The Best American Spiritual Writing

This year's spiritual writing anthology is varied and stimulating, showcasing reflections on the faith of children, Bible reading, Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King Jr. Some contributions are journalistic, others autobiographical, others analytical. Sources are wide-ranging and largely ""secular,"" including literary reviews and such standard-bearing magazines as The New Yorker. With provocative and creative compression, the poetry in particular rewards with the fresh views that thoughtful writing stirs. Franz Wright's ""Prescience"" captures paradox (""Your unwitnessed and destitute coronation""). Among essays, Bill McKibben's ""High Fidelity"" impresses with its understated excellence. In ""Dr. King's Refrigerator,"" Charles Johnson's fly-on-the-wall conjuring of an imagined scene in the civil rights hero's life is as fresh as the midnight snack it describes. Unfortunately, in this anthology, ""best writing"" doesn't necessarily mean ""best written."" Some passages convey only spiritual ozone (""Everything seemed poised on the cusp between familiar and unfamiliar""), which ought to be a sin in the religious genre. Some work is pedantic (""Both were radically opposed to Kulturprotestantismus""). Although some of the material requires more contortion than effort, other writings, using varied paths, reach the goal of inspiring what Barry Lopez in his introduction aptly calls reverence.