I found myself disappointed in this book, given my liking for Winner's previous work. The promotional blurbs are a little misleading as the book is not inherently about her mother’s death or the dissolution of her six-year marriage. Despite the honesty and brokenness that is expressed in Winner’s writing, I felt disconnected and unmoved by most of the book. ( )

I think I came across this book at the right time. While mine and Winner's inner qualms are very different from one another, it is incredibly refreshing to see someone of her intellectual caliber be both humble and seeking, and occasionally so weary.

Still is a far cry from Girl Meets God, which I read years ago when it first came out, and fell in love with Winner's honesty, zeal, and her confrontational-yet-sweet prose. ( )

“That finally is the questions, that is the anguish — to abide in God’s hiddenness is one thing, to abide in God’s absence is altogether something else.”

I loved Lauren F. Winners book [Mudhouse Sabbath] in which she reflects and look back at some of the Jewish practices that she misses after converting to the Christian faith.

In Still we find Lauren in a crisis of faith after going through a divorce and she finds herself spiritual lost and bewildered.

There is a movement toward finding some solace in the presence of God - although He’s still rather elusive.

“Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt, or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze.”

These glimmers of holy - of the enchanted world keep popping up in the journal-like entries, that are deeply personal - it's a vulnerable soul who shares her loss and pain but also the light and beauty. ( )

This was probably not the book for me to read at this time. I'm not in the middle of a mid-faith crisis, and never hope to be. I only wanted to read some kind of spiritual memoir so my memoir might become more spiritual. I think she is a good writer and applaud her willingness to publish something so personal. I may have done a disservice to myself by not having read her first book first. Some of my favorite parts of this book were when she kind of veered off the subject of her crisis and talked about other things like boredom and middle voice, but then returning to how they relate to faith. ( )

Lauren Winner, who previously examined her conversion from Reform to Orthodox Judaism, and later to Christianity in Girl Meets God, now writes from the middle of her spiritual journey in Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. After the breakup of her marriage (for reasons she does not divulge), Winner found herself bereft of God as well. In short, blog-like essays, she works through the spiritual implications of this difficult period of her life. She's read a lot of books on her time, and she uses her even her more secular reading as spiritual ballast. The poetry of Anne Sexton and Emily Dickinson, in particular, speaks to her in the midst of her spiritual desert.

What I like about Winner is that she's well past the point of debating whether God exists, or if its cool to believe in God, etc. God and her church are part of the fabric of her life, even when she feels distant from God, or, as she admits, even bored with the whole religion thing. She writes well about divine mystery, and doesn't seem to feel like she needs to know all the answers (a rare quality in an academic like Winner, who is a professor at Duke Divinity School). She also stays out of the religious vs. secular "culture wars."

If you liked Winner's Girl Meets God, you will probably like this book, with its similar approach, as well. ( )