Julie Perrin, Tender: Stories that lean into kindness, MediaCom Education Inc., ISBN 781925722192
Every generation throws up popular reflection on how best to live. Much of it comes from within religious traditions. It is designed to help people reflect on their lives by building bridges betwee religious traditions and the world in which the reader lives. It is instructive to note how its style and emphases vary with changes in the religious and broader culture.
Julie Perrin's recent book Tender, a collection of short reflections, grouped thematically, is splendid in its own right. It is spare and elegant in its writing, inclusive in its address and open-ended in its invitation to reflection. It also offers an occasion to reflect on the ways in which spiritual writing has changed.
Seventy years ago much spiritual writing was based in the language, ritual practices and shared faith of religious communities. Readers outside the community would normally feel themselves made outsiders. A reader wandering along shelves of spiritual books would look first for their denominational origin to see if they were Anglican, say, or Catholic. If readers drew on their own experience or on contemporary news, they usually did so simply to illustrate a point already made conceptually.
Fifty years ago many churches were becoming less tribal, ascription to faith was less certain, and people looked to a range of authorities when seeking wisdom. Though spiritual writers generally worked within a particular tradition, they also drew on other Christian and religious traditions and appealed to psychology and other secular sources. The writing was often exploratory rather than didactic. Readers measured it, not by its denominational solidity, but by its spiritual depth.
Today another genre coexists with those earlier ones. In it, writers with a strong and questioning faith address a general audience, using anecdotes, inherited wisdom, contemporary social debates and a broad cultural reference to encourage their readers to move beyond inherited prejudice and ask themselves what really matters. The heart of the exercise is to find the right words that will disclose the depth in ordinary experience. The writing encourages readers to pay attention to the world around them, to wonder, and to celebrate God's presence there. Readers evaluate it by the quality of the writing and its attentiveness to the depth of ordinary human experience.
Among writers familiar in Australia who write in this vein are Michael McGirr, Terry Monagle, Pádraig Ó Tuama and the much missed Brian