encourage new ways of seeing, thereby feeding the spirit. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
 
Kirkus  
Zaleski, who edited Harper San Fran's much ballyhooed first Best Spiritual Writing volume last year, has produced an even better follow-up. From alpha to omega, the pieces in this collection simultaneously satisfy and challenge the reader: No easy-to-swallow New Age pap here. In the first entry, "Zazen," Virginia Hamilton Adair meditates upon the "no one" who "praised [her] appearance" or "remarked that [she] had brought too much" or "noticed" her. In the last entry, "A Fifty-Year Walk," Larry Woiwode proves he has something fresh to say about finding God in the woods. In between, the pages overflow with wonderful writing about matters spiritual. Episcopal priest and renowned preacher Barbara Brown Taylor teaches about Ascension Day, Pico Iyer explores "Why We Travel," Max Apple ruminates on Jewish-American identity, Ron Hansen reflects on stigmata, and Brian Doyle finds meaning in dirt. Zeleski remembers to include some good poetry: Wendell Berry writes about a widower's realization that "To participate in the resurrection, one/first must be dead," Seamus Heaney reflects on Ted Hughes's "Birthday Letters," and Luci Shaw captures the difficulty of prayer in "Some mornings she simply cannot." Perhaps the best essay is Jonathan Rosen's gem "The Talmud and the Internet," originally published in The American Scholar. Rosen, novelist and cultural editor of the Forward, mourns his grandmother's death, searches for a John Donne poem online, and muses about the similarities between the Internet and the Talmud, two places where "everything exists, if only one knows how and where to look." In her Foreword, Kathleen Norris says that good spiritual writing "is hospitable to the reader; itoffers an open door." So many tantalizing invitations are extended in this book that you may find your social calendar full all year.