Sense Making Faith: Body, Spirit, Journey [Paperback]

 

 

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Sense Making Faith' is a wonderful achievement. The title is intriguing, and so is the content. Picking up on current popular interests, like spirituality, experience, and holistic lifestyle, this book explores how our five senses can feed faith. It is a bold exploration which individuals and groups can follow with the picture clarity of a `DK Guide' and text which assumes nothing but goes deep.
Jim Currin

This is an ambitious project, comprising a beautifully presented and illustrated book, and an accompanying attractive and accessible website []

The co-chairs of the Mission Theological Advisory Group, Revd Professor John Drane and Rt Revd Dr David Atkinson, explain in the foreword that the task was `to see whether the Christian faith has anything to offer today's world of spirituality shoppers' and at the same time discover what `we may have forgotten about our own spiritual wisdom, richness and heritage.' Consequently readers are invited to enter into an ongoing exploration, which will enable them to move from the known into new and unknown places on their own spiritual journey. To this end the book is organized into chapters in which symbols helpfully indicate waystations for prayer, reflection, meditation and activity.

The book is intended primarily for people who wish to undertake their own personal spiritual journey, although the last chapter focuses on how groups of people may use these resources to journey together.

The senses - sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste - are each the focus of a chapter, and offer a wide variety of information and experiences with which the reader can engage. Imagination is the sixth area of discovery. Each of these six chapters begins with a haiku (a poem of 3 lines, containing 17 syllables) written by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. The haikus themselves offer a rich source for meditation. The book has many images, in colour, often as many as three or four to a page, so that it is easy to pause and reflect on any picture which catches the attention.

Some of the areas covered in this book have been written of elsewhere, for the questions raised about the exploration of spiritual journeys frequently reach into modern society, as well as into church life. But it is difficult to think of one which, together with the website, covers such a wide range of experiences and opportunities. It is to Dr Anne Richards's credit that the material has been edited so skilfully. The book will be a most helpful resource for many people inspired to deepen their spiritual journey.

The excellent, comprehensive, website offers prayers, reflections, poetry, Christian art, essays, and suggested books and films, among much else. I hope that readers of Sense Making Faith will use the opportunity to provide feedback, so that the Mission Theological Advisory Group will be able to assess the success of its aim of engaging readers in a real dialogue with those who are `perfectly happy' in being spirituality shoppers, and of learning from each other.

This book and website should be an important tool, enabling readers to reconnect, through their senses and imagination, with the God who meets them in surprising places, and empowers them to listen to others, to share their own spiritual journeys, and to keep going on the road of discovery.

Judith Lampard, 14/01/2008

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