Originally Published on ronrolheiser.com

Full disclosure, I don’t read enough. A busy, pressured life affords me only small windows of time to read anything not directly related to my ministry. Nonetheless, I try to be faithful to a discipline I set for myself years ago, namely, to read eight to ten pages every day from a book (magazines and newspapers don’t count). In a year that adds up to several thousand pages.

Among those pages this year, which ten books would I recommend? Here’s my list.

Among books on spirituality, I found each of these meaningful:

• Richard Gaillardetz, While I Breathe I hope – A Mystagogy of Dying, edited by Grace Mariette Agoli. This is the book that affected me most this past year. Richard Gaillardez, as you probably know, was a renowned theologian at Boston College who died of cancer in November 2023. These are his reflections during the last months of his life. They show a remarkable faith and an equally remarkable love. He didn’t miss the hour of his death, but gave it away as a gift. This book is part of that gift.
• Mark Joseph Williams, Torrent of Grace, A Catholic Survivor’s Healing Journey After Clergy Abuse. A survivor of clerical sexual abuse, Mark Williams comes to grips with this in a way that leads to forgiveness and reconciliation, but only after many years of trauma. He tells his story in a way that doesn’t gratuitously spray guilt around but leaves everyone, not least the institutional church, with a needed challenge. Everyone should read this story of healing.
• John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become like Him, Do as He Did. John Mark Comer is an Evangelical Christian with wide ecumenical leanings and solid theological insight. This is an excellent book, a practical guide to deepen anyone’s Christian discipleship, irrespective of denomination.
• Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism, Your Life As Sacred Ground. Mirabai Starr is a believer and a mystic, even though she does not formally profess faith in any religion. She gives the phrase I am spiritual but not religious more depth than is ordinarily found there. And because she is not speaking out of any one religion or denomination, her words offer something for anyone of any religion or denomination.

• Peter Halldorf, To Love Your Neighbor’s Church As Your Own – A Manifest for Christian Unity. Peter Halldorf is a Lutheran, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox Christian. This book (which was handed to me by an Eastern Rite Bishop at an ecumenical celebration this past summer) outlines a vision for ecumenism and Christian unity which are more insightful and far-reaching than most anything I have read. This little book is a treasure.
• Brian Swimme & Monica DeRaspe-Bolles, The Story of the Noosphere. Perhaps more scientific than spiritual, this very readable book will help you understand both the origins of our universe and how those origins fit seamlessly into a Christian vision.
• Raymond E. Brown – Each year during those respective seasons, I reread Raymond Brown’s books on Advent, Christmas, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. Each of these (five books in all) is a small (under 90 pages) volume which is a major scripture course all by itself.
• Donna Freitas, Wishful Thinking, How I Lost My Faith and Why I Want to Find It. Known for her books in the area of sexuality, Freitas writes a memoir of her own struggles with faith and how that struggle was compounded by her personal experience of being sexually abused by a priest. What sets this book apart from other memoirs of this sort is the second phrase in her title, Why I Want to Find it.

Among academic books, I recommend this one:

• William T. Cavanaugh, The Uses of Idolatry. Charles Taylor in his classic, A Secular Age, speaks of how we now live in an age of disenchantment, wherein we no longer see anything behind empirical reality. For us, he submits, there are no angels, no spirits, no demons, and no gods, only empirical reality. We live with what he calls “buffered personalities,” that is, the world of spirits and demons no longer affects us. The consequence of this is that agnosticism and atheism now become easy options. Cavanaugh disputes that and argues that we are not disenchanted. Rather we are simply re-enchanted with different (empirical) spirits, demons, and gods. Our problem, he believes, is not atheism but idolatry. We simply are worshipping new gods and fearing new demons. This is an interesting read, though not an easy one.

Among novels, it hasn’t been a banner year for me, both because I didn’t find time to read many novels and because I was disappointed with many I did read.  But this one stands out:

• Anne Michaels, Held. Nominated this year for the Booker Prize, this is Anne Michaels at her literary best, though with a storyline that is not always easy to follow. But Anne Michaels is always worth reading.

And all of this is offered under St. Augustine’s famous dictum: Concerning taste there should be no disputes.