Although the Bible employs a staggering array of metaphors for God, Jews and Christians tend to use a handful of them over and over: shepherd, king, omniscient creator, sacrificial lamb. With her trademark acerbic wit and wry honesty, in Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God, theologian and memoirist 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 Realizing that her images of God were both predictable and somewhat outdated, Winner began mining the Bible for its more unusual or startling depictions of God. She examines half a dozen of them--clothing, laughter, smell, flame, laboring woman and the intertwined images of bread and vine--in this book, pondering the implications of each one.
While Winner--a former Orthodox Jew who later converted to Christianity--approaches God through the lens of faith, she has plenty of doubts, and she's not afraid to air them. She freely admits that God is difficult to grasp, frustrating, even unreachable. But her analysis of each metaphor gives her "an image that beckons me to go somewhere toward and with God." Even while exploring the dark side of several images (e.g., the ways that fire can be both life-giving and dangerous), Winner finds God there, too.
Each chapter, with a short note at the end, includes insights from the class Winner co-teaches at her local women's prison to a group of students whose experiences (religious and otherwise) contrast sharply with her own. Winner's trips to the prison keep the book from feeling overly academic, as she is forced to ask how God might appear differently to people whose circumstances are limited, even desperate.
Throughout Wearing God, Winner 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.
"An ordinary Tuesday--what you wear, what you eat and how you experience the weather--has something to offer you about God," Winner asserts in her introduction. With her mixture of anecdotes and thought-provoking analysis, Winner proves a wise and appealing companion on the journey. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Memoirist and theologian Lauren F. Winner returns with a wry, often surprising exploration of several overlooked metaphors for God.