Friends, I am so honored to announce that I have an essay appearing in an upcoming anthology called Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership which is being published to celebrate 50 years of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Direction — the organization that first introduced me to silent prayer and spiritual direction when I was a grad student forty years ago.
Soul Food collects 18 essays by contemplative writers including Lerita Coleman Brown, Tilden Edwards, Gay Byron, Margaret Benefiel, Marcelle Martin, Elaine Voci and others. The essays cover a wide terrain, from the relationship between Centering Prayer, recovery and social justice; contemplative aging; silence in queer life; spiritual care for persons of color; rage and spirituality; group spiritual direction; and much more. My essay is called “God’s Pronouns” — it begins as an appreciation of Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s luminous new translation of Brother Lawrence, but from there I explore larger questions of how contemplative practice can give us insight into not only the question of gender in relation to God, but also a contemplative approach to solidarity with nonbinary and transgender persons.
The book is edited by Westina Matthews, Margaret Benefiel and Jackson Droney. It will be published in September 2023, but you can pre-order it now by clicking here.
