Imagination & Spirit: A Contemporary Quaker Reader

by J Brent Bill (Editor)

Overview

Chicken Soup for the Soul - Quaker style! Imagination and Spirit offers the "best of the best" by contemporary Quaker authors with a brief biography of each. Features work of Daisy Newman, Jessamyn West, Richard J. Foster, Douglas V. Steere, Thomas Mullen, D. Elton Trueblood, Elizabeth Gray Vining, Scott Russell Sanders, Irene Allen, Phil Gulley, James A. Michener, Thomas Kelly, Jan De Hartog, Elfrida Vipont Foulds, and David Yount.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780944350614
Publisher:	Friends United Press
Publication date:	02/20/2006
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	783,712
Product dimensions:	5.54(w) x 8.62(h) x 0.85(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Foreword	xv
	Introduction	xix
	"Holy Obedience" from A Testament of Devotion	3
	"A Contemporary Christian Delusion" from The Incendiary Fellowship	21
	"The Dialogue of Prayer and Action" from Dimensions of Prayer	47
	"Chapter IV" from Virginia Exiles	63
	"A Ridiculous Idea" from The Lark on the Wing	81
	"Music on the Muscatatuck" from The Friendly Persuasion	97
	"Chapter 9" from Indian Summer of the Heart	119
	"Voyage Four: 1661" from Chesapeake	133
	"New Mexico 1973" from The Lamb's War	151
	"I Take Thee Nancy..." from A Very Good Marriage	165
	"The Gift of Simplicity" from Spiritual Simplicity: Simplify Your Life and Enrich Your Soul	179
	"The Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation" from Celebration of Discipline	197
	"Silence" from Falling Toward Grace	213
	"Chapter One" from Quaker Testimony	231
	"Tasting Tears" from Front Porch Tales; "A Time to Hate: When We Were Children" from For Everything a Season	247

Editorial Reviews

It's high time the traditional Publishers of Truth as Quakers originally called themselves published something for today's general readers outside the Quaker fold. Bill's anthology picks up where the Quaker Reader (edited by novelist Jessamyn West) left, focusing on writings from the latter half of the 20th century. The prose mix is lively: nonfiction devotional slices from modern mystic Thomas Kelly are served up along with such fiction as an excerpt from the murder mystery Quaker Testimony by Irene Allen, pen name for geologist Elsa Kirsten Peters. Such dizzying range makes the point that contemporary Quakers liberal, pastoral, evangelical can be mildly or wildly different despite common core beliefs in peace, simplicity, truth telling and ongoing divine revelation. At the same time it offers excerpts from such better known Quaker believers as James Michener and Richard Foster, the anthology introduces such unsung writers as children's book specialist Elfrida Vipont Foulds, one of a notably large cadre of women who have always been empowered in Quaker tradition to speak or write. Anthologies are necessarily arbitrary, acknowledges editor Bill, an Earlham College writing program graduate who provides helpful biographical introductions. Still, the influential writer-educator Parker Palmer should have been included. However, this collection is a welcome reminder that the small Society of Friends, as Quakers are also known, continues to offer creative and relevant witness to the truth as found within and practiced in community. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The associate director of the Indianapolis Center for Congregations and director of Earlham's annual writing colloquium, Brill offers an interesting smorgasbord of modern Quaker writings that includes as much fiction as nonfiction. Selections come from James Michener, Jessamyn West, Jan de Hartog, and Elizabeth Gray Vining. Each selection is furnished with biographical and critical introductions. Standouts include the piece by Thomas R. Kelly and a murder mystery excerpt by Irene Allen. For most collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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