By Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich. 112 pages
This is a lovely book. I say that in the hope you will pause over the word lovely. Perhaps you will linger with the phrase in the hope. Marilyn McEntyre pays attention to words and in this book we can learn to do the same. This listening is done with the conviction that the Spirit meets us in the places where we are stopped and summoned by a word or phrase. Incline your ear becomes a doorway into the nature of divine assurance; consider the poor is an invitation (or admonition) to consider our lives in relation to the poor. This is a generous, wise book that will make us more generous and wise because we have learned to pay attention more carefully to words that evoke such virtue. The author wants us to learn “to notice what we notice as we move from words to meaning, pausing where we sense a slight beckoning, allowing associations to emerge around the phrase that stopped us.” This noticing what we notice is an “act of faith that the Spirit will meet us there.” Paying attention is how we become spiritually mature. McEntryre is a poet and a teacher who knows how to pay attention.
