Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

by Nora Gallagher

Overview

"Gracefully written and moving ... Things Seen and Unseen starts with Nora Gallagher entering the labyrinth of her life ... and ultimately it leads to the center of her being."—The Boston Globe

It started with an occasional Sunday, a "tourist's" visit to a local church. Eventually Nora Gallagher entered into a yearlong journey to discover her faith and a relationship with God, using the Christian calendar as her compass.

Whether writing about her brother's battle against cancer, talking to homeless men about the World Series, or questioning the afterlife ("One world at a time"), Gallagher draws us into a world of journeys and mysteries, yet grounded in a gritty reality. She braids together the symbols of the
Christian calendar, the events of a year in one church, and her own spiritual journey, each strand combed out with harrowing intimacy. Thought provoking and profoundly perceptive, Things Seen and Unseen is a remarkable demonstration that "the road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary."

"Like Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace, Gallagher is renewing the language of ultimate concerns."—San Francisco Chronicle

"The deep serenity that suffuses Gallagher's work, the lyrical cadences in which she writes, do not blunt the sharp edges of what she discovered in her quest for meaning."—Los Angeles Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679775492
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1999
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.23(w) x 8.03(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Nora Gallagher lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Table of Contents

	Advent	3
	Christmas	28
	Epiphany	59
	Lent	80
	Holy Week	107
	Eastertide	134
	Pentecost	158
	Ordinary Time	201
	Acknowledgments	235
	Notes	237

What People are Saying About This

Annie Dillard

A wonderful book. I laughed more often than I cried, but I did both. Nora Gallagher is perfect company, both witty and deep, and she describes church life and spirituallife with absolute accuracy.

Editorial Reviews

An appealingly modest book, which largely stays within reach of Gallagher's expereinces in the church and her personal meditations on these experiences....Gallagher is admirable in her total inclusiveness of all varieties of spiritual exercise as serious and valid religious practice.
—Women's Review of Books

Edith Milton

A gracefully written and moving account of her spiritual journey.
—Boston Globe

Robert Taylor

Enriched and enlivened by her experience in the secular world, a wry sense of humor and an admirable refusal to preach.
—Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Kirsch

An inspired book.
—Commonweal

Peggy Rosenthal

This is a book for those who doubt their faith, resist the institutional church, and yet are drawn to both. Faith, says journalist Gallagher, is "an accumulation of events and experiences of a different order." The author offers her insight into faith in artfully written chapters sprinkled with the wisdom of an array of writers from C.S. Lewis to medieval mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg. This is not, however, a collection of platitudes but a story of faith practiced in understanding and supporting a gay priest and in helping the homeless, hungry, sick, and dying, primarily through the Episcopal church to which she belongs. She avoids "cheap and casual religious jargon" to tell of work, doubt, searching--and moments of grace. -- Linda V. Carlisle, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville

Library Journal

Writer/journalist Gallagher's book is as much the story of a year in the life of her Trinity Episcopal Church as of her own spiritual development. During this year she struggles with faith and community, a fatal illness in her family, guests in the church soup kitchen, and the efforts of a priest who is a gay man and the church's vestry to decide whether he should be called as their rector.

Booknews

An appealingly modest book, which largely stays within reach of Gallagher's expereinces in the church and her personal meditations on these experiences....Gallagher is admirable in her total inclusiveness of all varieties of spiritual exercise as serious and valid religious practice.
— The Women's Review of Books

Edith Milton

A reflective, honest journey through the liturgical year with essayist Gallagher, whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. Her autobiographical musings stand out from among the spiritual introspections of other Baby Boomers. Like them, Gallagher's concerned with issues of authority and social justice, but her journey is far less solipsistic. Her refreshingly communal approach is guided by the rhythms and cadences of something larger than herself: the liturgical calendar. (In this, the author follows precedents set by fellow liturgical Protestants Madeleine L'Engle and Kathleen Norris. Her work is worthy of their legacy.) Beginning with Advent, Gallagher reflects on a single year in her life and in the life of Trinity Episcopal, her Santa Barbara parish. Quotidian concerns—-such as parish fund-raising and the soup kitchen where Gallagher works are interspersed with larger theological questions about sin, redemption, and the Incarnation. Through the year, she grapples with her brother's cancer while her temporary priest, who has revealed to the church's vestry, or board of directors (of which she is a member), that he is gay, struggles with the question of whether he should come out to the congregation. At Easter, the joy of resurrection is tempered by the death of a homeless man in the congregation and a stillborn birth to a parish couple. Gallagher juxtaposes personal sagas brilliantly with the church year; she recounts her own conversion (still in process) during Epiphany and her priest's early battles to overcome the "sin" of his sexual orientation during Lent (having previously spent ten years away from the ministry, he decided that Godaccepted him the way he was). At Pentecost, the church's celebration of the Holy Spirit, Gallagher claims that the spirit descended on their vestry meeting as they decided to hire their beloved interim priest as their permanent rector. Upon learning the news, the usually staid congregation leapt to its feet, applauded, and shouted affirmation "entirely un-Anglican" behavior, Gallagher notes.

Kirkus Reviews