Debbie Blue wrote two of my favorite popular theology books of the past decade, Sensual Orthodoxy and From Stone to Living Word. She was also—full disclosure—one of the pastors at a church I attended for years. But I admired her writing before we ever spoke. In the five years since the latter book, her prose has only grown richer, wiser, and weirder.
This book takes up an unlikely subject—bird imagery in the Bible—and works it up into a meditation on virtually everything: marriage, ecology, cockfighting, militarism, the human need for an enemy, and the late-Victorian vogue for ostrich-feather hats (World War I killed that off). She is incapable of being boring, and she sends you back both to the Bible and to your backyard with a more careful, more attentive, more loving gaze. (Abingdon Press)
About the Author
Phil Christman teaches English at the University of Michigan and attends St. Clare's Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, Mich.
