A Dynamic God

When Nancy Mairs published her "spiritual autobiography" Ordinary Time, Kathleen Norris greeted it in the New York Times Book Review as "a remarkable accomplishment," calling Mairs "a relentlessly physical writer, as fiercely committed to her art as to her spiritual development." Mairs's new book on spirituality describes the alternative brand of Catholic worship that she observes in the American Southwest. Raised Congregationalist in New England, Mairs is a convert to Catholicism. She is also feminist, radical, political activist—and all this in a church that tends to scorn her kind of progressive iconoclasm. A Dynamic God explores why and how Mairs deals with those contradictions and still identifies Catholic (Zen Catholic, as she sometimes says), and what she finds to love in that tradition. Doctrinally, Mairs parts ways with the mainstream Church with few regrets. The people she worships with celebrate communion in each other's homes without a priest, discuss politics, and defy Church opposition. But the Catholic rituals and imaginative structures that Mairs loves shape her life. In the Latino image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, for instance, she finds inspiration for a commitment to social justice. In her unmistakable, vibrant voice, she writes about sin and abundance; understanding vocation in a life circumscribed by multiple sclerosis; and celebrating life.