Our Hearts Are Restless

Lives--we learn to live by attending to lives. In our hunger for coherence we are tempted to simplify the lives of others as well as our lives. In this beautifully written book Richard Lischer's truthful account of lives, Christian and non-Christian lives, testifies to the complexity of what it means to live well. In this time when it is by no means clear what it means to live honesty as a Christian, Lischer's account of these lives gives us a way to go on. This is a book of wisdom that took a lifetime to write. * Stanley Hauerwas, author of Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir *
Lischer has a storyteller's genius, a pastor's instinct for emotional authenticity, a preacher's eye for tracing gospel truth, a scholar's skill at critical inquiry, and a Christian understanding of love and suffering. As he opens up these faithful lives, he shows how true is John Donne's dictum: 'The art of salvation is but the art of memory.' * Ellen F. Davis, author of Opening Israel's Scriptures *
A book holy and humane, reverential yet playful, absorbing but provocative, challenging and deeply affirming. After reading you feel wiser, more compassionate, more perceptive, more comfortable with your own struggles and shortcomings—but above all, eager to revisit your own yearnings and searchings, and recognise in them the loving patience of the Holy Spirit. Richard Lischer has shown us where treasure is to be found, and reignited our desire to find it. * Sam Wells, Author of Humbler Faith, Bigger God *
This is an odd but oddly compelling book...Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, general readers. * Choice *
There is much to ponder in this humane and challenging book. * Paradigm Explorer *
Richard Lischer's new book, Our Hearts Are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir, is a cross between academic monograph and devotional guide, annotated bibliography and narrative compendium. Guiding us enthusiastically through a broad range of spiritual autobiographies, Lischer is as committed to motivating us to read these works as he is to explaining how they ask us to rethink modern autobiography in general and Christian autobiography in particular. * Matthew Mullins, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly *