As a college campus Chaplain, I keep my eyes open for resources to engage spirituality with my students. Many of them are coming from a deconstruction angle of some sort, even if they are just questioning their religion/faith for the first time while away from home. More of them are suffering from pain caused by the church when they or their friends/loved ones were told they didn’t belong in all the areas because of who they are as a human. In that space of pain and question, the chaplain sits, holding their questions and helping them find a way forward to be a faithful human even if it means walking away from religion.

Along came Spiritual Edge; Exploring the Boundaries and Evolution of Religion by Joran Slane Oppelt. This book is written in snippets- more like a blog post than a chapter. From Valuing the Via Negativa to Cultivating Gratitude, Oppelt takes on topics of faith and religious practices through unique lenses. I have read and heard about cultivating gratitude for years, but I have never heard it framed through the lens that explores a lack of it as a violence to self and community. Oppelt explores the role of responsibility we each hold for gratitude and the power gratitude holds on the self, as well as the community. In a world where it seems anger and negativity are the fuel of hate for the world, this one snippet alone gave this reader pause to consider a new way forward around gratitude.

As the Christian Church is shifting in volcanic ways, the author gives us tools to talk about who we are, why we do what we do, how we believe, and what it means to engage in meaningful faith and religious practice. While this book seems thin, it is rich with ideas and fodder for necessary conversations in both religion and the world. For this Campus Chaplain, I believe it will become a fast favorite for the thick conversations we engage in campus ministry and I cannot recommend it enough to pastors for small groups, newsletter, and sermon resourcing.