Customer Reviews

Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

5 star:		(23)
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Christian living is not a matter of assent to a certain set of truths, nor of wearing "WWJD" bracelets and a big smile. Christian living is the often heart wrenching process of walking each day -- each hour -- in the presence of the living God.

Nora Gallagher is not a theologian -- she's a journalist -- and Things Seen and Unseen is a reporter's notebook, a journal of life in the Christian front lines. Her church family falls into division, and pulls together over the selection of a new pastor. The soup kitchen in the parish hall draws criticism from the neighbors -- and from members of the congregation. Gallagher's beloved brother, Kit, grows ill and moves toward death.

None of this is earth shattering, but as Christians, we all live in a shattered -- and reclaimed -- world. Gallagher reminds us of that mysterious reality on each page.

Some things are seen, and other's unseen. Gallagher reminds us that what we see often depends on where we look. For that, her book is a treasure.

I read an excerpt of Nora Gallagher's "Things Seen and Unseen" in Utne Reader magazine almost a year ago. I remember sitting in the cafe at B&N, and feeling drawn to the religion section to immediately hunt down this book. As a "recovering Catholic", I was amazed that someone else felt as I did- that I had a deep, quiet longing for God but felt too alienated from the church of my childhood, and too isolated in my desire, to reach out to organized religion. In fact, I went through a long period of fascination with Wicca and other nature religions, always remaining on the fringes of involvement, and never feeling quite comfortable with "worshipping" pagan gods & goddesses. Even though I still feel that there are healthy expressions of the divine missing from traditional religious life, I now know that those facets are available to us if we refuse to define God in the narrow terms fed to us. This book led me to explore the Episcopal faith, and while there is enough in common with Catholicism to keep it from feeling too foreign to me, there are so many clear and beautiful differences that I feel that I have found a spiritual home at last. Just as Ms. Gallagher describes, my church encourages outreach and involvement with each other AND with those outside our comfortable circle. It is an inclusive environment that expects everyone to participate in ministry. AND, our priest is a woman, which of course, is lightyears away from my previous experience. Nora Gallagher writes in a way that, when read, actually changed my breathing! It felt like lectio divina, and prompted me to dive deep and allow myself to love God again.

I reviewed this book on November 19, 1999, and gave it 5 stars back then. If I could, I'd award it 10 stars. I have re-read THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN several times since then and it NEVER disappoints. I am sorry to see an obviously fundamentalist reviewer give it only 3 stars, but, Jerrod, all I can tell you is that when I want to read a book that strictly "agrees with what the bible says", I read the Bible. Everything else is someone's experience of their faith described on paper, which is as it should be. When I pick up a book about a person's spiritual journey, I come to it prepared not for a perfect regurgitation of Biblical quotes, but of that individual's unique relationship with God. I have a unique relationship with God, don't you? Or do we prefer to have our faith force-fed to us? We have souls AND minds- best not to waste either God-given gift.

I have given or recommended this outstanding book to many friends, including several priests and others in ministry.

It continues to be, as my rector put it, a seminal book in my faith journey.

I use this book for a course I teach on American religion. Gallagher provides an account of her experience as a seeker, as someone on her own restless quest, in terms that many students can relate to. Her world of uncertainty is one we can all understand. But she points beyond mere "spirituality" to the meaningfulness of Christianity lived within a liturgical cycle, in a community with a tradition and a sense of vocation to serve God and humanity. Highly recommended.

Gallagher has written a beautiful book, giving us a year-long chronicle of her faith, using the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church as her guide. She shows us that faith encompasses the whole human person--doubt, pain, loss, and joy. She reminds us that God's in it all, for better or worse--"God is not too good to hang out with jet-lagged women with cat-litter boxes in their dining rooms, or men dying of AIDS, or, for that matter, someone nailed in humiliation to a cross."

This is real faith--faith that faces life rather than hiding from it. Nora reminds us that prayer is not simply the words we say to God, but what happens when we throw our lives into God's work. For her this involves helping the homeless, working in a soup kitchen, caring for dying friends... Her book has a lot to offer and remind us. So buy a copy and share it with your friends... it's what I've done. ;)

...and as for the reviewer below who states "I'd only recommend this book if you are a feminist or leftist" I ask, Wasn't Jesus both?

In my busy life, it's easy to forget to be aware of the Holy -- God -- breaking through into the seeming ordinariness of my world. I whizz from one activity to the next, getting things done, staying organized, dealing with people and events as they come up -- and I don't stop to appreciate how God is making the Holy manifest in my daily existence.

Nora Gallagher's book is full of encounters with God breaking through into her ordinary life -- moments in the "thin space" between Heaven and Earth, where the Holy touches our humanness and, if we're paying attention, we know that that is happening.

Especially wonderful is Gallagher's awareness of these moments of God breaking in when she is working with the homeless people who come to her church for lunch every day. For her, they are a window on what God is doing today in the world. These people are not just objects of her kindness but opportunities to know the Holy as Jesus might have known it, as he moved among the marginalized and dispossessed of his own time.

But Gallagher certainly doesn't think she's Jesus. She is refreshingly clear about her human frailties, and about the frailties of those about her in her church. She has that gift of looking squarely at the human condition -- her own, first of all -- and loving it just the same.

If you've ever kept a personal journal so honest you should burn it, you'll know what it feels like to read "Things Seen and Unseen." On the other hand, if you have a hard time telling the truth even to yourself, you'll ask how Nora Gallagher brings herself to the task of telling her truth without burning herself in the process. She's as human as any of us is. And if life can be redeemed by writing about it, she finds salvation by writing truthfully about her human being.

I picked up this book on a whim the week it was first published in hardback. Ms. Gallagher's voice drew me in from the very first page, and I stayed up late for two nights in a row to finish it. It is truly a very personal, very spiritual evocation of one woman's journey with God. It was so moving that I encouraged my women's prayer group to read it also. Our discussions of Ms. Gallagher's experiences led to a sharing of many of our own personal experiences, and a deepening understanding of our own walks in faith. This is not a "Bible-believing text book", but a serious, thoughtful and beautifully written journal of Ms. Gallagher's experience in faith. I encourage each of you to read it for yourselves, and to listen to what her experience calls up from your own walk in faith. You will not be sorry to have spent the time.

I found in this book a relevance of church and liturgy to my own confused spiritual journey, certainly, but more than that, the intensely personal story reminded me that faith and hope are not "high mysteries" but instead ordinary living with a touch of grace. This was a message of hope for me, and also a way to connect again with the church of my youth to aid my search and journey. Highly recommended.

THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN: A Year Lived in Faith Gallagher, Nora. (New York: Knopf, 1998) "I came to this church five years ago a tourist and ended up a pilgrim," writes Nora Gallagher in the first chapter of her new book "Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith". In the particularity of her pilgrimage the reader is invited into the universality of "the longing a soul has to find its shape in the world" -- a longing Gallagher explores in the context of her life in the parish of Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara. Her story of this year lived in faith -- one Advent to the next -- offers insights for all spiritual seekers: struggles between the ideal and real, the power and pain of authentic community and the search for a practical mysticism that bridges the "thin place" between those things seen and unseen. By giving us a glimpse of the sacred in the ordinary of her own life (in the tradition of Madeline L'Engle and Kathleen Norris) Gallagher challenges us to do the same in ours, and we are the richer for it. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and currently living in Santa Barbara, Nora Gallagher has reported for Time and Life magazines and her articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Village Voice, Mother Jones and the Utne Reader.