Review_NONFICTION
64 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Review_NONFICTION
Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets:
Meditations on Letting Go and
Finding True Freedom
Mark S. Burrows and Jon M. Sweeney.
Hampton Roads, $16.95 trade paper (240p)
ISBN 978-1-57174-847-8
Poet Burrows and scholar Sweeney
(Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart) collect
meditations derived from the writings of
14th-century mystical Dominican friar
Meister Eckhart in this moving selection of
poetic interpretations based on his quota-
tions. The authors have translated Eckhart’s
original sermons and academic texts, both
from Latin and German into English and
from prose into poetry. They consider their
work a “carrying over” of his insights for
readers “for whom the style of his writings
might not be easily accessible.” The book
contains five loose sections with titles that
suggest the paradoxical nature of Eckhart’s
work, including “Knowing Nothing” and
“Embracing Everything.” The meditation-
poems create a satisfying thematic arc if
read from start to finish, or they can be
selected at random as part of a meditation
practice. While most of the poems feature
God (and some specifically reference the
Bible), the insights often speak to a broader
spirituality, such as: “So you want to learn
to love God?/ Well there is no particular
way,/ since God is not to be found in any/
way...” These short poems, filled with the
Dominican mystic’s insight and levity, will
make for a fine introduction to Eckhart’s
thinking. (Oct.)★ On the Road with Saint
Augustine: A Real-World
Spirituality for Restless Hearts
James K.A. Smith. Brazos, $24.99 (256p)
ISBN 978-1-58743-389-4
In this engrossing reflection on the
human spiritual journey, philosophy
professor Smith (You Are What You Love)
uses the fourth-century Bishop of Hippo,
Saint Augustine, as a guide for considering
complex, timeless issues. Exploring
Augustine’s Confessions, which describe
his decades-long resistance to God and
gradual conversion to Christianity, Smith
asserts that Augustine’s insights into
freedom, ambition, sex, friendship, par-
enting, justice, and death have much to say
to seekers today. He analyzes Augustine’s
influence on philosophers including
Arendt, Camus, Derrida, Descartes, andWhat led you to write this memoir?
In 2014, as a Christmas gift, I wrote
an essay for my husband, about our
story. Writing that showed me there
was value in interrogating my experi-
ences while they were fresh—especially
because I was terrified of forgetting.
There were other reasons to write, too.
Since leaving the church, I’ve been
working with law enforcement
involved in counterterrorism and
deradicalization. I hoped that illu-
minating Westboro’s ideology— and
especially the unraveling
of that ideology—would
be useful to the people
doing that work. I wrote
for outsiders who didn’t
understand why I stayed,
and for people at
Westboro who didn’t
understand why I left.What was the hardest
part about writing the
book?
Writing about the period when my
faith unraveled was the hardest part.
Things were changing, and it didn’t
make sense. I couldn’t understand
how the people in the church were
going along with this, especially as I
started to see the contradictions. All
my life we had claimed that we were
loving our neighbors, and yet we were
praying for people to die. “Is there not
a lie in my right hand?” [Isaiah
44:20]. That whole process was so
awful, and when I was writing about
it, my husband would come home and
find me weeping in the fetal position
on the couch. There are certain mem-bers of my family who looked at that
writing process and asked why I was
doing that to myself. While it was
painful, it was also important to me to
write about it and process it while it
was so fresh. It has allowed me to
move forward fairly quickly relative to
others who left Westboro and still
struggle with the relational patterns
that we learned there.What do you most want readers to
take away from your experience?
I would just say: I think
that hope is incredibly
important. When we
lose hope that there is a
possibility of reaching
the other side—I don’t
even like to say the “other
side” because there are so
many sides, and breaking
it down into us/them is
oversimplifying—it
allows us to treat people
in a way that’s incredibly
destructive. That situation is exactly
what’s happening at Westboro. We
had so otherized outsiders that we lost
all hope for them. They were doomed,
and that’s why we could pray for them
to die. It pains me to see this attitude
in public discourse now, and so I hope
that people can take away from the
book that if even Westboro members
are well-intentioned and can change,
there’s hope for everyone. Take heart,
and be patient; change takes time but
it is possible, and it’s way more likely
if we can reach out and disagree
without demonizing.
—Hannah Pritchett[Q&A]
PW Talks with Megan Phelps-Roper
Long Time Leaving
In Unfollow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct.; reviewed on p.65),
Phelps-Roper recounts her experiences growing up in and eventually
leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.©^
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