This wry memoir tackles twelve different spiritual practices in
a quest to become more saintly, including fasting, fixed-hour
prayer, the Jesus Prayer, gratitude, Sabbath-keeping, and
generosity. Although Riess begins with great plans for success
("Really, how hard could that be?" she asks blithely at the start
of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation
that she is failing--not just at some of the practices, but at
every single one. What emerges is a funny yet vulnerable story of
the quest for spiritual perfection and the reality of spiritual
failure, which turns out to be a valuable practice in and of
itself.
Praise for "Flunking Sainthood: "
" "Flunking Sainthood" is surprising and freeing; it is fun and
funny; and it is full of wisdom. It is, in fact, the best book on
the practices of the spiritual life that I have read in a long,
long time." - Lauren Winner, author of "Girl Meets God" and
"Mudhouse Sabbath"
Jana Riess reminds us that saints are different from most of us:
They are special, we are barely normal. They get it right, we
rarely get it. They see God, we strain to see much of anything.
And, Jana is no saint. Rather than climbing to the pinnacle and
sitting on a pedestal to tell us how it could be, Jana slides right
next to us and reminds us that sainthood is overrated. With humor
and insight she whispers to is that our lives matter just as they
are. She prods us to never let our failures hold us back. She calls
us to something greater than spiritual success - ordinary
faithfulness.
"Flunking Sainthood" is the book I'm giving to my friends who
are seeking to make sense of their emerging faith. - Doug Pagitt,
author of "A Christianity Worth Believing "
"Jana Riess may have flunked at sainthood, but she's written a
wonderful book. It's both reverent and irreverent, and it will make
you want to become a better Christian -- or Jew, or Muslim, or
Zoroastrian, or Jedi, or whatever you happen to be." - AJ Jacobs,
author of "The Year of Living Biblically"
"Warm, light-hearted, and laugh-out-loud funny, Jana Riess may
indeed have flunked sainthood, but this memoir assures us that she
is utterly and deeply human, and that is something even more
wonderful. Honest and sincere, she will endear you from page one."
-- Donna Freitas, author of "The Possibilities of Sainthood"
"With a helpfully hilarious account of her own grappling with
godliness, Jana Riess proves to be a standup historian
well-practiced in the art of oddly revivifying self-deprecation.
She loves her guides, historical and contemporary, even as she
finds them alternately impractical, harsh, or "infuriatingly
jolly." The book is freaking wonderful--a candid and committed tale
of prayers that resists supersizing and spirituality that has no
home save the glory and the muck of the everyday."--David Dark,
author of "The Sacredness of Questioning Everything"
"Jana Riess's new book is a delight--fun, funny, engaging and a
powerful reminder that the greatest work in our lives is not what
we'll do for God but what God is doing in us." --Margaret Feinberg,
www.margaretfeinberg.com, author of "Scouting the Divine" and
"Hungry for God"
""Flunking Sainthood" allows those of us who have attempted new
spiritual practices-- and failed-- to breathe a great sigh of
relief and to laugh out loud. Jana Reiss's expose of her year-long
and less-than-successful attempts at eleven classic spiritual
practices entertains and educates us with its honesty and
down-to-earthiness. In spite of Jana's paltry attempts at piety and
her botched prayer makeovers, God showed up in the surprising,
sneaky ways that only God does.Jana is the kind of girlfriend I
like to have--hilarious, smart, stubborn, irreverent, and totally
gaga over God. She writes in the unfiltered, uncensored way I'd
write if I had the skill and the guts (Oh sorry, Mom, I meant
gumption, not guts.)" --Sybil MacBeth, author of "Praying in
Color"