The Sacred Body: Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture by David Jasper, and: Between Truth and Fiction: A Narrative Reader in Literature and Theology by David Jasper, Allen P. Smith (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 159 nuance of the poet's word choice and the historic situations alluded to in the poetry. My only complaint is that the print is a bit small for late night reading. Nevertheless, the layout and design of this volume, enhanced by an inviting cover photographed by the author, is stunning and sized to tuck easily into purse or backpack to accompany one's own journey. Useful, too, is the extensive bibliography of primary, secondary, literary, and devotional sources that reveal not only the author's personal interest in all things Celtic, but also her meticulous effort to provide non-scholars with the best distillation of our Celtic theological heritage. To be both scholar and poet is a rare combination. To her credit, Thurston flaunts neither. Rather, BelongingtoBorderscelebrates ajourneythat isboth personal and universal and offers readers an integrated experience that is as uplifting as it is challenging. This little gem resists presenting readers with a facile and trendy veneer of what I might call Celticism; instead, in the tradition of Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas, Ruth Bidgood, Anne Cluysenaar, and Rowan Williams, Thurston is another voice of truth, one who understands the interplay of inner and outer landscapes by poignantly and pointedly illustrating the "primeval in the external world" and the "primal within ourselves" (xi). Those immersed in Celtic studies, as well as newcomers to the field, will find this little volume a welcome addition to their library and their reflection; those serious about pursuing their own spiritual journey will find nourishment and new ways of praying about and belonging to the natural world. All readers, I dare say,will experience what the author describes in her poem about candles at a requiem mass: "a receiving and releasing / of the gifts of light" (98). Monica Weis S.S.J. Nazareth College The Sacred Body: Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture. By David Jasper. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009. ISBN 948-1-60258-141-8. Pp. xix + 236. $39.95. Between Truth and Fiction: A Narrative Reader in Literature and Theology. By David Jasper and Allen P. Smith. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010. ISBN978-160258 -319-1. Pp. x + 179. $39.95. These two books read well together, because Between Truth and Fiction consists of short excerpts of texts that illustrate the ideas developed in The Sacred Body and because many of them are discussed there. The Sacred Body offers a further development of ideas that Jasper introduced in his earlier book The Sacred Desert (2004), which, like this one, ranged widely over religion, literature, and art. 160 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Jasper spoke in the Preface of that first book about the personal "journey" that it represented and said that "the journey was becoming more than the academic work I was paid to do by my university. Yetat the same time it was very much to do with the nature, even the possibility, of doing theology now, and both where it is to be found and how pursued" (xvii). He speaks of TheSacredBody in similar terms: "At its heart is a theological journey on which I am still embarked, a journey that is incomplete and still struggling for articulation" (Sacred Body, xi). This is a book that simultaneously records and enacts that journey and evokes it for and in the reader. The Sacred Body does not, therefore, present an argument that could be the object of the sort of objective assessment one commonly expects in a review.Jasper saysexplicitly,"Mypurpose is not so much to establish a careful academic narrative, but rather to explore, repetitively and in unlikely conjunctions, a profound understanding of the nature of the body recognized in theology and the religious life, and by artists and poets" (6). What he does do, very effectivelyI think, is evoke a vision of life as sacramental (what he calls "liturgical living"), and in the process he sketches a theological paradigm with which to understand that vision and relate it to strands of the Christian tradition that harmonize with it: Eastern Christian traditions of kenosis (self-emptying) and apophaticism, especially in Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa, and the more mystical thinkers of Western Christianity, such as Meister...