Table of Contents

Walking a Literary LabyrinthPrologue

The ABCs of the Self

First Steps to Interiority
Reflection. Take And Eat: The Act of Reading

"Take And Read"
A Turning Point
Reflection. Sacramentality: The Book and the World

"Not by Bread Alone"
Spiritual Reading in a Literary Desert
Reflection. Pilgrams and Monks: Reading and Praying

The Circle Widens
Theology as Spiritual Reading?
Reflection. Pleasure: Wasting Time for the Sake of God

Recovering The Self
Stories: Fact and Fiction
Reflection. The Grammar of The Spirit

Alone at the Center?
Intimacy in Reading and Prayer
Reflection. Poetry: A Deeper Intimacy

Our Bodies, Our Selves
The Erotic in Spirituality and in Literature

A Literary Contemplatio ad Amorem
Imagination: Faith, Hope, and Love

Epilogue
"Give Beauty Back": An Apologia

Recommended Reading
Fiction
Short Pieces That Have Made Me Laugh
Nonfiction
Biography and Autobiography
Spiritual Reading and Theology
For the Theologically Minded

Index

About the Author

Nancy M. Malone, O.S.U., is an Ursuline nun with a degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School. She was an editor at Religion and Intellectual Life and a coeditor of Cross Currents.

Reviews

"Nancy Malone will shatter whatever stereotypes you carry in your mind about nuns. She is an extraordinary woman--and an extraordinary reader."