Soul Cravings: an Exploration of the Human Spirit, by Erwin Raphael McManus, Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, TN., USA, 2006

Erwin McManus is, according to his website, "lead pastor and Cultural Architect" at Mosaic, a post-modern congregation in Los Angeles. "Mosaic is a community of followers of Jesus Christ committed to live by faith, to be known by love and to be a voice of hope." He is also one of the leaders of The Origin Project and Awaken, para-church organizations engaged in future visioning for the church. He is also, obviously for this magazine, an author of numerous books on Christian spirituality, the latest of which is Soul Cravings.

The book contains three major sections that deal with the human spirit: Intimacy, Destiny, and Meaning. The final chapter pulls all of McManus' thoughts together under the heading Seek. Soul Cravings is a kind of stream-of-consciousness flow of thoughts and prayers and insights that are meant to draw the reader deeper into his or her own soul. One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it has no page numbers; there are simply entries that stretch for a few pages, and then the reader moves on. Each entry could well be a stand-alone, but there is also a connection among them all. Each one requires time for the reader to digest, and the connectedness of the entries brings the reader back and forth throughout the book. The book is certainly different from most theological tomes with their page numbers, cross referencing, footnotes and bibliographies. This reader found it quite refreshing.

The book is a reflection on the human soul and the soul's craving for eternal intimacy, destiny and meaning. There is a real hunger in North American society for a meaning deeper than understanding oneself as a "taxpayer" or "consumer." Stuff doesn't fill the hole that is in every human heart. That hole is God-shaped, and can be filled with nothing else. Our children's generation, the twenty-somethings tell us over and again, "I want my life to make a difference." They have been raised in such a consumer society that they have come to realize early in life that rabid consumption just doesn't cut it any more. We could all certainly do with that lesson.

McManus writes of different kinds of intimacy, and how each one is a pale and unfulfilling imitation of the intimacy God offers us in Christ. In the end, he says, the faith is not about "right belief" but "right relationship." God is the ultimate in intimate love, and anything short of God, no matter how wonderful, is nothing. God pursues His beloved in the same way as the lover in the Song of Solomon traces the streets of the city in search of her beloved. The image of falling into the loving hands of Jesus is strong.

McManus also deals with ultimate destiny. In our world, we speak a lot about the journey, and we acknowledge the journey's importance. Yet without a destiny, a journey simply becomes traveling with no particular reason or goal. What is the destiny of the human soul? McManus states, "We humans are most alive when we passionately pursue our dreams, live with purpose and have a sense of destiny…. Bottom line: we cannot live the life of our dreams without an irrational sense of destiny" (Destiny: Entry #1). The image of life as journey without a sense of destiny can sometimes lead to a sense of fatalism. Fatalism has no place in the Christian faith since God has shown us our destiny already, indeed clearly, through Jesus Christ, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."

Finally, McManus touches on the issue of meaning. Is there meaning in our lives, or is everything just dumb luck? It's a question everyone asks at one point or another. McManus uses the memory of shooting a small bird with his pellet gun when he was about seven years old. What was it that brought that bird and that pellet together at the same place at the same time? Was something greater at play, or was it just an accident? Like the author of Ecclesiastes suggests, is everything just meaningless?

We humans can deal with mystery-it can bring us alive. Meaninglessness, however, paralyzes. If we believe that life has no rhyme or reason, then what's the point? McManus refers to Solomon, to whom the book of Ecclesiastes is attributed and who was regarded as the wisest person of his day. Solomon decided to run from God rather than to God, searching for meaning in all the wrong places. At the end, like T.S. Eliot, he came back to the beginning again for the first time. "Having searched the world for meaning, Solomon concludes that life is meaningless without God and that only in God will we ever find the meaning our souls long for" (Meaning: Entry # 3).

Soul Cravings is certainly readable. Its stories delight and challenge and lead the reader to places and thoughts he or she may never have pondered. McManus draws us deeper into our own souls-a place we would all do well to explore with the passion and vulnerability he shows. In understanding our souls in the light of God's love for us, we can begin to fathom wherein lie true intimacy, destiny and meaning. Thank you, Erwin!

Rev. Dr. Colin MacDonald is minister of Central United Church in Barrie, Ont., and a member of Fellowship Publications Board of Directors.

A Perfect Primer

Simply Christian by N.T. Wright, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. 240 pp. $40 (Cdn.)

The questions that Simply Christian answers may be the perfect primer for the United Church person struggling with the basis of our faith. N. T. Wright takes the perennial questions that our culture is struggling with and writes on the "very echoes of a voice" that we don't often perceive in our pulpits but deeply long to hear.

Wright offers a readable and informative solution to the mysteries of Christianity that may have eluded the average seeker. His work and scholarship is comparable to C.S. Lewis's classic summary of the faith, Mere Christianity.

Simply Christian would be a great antidote for the more liberal readings on the faith circulating in the United Church. This is the book to recommend to a friend with an aversion to organized religion or no knowledge of Christianity.

Fellowship readers should read Wright's book for the step-by-step and question-by-question format that makes it a simple yet exciting way to explain the challenge of our doubts and dilemmas. This book is for those who want to learn more of the historic Christian faith and move beyond the liberal controversies that can obscure what Christianity really stands for.

Rev. Scott Boughner is the minister at St. Stephen's United Church in Oshawa, ON. and is a Doctor of Ministry student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.