Mudhouse Sabbath

September 29, 2003
Winner, who wrote about her conversion to Christianity in 2002's acclaimed memoir Girl Meets God, draws on the Orthodox Jewish rituals that shaped her young adult life to rediscover the richness of those customs in her life as a Christian today. Through her personal reflections on 11 spiritual practices, including keeping the Sabbath, prayer, fasting and candle-lighting, Winner illuminates the profound cultural and religious significance of each practice within the Jewish community and modifies those practices to enrich the lives of Christians who seek of deeper experience of their own faith. Taking care not to turn the rituals into legalistic regulations, the author instead cuts to the heart of each spiritual practice and shows, through examples from her own life, how it can fit into a gospel-centered paradigm. The chapter on the Jewish approach to mourning, for example, poignantly conveys the inadequacy in the all-too-short grieving process among Christians. On a lighter, humorous note, a friend's suggestion that she continue the tradition of attaching a mezuzah, or tiny scripture scroll, to the door frame of her home forces Winner to face her unwillingness to expose her Christian faith quite so publicly. As much as anything else it accomplishes, Mudhouse Sabbath—"Mudhouse" refers to the coffee shop where the author read a compelling Sabbath account one Sunday afternoon—succeeds in establishing Winner as a writer of spiritual substance and grace-filled style.