Book Review: When Faith Becomes Sight
I recently reviewed the book When Faith Becomes Sight by Beth and David Booram for the Englewood Review of Books. An excerpt is below. You can read the full review here.
If you have ever had a spiritual director, you know that you typically see your spiritual director once per month. During your meetings, your director listens to you, prays with you, and helps you look for God’s presence and work in your life. But in spiritual direction, the focus is not on the director sharing their wealth of wisdom and understanding. Instead, a good spiritual director may speak very little in a session which helps keep the focus on God and on the relationship between the directee and God.
However, sometimes you wish you could go to your spiritual director and just listen, soaking up all their spiritual wisdom and knowledge. If you booked a spiritual direction session with Beth or David Booram I doubt you would be granted this comprehensive wisdom download, but fortunately, they have written a book that you can read their collected spiritual wisdom… When Faith Becomes Sight: Opening Your Eyes To God’s Presence All Around You.
Both Beth and David have been spiritual directors for more than a decade and disciples of Jesus for many years. They are founders of Fall Creek Abbey, an urban retreat house, and spiritual direction center in Indianapolis Indiana. There they offer spiritual direction, train spiritual directors, offer retreats and supervision for spiritual directors. So the Boorams have a lot of wisdom to share, and we are the beneficiaries.
When Faith Becomes Sight accomplishes a lot in its 218 pages. Think of it as part prayer manual, part spiritual direction textbook, part psychology informed self-discovery workbook, and part contemplative prayer survey. Beth and David masterfully weave together personal stories, spiritual direction session narratives, guided scripture meditations, quotes from spiritual direction masters, and reflection questions to form an engaging book that draws the reader deeper into reflection on God’s work and the terrain of the reader’s own spiritual journey.
One of the things I loved most about this book was the active God that it portrays and assumes. Many Christians today are functional Deists, who don’t experience an active God who initiates relationship and is alive and at work in their lives, not so with Beth and Dave Booram. Their first chapter begins with an exploration of God encountering Moses through the burning bush. While we may not be Moses, we are invited to live our lives on the lookout for the same God who puts “shimmering attractions” in our lives that if we respond to, lead us deeper into connection with God.
Because our God is active and involved in our lives, the Boorams invite us to overcome “our inner agnostic,” respond to God’s presence and be drawn closer to God. Spiritual direction, then, becomes a place to notice and reflect on the work of God in our lives, which further requires self-exploration as we come to know the terrain of our spiritual lives.
Read the rest of the review here.