Marilyn McEntyre

The Pastor’s Bookshelf

Church Leadership & Ministry

“All of us need the encouragement Austin Carty offers fellow pastors in this elegant invitation to reconsider reading. Good reading practices, he reminds us, help us preach, converse, reflect, find connections, offer lively analogies, enjoy each other, and love more richly and effectively. The book is full of stories and surprises offered with a warm collegiality that reminds us as we turn its pages of the sheer pleasure of reading a good book.”

The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty

Arts & Literature

“Reading these richly evocative reflections, I found myself again and again ‘surprised by joy.’ And gratitude. I was reminded that when people live into their callings deeply and faithfully, they become beacons: they remind us what happens when one says yes to the Spirit’s invitation daily and faithfully. Stories from Schleske’s work as a violinmaker, his knowledge of trees and music and even varnish, become heart-opening parables, not by preachment, but by the loving particularity with which he pays attention to the work he was given.”

Unteachable Lessons

Christian Living

“These lively stories of loss, awakening, and moments of divine encounter and surprise offer invitations at every turn to recognize how the Spirit lives and moves in our own lives as well as in the author’s. Deft and funny, rich with spiritual insight and unpretentiously articulate, this book is one to be enjoyed, dog-eared, carried to retreats, and shared.”

Way of Love

Christian Living

“In surprising reflections on biblical and contemporary stories of love, earth care, and hospitality, Wirzba reminds us of the many facets of a truth too often reduced to abstraction: God is love—a love that shows up in lives of joyful sacrifice, unstinting hospitality, almost unfathomable forgiveness. His retellings and reflections are acts of hospitality that offer a kind of nourishment we need again and again.”

Wired for Wonder

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“You might well finish this book feeling you've found a new friend. Hanbury's intimate, quirky, colloquial, and deeply thoughtful reflections on electronic technology and the moral life--a life of rightly ordered attention, rightly oriented longing, and human presence, including hugs, in which we flourish--feel like conversation. We're invited in. It's an invitation worth accepting.”

You Teach Me Light

Arts & Literature

“Alighting in surprising places, these lovely, lively poems invite us to imagine people, places, and historical events with a childlike freedom that entertains what might have been in all its parabolic possibility. The poet shows how deep faith delights in whimsy, how the smallest encounter can become an occasion of grace, and how poetic lines, in their brokenness, call us out of the shaded and well-trodden paths of prose into sudden and marvelous light.”