The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 [Paperback]

Philip Zaleski (Editor), Jack Miles (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0618443037 | ISBN-13: 978-0618443031 | Publication Date: October 14, 2004

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
The latest addition to the esteemed Best American series is a collection of the best spiritual writing of the year, introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Miles and including both prose and poetry. Series editor Philip Zaleski has chosen the volume's pieces with an eye to spirituality's many guises, from its impact on personal relationships and the environment to politics, creativity, and literature. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, secular, and pan-Hindu perspectives are all represented in these pieces, which have been selected from both mainstream and more specialized periodicals.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers of Zaleski's anthologies will be glad to know that, after a yearlong hiatus, his spirituality series has found a new home with Houghton Mifflin's Best American books. This sixth volume follows the expected format: some 25 essays and 10 poems that, according to the introduction, "address the eternal oppositions of good and evil, virtue and vice, creation and destruction; the sorrows and exaltations of heart, mind, and soul; the ceaseless quest for God." With approaches ranging from Seyyed Hossein Nasr's philosophical argument for the primacy of consciousness to Mark Doty's ecstatic vision of "fire [calling] its double down," the collection includes household names like Natalie Goldberg and Oliver Sacks alongside newer authors. Bus driver Robin Cody, for example, pays touching tribute to "birth-damaged or world-beaten children," and memoirist Lindsey Crittenden describes depression, death, her mother and the kind of prayer that is "pure throw of yourself into the unknown." Welcoming varied perspectives, Zaleski includes David Gelernter's summary of Judaism as well as a sprinkling of overt Buddhists and Christians, though most selections transcend religious categories. A large number, like David James Duncan's "Earth Music" and Allen Hoey's "Essay on Snow," focus on the natural world, while some, like B.K. Loren's "Word Hoard," resist classification. With few misses and many hits, the collection is a thought-provoking and often poignant read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

As far as editor Zaleski is concerned, spiritual writing must first be good writing, "aiming always for lucidity of thought and beauty of expression," and then it must show the writer concerned with becoming "more, better, truer, clearer, more open." Those criteria are consistently met by the selections in the fourth edition of this treasurable series. The range of immediate subjects under consideration is gratifyingly broad. David Gelernter's bracing "Judaism beyond Words" argues Jewish distinctives with tremendous forcefulness. Lindsey Crittenden's account of her prayer life, early and late, gains cogent accessibility by being couched in recollections of her rather waspish mother. Bill McKibben gets us thinking about the spiritual implications of "Designer Genes," and Peter Friederici illuminates the inner and outer selves of us all via the astonishing "Fifteen Ways of Seeing the Light." Patricia Monaghan's "Physics and Grief" offers moving personal testimony and scientific reason to believe in afterlife--and lives prior, parallel, and other, as well. Other very impressive contributors include Oliver Sacks, Joseph Epstein, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618443037
• ISBN-13: 978-0618443031
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #816,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born premature. That was the end of my precociousness. Mostly, I have spent my life trying to find quiet jobs that allow some psychological space where I can write in my head as I work. I've worked on a ranch, in a candy factory (Russell Stover), in retail stores selling shoes. I've built furniture, cooked for a gourmet catering service in NYC, cooked, also, in a weird little cafe run by a reverend healer who cured people's ailments with a pendulum and herbs. I was an aide on a locked psych ward, a tenured college professor, a graphic artist, a UPS driver, and now and again I still work as a professional brainstormer for branding companies. I was extremely grateful for the chance to go to college (it was never a given), but I also feel that these life experiences inform my writing as much as any class ever has. The publishing editor of one of my books told me I wrote like I was raised by wolves. I try to live up to that daily.

Along with the books listed here, you can read my work in many magazines, including, Orion Magazine, Spirituality and Health, Three Coyotes, Yoga International, The Body-Soul Connection, Fourth River, Hawk and Handsaw, and many others.

I'm grateful to these fellowships and Residencies:
Mary Roberts-Rinehart National Fellowship
Ucross Foundation
Colorado Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship
Colorado Art Ranch
Atlantic Center for the Arts
and others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you don't find something you like, you justaren't trying., April 21, 2005

By 

Michael Bond (Shawnee, OK United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 (Paperback)

Most people have at some level, an interest or curiousity in things that are considered 'spiritual'. Philip Zaleski has selected an excellent collection of essays and poems that reflect a wide range of spiritual-related ideas, musings, stories and expressions.

The number of essays is over twice that of poems but the volume of writing in the essays is probably fifty-fold that of the poems, so if you are looking for poetry, this is not the best source.

Keep in mind that the group is of 'spiritual' writing and not 'Christian', meaning that from essay to essay, idealogies will vary so much that at times you will wonder why they are even in the collection. Viewpoints move from naturalism to Buddism to Catholicism and more.

I found some of the essays very interesting. What will appeal to a different reader? It's hard to guess. But any reader with the slightest interest in things spiritual or spiritual people or other cultures are sure to find something he likes here.


Some of my favorites were:
The introdction
Physics and Grief
Judaism beyond Words
What The Blind See


As I said, the poetry is a relativly minor part of the collection. But of what was included, very little appealed to me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brightness, February 21, 2009

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 (Paperback)

This collection of spiritual writings was created by Jack Miles and Philip Zaleski. Buddhism holds the self is an illusion. Jack Miles practiced Buddhist meditation after leaving the Society of Jesus. (Later he became an Episcopalian.)

Rick Bass grew up at the edge of a prairie where there were things to see. Later, watching his daughter Lowry approach a woodpecker, he is delighted. Robin Cody's piece about Ivory Bloom also involves a child, a child's fresh perceptions. Robin Cody's narrator, a bus driver, learns that story is the assassin of despair, (the bus is one for transporting special-needs students).

Joseph Epstein avers that envy is no fun. With few exceptions we all experience envy. Envy and jealousy are different. Envy is not a general yearning and it is not open conflict. The envious are intent on destroying the happiness of others.

Thomas Lynch opines that the good grief, the good death, the good funeral are oxymorons. Are spritual bodies more agreeable than natural ones? A memorial service is a way of not dealing with the dead.

Kathleen Norris observes that it is easy to like the idea of grace. R.R. Reno reminds the reader that many writers have suggested that pride is a barrier to faith. Nevertheless, a greater danger is spiritual apathy. Acedia means without care.

There are a number of interesting selections in the compilation including some very good poems.