Spirituality for Extroverts: and Tips for Those Who Love Them

Nancy Reeves, Spirituality for Extroverts (And Tips for Those Who Love Them) (Nashville: Abingdon, 2008) Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw The best news for my worship of God I heard last year was when my spiritual director said I was "allowed" to use bushwalks and gardening as spiritual practices. I love conversation, the outdoors and activity. Being quiet, staying indoors and doing nothing has never particularly appealed to me as a life-giving activity. For morning prayer, I prefer a jog and a chat with God than a sit and a read. I understand that quiet contemplation and slowing down can be a helpful corrective to my driven and workaholic tendencies. I also appreciate that God can speak to me and be with me as I am. Quiet introverted ways are not the only way to encounter God - "Hallelujah" says my extroverted soul. Spirituality for Extroverts gives me permission to name things I do to encounter God as spirituality. With my "tigger" self I look forward to talking it over with my "owl" wife, as Nancy uses Winnie the Pooh's friends to describe our respective personalities. Her book helps me think broadly about encountering God, not just through practices that sometimes feel more like torture than blessing, but through: * talking about faith with others, including seekers, spiritual friends, my spiritual director and small group buddies * seeing the sacred in people and nature, for me especially when I am rock climbing * singing, dancing and playing with my kids * prayer-walking, jogging, swimming and gardening * pilgrimage, inter-faith dialogue, reading and writing * reflecting on God in church and with worship music, but also in the coffee shop where I read this book and heard the longing for a better world in the background music lyrics. It offers numerous examples of extroverted believers, challenges to beware of, activities, discussion points and journal questions, and tips for friends and spiritual directors (especially introverts trying to keep up with our comparatively impulsive, energetic ways). In my worship, using that term in a broad sense of all I do to honour God, I don't want to be stuck in just "extroverted" ways. I long to celebrate ministry and retreats, outer and inner, loud and quiet, active and slow ways of encountering God. Spirituality for Extroverts is the best news for my spirituality I have read in 2009; right up there with my spiritual direction session last year that sent me outside to nurture my fruit trees, and up to Warburton each month for a bushwalk, coffee and mutual spiritual direction retreat with Jenni. "Either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we have lost the basis for seeing God in anything." (Richard Rohr) Darren coordinates leadership training with the Baptist Union of Victoria.