Thursday, May 10, 2012

Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis


Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God is probably one of my top ten favorite books. Something about the book and the time period I read it resonated with me. The book also began my curiosity and fascination with Judaism which continued with her follow-up book, so it has a special place on my shelf.  

When I saw that Winner had written a new book I was excited to get my hands on it and read it, even though I was a little worried about the topic and subject matter- not about having a crisis of faith, but on writing about so soon. Ms. Winner is a few years older than me and while I've had my own crises of faith, I also realize that life for me is still young and so it was a little hard for me to take this book seriously. Are we going to get a book after every crisis of faith? Also there wasn’t much spiritual meat in the book, it honestly felt like whining and complaining about life, the end of the marriage and such. Its perfect material for a blog, but as a memoir on faith it fell short for me and I reluctantly abandoned it.
The chapters were very short and seemed somewhat choppy and it felt like I was just rambling along in Lauren’s head. This type of writing isn’t uncommon, but for what a deeper subject was it just seemed too much.  Perhaps I will give this one another go at another time. I found that a lot of time spiritual memoirs resonate differently depending on when they are read.
**********
I realized that I never got around to writing a review for Girl Meets God. Again, I’m aware that part of the reason that book had such a profound impact on me, was because of where I was in my own spiritual journey at the time. I did find my amazon.com review of her book Mudhouse Sabbath which I enjoyed immensely. I also found a post where I mentioned my love of Ms. Winner’s book.

No comments: