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99213 SIS 26 17 Book Notices.Indd 393 7/12/16 15:17 394 Book Notices Studies in Spirituality 26, 393-413. doi: 10.2143/SIS.26.0.3180817 © 2016 by Studies in Spirituality. All rights reserved. BOOK NOTiCEs The intention of these book notices is very simple: to draw attention to new spirituality books that could be of interest to readers of Studies in Spirituality. Henk Rutten, the librar- ian and information manager of the Titus Brandsma Institute, lists about 50 titles with short descriptions. They are not meant to be comprehensive and in-depth book reviews. Anderson, Elizabeth, Andrew Radford, & Heather Walton (Eds.), Modernist Women Writers and Spirituality: A Piercing Darkness, [S.l.]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 256 pages, ISBN: 9781137530356 (Hb.); 9781137530363 (Eb.). Concentrating on female modernists specifically, this volume examines spiritual issues and their connections to gender during the modernist period. Scholarly inquiry sur- rounding women writers and their relation to what Wassily Kandinsky famously hoped would be an ‘Epoch of the Great Spiritual’ has generated myriad contexts for closer analysis including: feminist theology, literary and religious history, psychoanalysis, queer and trauma theory. This book considers canonical authors such as Virginia Woolf while also attending to critically overlooked or poorly understood figures such as H.D., Mary Butts, Rose Macaulay, Evelyn Underhill, Christopher St. John and Dion Fortune. With wide-ranging topics such as the formally innovative poetry of Stevie Smith and Hope Mirrlees to Evelyn Underhill’s mystical treatises and correspondence, this collec- tion of essays aims to grant voices to the mostly forgotten female voices of the modern- ist period, showing how spirituality played a vital role in their lives and writing. Elizabeth Anderson is impact research fellow at the University of Stirling. Andrew Rad- ford is a lecturer in Anglo-American Literature in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. Heather Walton is professor of Theology and Creative Practice and co-director of the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. Ashley, James Matthew, Take Lord and Receive All My Memory: Toward an Anamnestic Mysticism, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2015 (The Père Marquette Lec- ture in Theology; 2015), 116 pages, ISBN: 9781626005020. This book explores the possibility of looking at the Christian spiritual life as a journey in which the way one remembers is gradually transformed, culminating in a union of memories with Gods memory. It does so partly in response to the need to remember correctly, both as individuals and as a society, both joyful events worthy of celebration, and atrocities that require lamentation and repentance. The book suggests that map- ping such an anamnestic mysticism draws on key themes on memory from the pre- modern tradition, provides a helpful perspective on the Ignatian ideal of contemplation in action, and, finally, can help us remember Christian martyrs such as Oscar Romero. 99213_SIS_26_17_Book Notices.indd 393 7/12/16 15:17 394 BOOK NOTICES J. Matthew Ashley is professor and chair of the Department of Theology at the Univer- sity of Notre Dame. Beavis, Mary Ann, Christian Goddess Spirituality: Enchanting Christianity, [S.l.]: Rout- ledge, 2015 (Gender, Theology, and Spirituality; 18), 194 pages, ISBN: 9781138936881. This monograph focuses on ‘Christian Goddess Spirituality’ (CGS), the phenomenon of (mostly) women who combine Christianity and Goddess Spirituality, including Wicca/Witchcraft. Mary Ann Beavis’s study provides ethnographic data and analysis on the lived religious experience of CGS practitioners, drawing on interviews of over 100 women who self-identify as combining Christianity and Goddess spirituality. Although CGS also has implications for Goddess Spirituality and related traditions (e.g., Neopa- ganism, Wicca), here, CGS is considered primarily as a phenomenon within Christian- ity. However, the study also shows that the fusion of Christian and Goddess spirituali- ties has had an impact on non-Christian feminist spirituality, since Goddess-worshippers have often constructed Christianity as the diametrical opposite and enemy of the God- dess, to the point that some refuse to admit the possibility that CGS is a valid spiritual path, or that it is even possible. In addition, biblical, Jewish and Christian images of the divine such as Sophia, Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and even Mary Magdalene, have found their way into the ‘Pagan’ Goddess pantheon. Mary Ann Beavis is professor at St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatch- ewan, Canada, and is founding editor of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. Bingemer, Maria Clara, Simone Weil: Mystic of Passion and