DIVINE NOBODIES

review by

Larry Shallenberger

DIVINE NOBODIES: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the Unlikely People Who Help You)

by Jim Palmer

(W Publishing Group)

Reader Appeal: Adults

Genre: Religion / Spirituality

In his insightful book Soul Survivor, Phillip Yancey suggests that Frederick Buechner created a new genre of Christian literature; the spiritual memoir told free of religious jargon and told with raw authenticity. Buechner broke new ground as a pastor and author by writing about faith, not as it ought to lived, but as he lived it, as a fallible human filled with doubts, anxiety and imperfection. Prior to Buechner, much of what passed for spiritual journals were self-serving autobiographies that air-brushed away the author’s imperfections.

Finding a writer able to be simultaneously vulnerable and an spiritual was, and is, rare. Too often the language of "ought" overtakes the language of "is." Consequently many of the books in the evangelical world which are intended to provoke spiritual growth settle for passing out the latest God-talk and slogans instead. In recent years, other authors are writing on the path that Buechner pioneered: Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, and most recently Jim Palmer.

Palmer is a writer who appears to have learned to embrace his imperfect humanity and a God who is comfortable to enter that life anyway. Divine Nobodies chronicles how Palmer got to that place. In what now feels like a past life, the author had been a rising star in the world of evangelical leaders. At the time, he peddled Jesus-mottos, but never experienced the grace of God moving in among the hurts of his childhood. Jim's ascent into mega-church heights stalled when his marriage fell apart.

Divine Nobodies is the story of God rebuilding Jim's spirituality by placing a line of ordinary "Joes" and "Janes" into his life. Each chapter of Divine Nobodies contains an essay about one of these "nobodies"-- a waitress, a mechanic, a homosexual believer, a wheelchair bound girl and her father among them -- and how these individual made Jim reconsider what it means to be spiritual. According to the author, God met Palmer in the temple of his damaged emotions, fears, anxieties shared his love.

Palmer's essay's are warm and gracious. He manages to describe those who hurt him the most with gentleness and honor. He also seems to grasp how fragile we all are, so he applies self-depreciating humor and vulnerability to disarm his readers and to guide them toward a God who collects "nobodies." I suspect that Divine Nobodies will resonate with the silent majority of injured people who fill our churches, people who want to connect with God, but who aren't sure how to introduce God to the dark corners of their hearts. This book is a loving guide which shows us how.

FAMILYFANS RATING:  A

 --LS