Although the Bible employs a staggering array of metaphors for God, Jews and Christians tend to use a handful of them over and over. With her trademark acerbic wit and wry honesty, in Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God, Lauren F. Winner delves into a few seldom used--in some cases completely overlooked--biblical images.
Winner (Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis) begins with a confession: even as a professor at Duke Divinity School and a longtime person of faith, she sometimes finds it difficult to think about God. "Sometimes, a hymn gets caught in my hair," she writes, "and I sing it all week long, off and on, without ever thinking hard about what it says about God." Realizing that her images of God were both predictable and somewhat outdated, Winner began mining the Bible for its more unusual or startling depictions of God. In this book, she examines half a dozen of them--clothing, laughter, smell, flame, laboring woman and the intertwined images of bread and vine--pondering the implications of each.
While Winner approaches God through the lens of faith, she has plenty of doubts, and she's not afraid to air them. Throughout Wearing God, she draws on the imaginings of other theologians, both Jewish and Christian; she excerpts several sermons and peppers the book with quotes from mystics and other scholars. Despite its depth, Wearing God never feels dry. It is, at heart, simply the newest chapter in Winner's continuing quest for a deeper relationship with God. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams