Chicago Tribune Article on Flunking Sainthood Every Day:
Spiritual roundup: ##039;The Norton Anthology of World Religions##039; Flunking Sainthood Every Day: A Daily Devotional for the Rest of Us, by Jana Riess, Paraclete, 328 pages, $21.59

Roundup: Books for the soul
If you##039;re inspirationally inclined — meaning you tend to rip wisdom-steeped paragraphs out of whatever your read and pin them prominently wherever they##039;ll stir you to action (the pantry, the dashboard, tucked under the toothpaste) — this little book has, effectively, hauled out the scissors, mastered the clipping and pasting, and packed a year##039;s worth of finely curated wisdom into its pages.

And these aren##039;t your everyday inspirers, the usual host of holy thinkers. Here, you##039;ll find the likes of Marmee from Louisa May Alcott##039;s #quot;Little Women#quot; or A.A. Milne##039;s #quot;Winnie the Pooh.#quot; You##039;ll find Annie Dillard at her literary best, and St. Augustine of Hippo, C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton, for a sweep through the centuries. Kathleen Norris and Desmond Tutu are among the enlightened. The index at the back of the book will help you put your finger on thinkers from Angelou, Maya, to Singer, Isaac Bashevis.

It##039;s a book of daily readings centered on 12 spiritual practices Jana Riess explored in her wry and deeply humble 2011 memoir, #quot;Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor.#quot; Riess made it abundantly clear back then that trying and failing is more or less the whole point. And in her latest work, she offers day-by-day #quot;courage to laugh at our shortcomings as we pick ourselves up to try, once again, to inch just a little closer to God.#quot;

While it##039;s written with an eye and an ear to Christianity, this is a book that transcends denominations.

Flunking Sainthood Every Day: A Daily Devotional for the Rest of Us
www.paracletepress.com
Flunking Sainthood Every Day: A Daily Devotional for the Rest of Us – Over one year recounted in Flunking Sainthood, Riess failed twelve different spiritual practices. To her surprise, thought, she …