White China: Finding the Divine in the Everyday

White China is Molly Wolf's personal short hand for God-Talk. In multiple, short essays she unpacks the presence of God in our daily lives in everyday concepts and terms. She struggles with tough issues such as "where is the biblical God who always answers prayer, who punishes the wicked and comforts the afflicted and rewards the good?" She does not believe for a moments that God wills suffering. Her response is that this is a world still subject to the three great necessary wild cards of biology, physics and human free will. She sees God working through all this when we break through our constraints of fear, prejudice or the need to control. She tells us how God's grace is so deeply unjust that sinners never get what they deserve. Thank God. At the same time God does not put a particularly high value on comfort. Everything that is spiritually right is messy, and virtually everything that is extremely neat and orderly probably hasn't been kicked hard enough yet to show how messy it really is. God can look terribly two-faced at times. But this isn't God's problem. It's our perception, which is clouded by our own confusion to keep love for ourselves. We load our own issues, baggage, and confusion onto God and then complain that God has a problem. I highly recommend these well written essays about life and God in easily understood, every day language.

Some people would look at something and just see what is there. Molly Wolf has a way of seeing something and finding things behind and beyond it, things that speak of and to faith as it really is, full of bumps, bruises, dry spells and triumphs. From the first essay, "One Loud, Heroic Frog" to the last in the collection, "Kyrie Eleison (2)", each one offers an opportunity and an unspoken invitation to stop and look about, seeing God and grace in everyday things that we might just overlook. "White China" is a continuation of Wolf's journey through life and faith. If you're looking for dogma, rules or "Do this and everything will be fine," this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for one woman's experience that can serve as a window to a new way of seeing and experiencing faith, order this one now.

In this book of short essays, Molly Wolf takes us on a faith journey through the seemingly ordinary events, places and experiences of life. She is able to see under and beyond the ordinariness, to glimpse the extraordinary in a frog, a failure or ferry ride. It is a journey refreshingly free of dogma (although a cat plays a starring role). Her writing neither talks down nor dumbs down; she walks with her readers and does so with intimacy and grace. The book moved me to to laughter, tears, frequent nods of understanding and agreement -- and more than once it shook my soul to the core. This is a book best read slowly, each essay rolled around in the heart and mind as one would taste a fine wine. It seems especially at home on the bedside table.