Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace

Nora Gallagher tells a wonderful story about the everyday as well as the "big" events of life. Through a year of searching for answers and asking the needed questions, she goes beyond the usual metaphors to look at how to deal with the death of her brother, how to reconnect to her husband and most significantly, how to make an decision about which road to take next in her life. Readers - don't be put off by the religious words and subtext of this powerful book! It is not a book about going to church, but rather about the value of people, prayer, introspection, respect and bravery in all our lives. Relish its beautiful language and poetic flow. It is well worth your time to live in the world created by Ms. Gallagher!

Practicing Resurrection confirms what Gallagher's first book, Things Seen and Unseen, demonstrates-the holiness of candor and the well-crafted word. By inviting readers to join her on a journey of deepening faith and vocational discernment, Gallagher provides us the opportunity to experience how each of us ministers and is ministered to. Her graceful prose, her expansive heart, and her exploration of our fragile and tenacious humanness make it easier to practice resurrection. This is a transformative book-sacramental in its ability to incarnate both the doubt and the grace requisite for faith.

At the beginning of Practicing Resurrection, Gallagher is at a crossroads, sorting out how to live after her brother's death and wondering whether she is being called to ordination. She is haunted by the sense that, despite her busyness, her life is drained of meaning. She feels trapped in a small world, as if she's just going through the motions and painting by the numbers. What is the larger, wilder, and more vivid life that keeps calling to her from her dreams? And where is the door? As Gallagher makes clear, resurrection is not about dead bodies coming out of the grave. It is God's energy of renewal and rebirth, a compelling and sometimes dangerous vitality that calls us to live larger lives - to give ourselves more generously and to love without holding back. Written with the keen eye of a journalist and the open heart of a poet, this marvelous new memoir is a treasure.

This book aptly shows how some who feel called to ordination are confronted with the differences between ordained and lay ministry and thereby challenged to make a deliberate choice, one way or the other. As churches move toward greater empowerment of laypersons, some who may have sought ministry as vocation instead may stay outside the borders of the institutional church hierarchy. Whether that is good or not is an open question. Gallagher tapped into my own yearning to be an ordained Episcopal priest by showing the inherent tension in the church's ministry discernment process that, instead of leading a person to ordination, may in fact instill in that person the desire to work through the increasing role of the laiety. A very good read.

Nora Gallagher's openness and intellectual acuity in Practicing Resurrection are a gift, and we follow her more than willingly on her journey of discernment. This is a book for everyone who wants to live an examined life, regardless of their religious persuasion or belief. We laugh, we cry, and all along we keep turning the pages because she is also a terrific story teller.