Compassion, Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2015, 166 pages, ISBN: 9780718894269 (Pb.); 9780718844523 (Eb. PDF). A reflection on the life and thought of the French philosopher and mystical thinker Simone Weil, exploring her spiritual convictions from a Christian theological perspec- tive. Simone Weil reflects on the life, work, and legacy of an exceptional and enigmatic woman: the philosopher and French Jewish mystic of the same name. In a Europe where authoritarian regimes were dominant and heading, in a sinister manner, toward WWII, this woman of fragile health but indomitable spirit denounced the contradictions of the capitalist system, the brutality of Nazism, and the paradox of bourgeois thought. At the same time, her spiritual journey was one of zeal and sorrow – that of a true mystic – but her radical intransigence and passion for freedom kept her from actually approaching the institutional church. Curious and insatiable, she wanted to experience, in the flesh, the suffering of society’s least fortunate and the truths of other religions. Maria Clara Bingemer is full professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontificia Univer- sidade Católica de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Boyce-Tillman, June, Experiencing Music – Restoring the Spiritual: Music as Well-Being, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016 (Music and Spirituality; 2), 401 pages, ISBN: 9783034319522. This book concerns an examination of the totality of the musical experience with a view to restoring the soul within it. It starts with an analysis of the strands in the land- scape of contemporary spirituality. It examines the descriptors spiritual but not religious, 99213_SIS_26_17_Book Notices.indd 394 7/12/16 15:17 BOOK NOTICES 395 and spiritual and religious, looking in particular at the place of faith narratives in vari- ous spiritualities. These strands are linked with the domains of the musicking experi- ence: Materials, Expression, Construction and Values. The book sets out a model of the spiritual experience as a negotiated relationship between the musicker and the music. It looks in detail at various models of musicking drawn from music therapy, ethnomusi- cology, musicology and cultural studies. It examines the relationship between Christian- ity and music as well as examining some practical projects showing the effect of various Value systems in musicking, particularly in intercultural dialogue. It finally proposes an ecclesiology of musical events that includes both orate and literate traditions and so is supportive of inclusive community Bugyis, Eric, & David Newheiser (Eds.), Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015, 480 pages, ISBN: 9780268022426 (Pb.); 9780268075989 (Eb.). In the face of religious and cultural diversity, some doubt whether Christian faith remains possible today. Critics claim that religion is irrational and violent, and the loudest defenders of Christianity are equally strident. In response, this volume explores the uncertainty essential to Christian commitment; it suggests that faith is moved by a desire for that which cannot be known. This approach is inspired by the tradition of Christian apophatic theology, which argues that language cannot capture divine tran- scendence. From this perspective, contemporary debates over God’s existence represent a dead end: if God is not simply another object in the world, then faith begins not in abstract certainty but in a love that exceeds the limits of knowledge. The essays engage classic Christian thought alongside literary and philosophical sources ranging from Pseudo-Dionysius and Dante to Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida. Building on the work of Denys Turner, they indicate that the boundary between atheism and Christian thought is productively blurry. Instead of settling the stale dispute over whether religion is rationally justified, their work suggests instead that Christian life is an ethical and political practice impassioned by a God who transcends understanding. Eric Bugyis is lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Washington at Tacoma. David Newheiser is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. Chalmers, Joseph, Elisabeth Hense, Veronie Meeuwsen, & Esther van de Vate (Eds.), Maria Petyt – a Carmelite Mystic in Wartime, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015, XII, 292 pages, ISBN: 9789004291874 (Eb.); 9789004291867 (Pb.). Based on the discovery of an unknown Latin manuscript, this work provides surprising new information about the seventeenth century Flemish mystic Maria Petyt (1623- 1677) who wrote many letters to her spiritual director, Michael of St. Augustine. The book contains a transcription of the (unfortunately partly damaged) manuscript, an English translation of it, and several articles opening up new horizons
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