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Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith
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Average Rating:  out of 29 Reviews
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Price: $13.95
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Sale: $7.25
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780679775492
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Nora Gallagher
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Publisher: Vintage
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Dewey Decimal Number: 200
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Publication Date: 1999-12-07
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Reading Level: 256
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Description: "I came to this church five years ago as a tourist and ended up a pilgrim," writes Nora Gallagher, speaking of her year at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara. It started with an occasional Sunday visit, a shy toe dip into the Episcopal Church. Eventually she delved into a yearlong journey to discover her faith and a relationship with God, using the Christian calendar as her compass. What Kathleen Norris did for the language of the church in Amazing Grace, Gallagher does for the Christian calendar--finding contemporary meaning in an ancient calendar that is often misunderstood or overshadowed with oppressive dogma. Starting with the chapter titled "Advent," and ending with "Ordinary Time," Gallagher speaks to the biblical and historical themes of the church's calendar, then offers a translation for living in America at the end of the millennium. Most touching is her raw honesty, whether writing about feeding the homeless in the Community Kitchen or the unglamorous job of caring for a friend with AIDS. Indeed, it is Gallagher's humble interpretations of faith that make her seasonal wisdom so trustworthy. "I learned something about faith, its mucky nature, how it lies down in the mud with the pigs and the rabble," she says when writing about the darkness of Advent. "...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." --Gail Hudson
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: A Bit Disjointed |
Date: 2008-04-06 |
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Details: While I appreciated the book as an Episcopalian who is very involved with my own parish, and one who is someone new to faith, I did find fault with her book. I felt it neeeded more structure.
She tended to jump from person to person and from situtation to situation too quickly, leaving me with a long, dizzy list of people who mattered to her, but it seemed like I didn't really know too much about any of them. It would have have been better if she focused on a just a few people in the church and expanded more on her experiences with them. Still it is worth a read and an honest peak into what being involved in a church is all about. |
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Review Summary: TRUE Religion |
Date: 2008-03-02 |
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Details: A good Episcopalian who has returned to the Church after a decade-long hiatus, Gallagher examines Christianity in action using the liturgical calendar as a framework. Her bold voice is one of common sense and reason, always true to her innate feminism without becoming strident. Good for seekers and rock-solid believers alike. |
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Review Summary: faith and faithfulness |
Date: 2007-01-25 |
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Details: "Sometimes I just can't stand church life," confessed Nora Gallagher to her friend Ann on the next-to-the-last page of her memoir. Baptized at the age of 15, she dropped out of church for about a decade, returned in her late twenties, then spent two decades negotiating a lover's quarrel with church life that she describes as both "familiar and a foreign planet. To cope we are often ambivalent." I suspect that a large part of this best-seller's success has been Gallagher's candor and the chord it has struck with readers who resonate with her experience.
Gallagher came to Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara as a "tourist," she says, but narrates how five years later, much to her surprise, she discovered that she had stayed on as a "pilgrim." Trinity was struggling in many ways for many reasons. The sanctuary that held 400 people was three-quarters empty. Dysfunctions abounded. But a new interim pastor, Mark, heralded a new day and the ship began to turn around. Gallagher organizes her eight chapters according to the church liturgical year (much as Kathleen Norris did for her monastic year in Cloister Walk)--Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time, and pulls back the curtain on every day church life at Trinity among ordinary people. She steps forward as a lay minister, serves communion, participates in a base community, and works at the church soup kitchen. She visits the dying, learns to love Republicans, attends meetings, and eats many a tuna casserole.
At its best, she discovered, church can be a place where, as her friend put it, "you can bring your whole self." Like her brother's bladder cancer, her non-believing husband, the drug death of Ephraim (one of their homeless regulars), or their pastor's announcement that he was gay and how Trinity handled that explosive issue. Gallagher shows what it looks like to do your doubting inside the church, rather than taking pot shots from the outside. She describes a very imperfect human institution where honest people articulate genuine questions and differing opinions. In such a church, observed the English historian Esther de Waal, we encounter the "sense of allowing the extraordinary to break in on the ordinary" (p. 18). If that prospect sounds attractive to you, then read Things Seen and Unseen. Then do what I did; read her sequel called Practicing Resurrection (2003). |
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Review Summary: Journey Towards Faith |
Date: 2004-07-22 |
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Details: Ms. Gallagher's year long journey with faith was very inspiring. The book covers her year at Trinity Episcopal Church and her growing faith. The chapters follow the Christian calendar and each is filled with insight into the season as well as her personal journey. A very rewarding book. |
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Review Summary: This is what faith is really about! |
Date: 2004-07-01 |
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Details: 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? |
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