any day a beautiful change: Particularly lovely essay...

9.23.2005

by Real Live Preacher. If you haven't already clicked over from the link on my sidebar, do so for this one. An excerpt:

There is a truth here that is hard to put into words. It is a life truth, a living truth, a truth of sinew and muscle and shared history and held hands. It is a truth that is utterly beyond us and somehow within us. It is a truth that makes us feel so small and childlike that we may have slipped, unnoticed, into the very Kingdom of Heaven.

Advance Praise for Any Day a Beautiful Change: A Story of Faith and Family

“I expect a good memoir to be wise and funny. A good pastoral memoir should bear witness to God’s goodness. I don’t normally expect one chapter to force me to read another, or to care so passionately about characters. The glory of this one, in particular, is its incarnationally-shaped bodiliness. We have a new writer to whom we must pay attention.”
Jason Byassee, author of The Gifts of the Small Church, senior pastor of Boone United Methodist Church, and Fellow in Theology & Leadership, Duke Divinity School.

“Pershey writes beautifully about hard things. This is not so much a book about ministry as it is about life. She examines her motherhood, her marriage and her ministry as they are all unfolding, in their tender beginnings, all three, works in progress. Despite being a memoir of faith, this honest book is a sanctimony-free zone.”

Lillian Daniel, author of This Odd and Wondrous Calling and senior pastor of First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn.

"In Any Day A Beautiful Change, Pershey shows us with candor and grace how motherhood, the chaos and delights of family, marriage, and our bodies enrich our interpretations of ministry, scripture and liturgy. I’m especially grateful for this memoir as a woman who has experienced pregnancy in the pulpit, but it is a gift for anyone who longs to reflect deeply on life and the church. It’s funny and honest and wise."
Debbie Blue, author of Sensual Orthodoxy and From Stone to Living Word and Founding Pastor, House of Mercy

"Katherine Willis Pershey walks alongside all of us who delight in Eat, Pray, Love, but yearn for a reflection on a different sort of path. With theological depth and insight, Pershey struggles with the passions of life, the heartbreaks of relationship, the worries of parenting, and the truths of vocation. Through all the twists and turns of her emerging marriage, ministry, and motherhood, she leads us to glimpses of reconciliation and wholeness."
Carol Howard Merritt, author of Tribal Church and Reframing Hope and a pastor at Western Presbyterian Church

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9.23.2005

Particularly lovely essay...

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