Book Report: Grow Gently by Raynna Myers
The eminent Religious Studies scholar Huston Smith once said of the Tao Te Ching that “it can be read in half an hour or a lifetime.” A body doesn’t need to stress over the issues of inspiration of various texts to be capable of learning from them, wherever and whenever they come from, whoever wrote them. Remember how the Apostle Paul quotes “pagan” poets in his sermons and epistles. How many Christian homes are donned with the ubiquitous refrigerator magnet theology? “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
But all of that is a diversion for another time, because our friend, mentor, spiritual companion and anam cara, Raynna Myers, needs no such scrutiny or wariness. A single conversation with her, even from the happenstance encounters of complete strangers, has the capacity to envelop a person within the felt presence of God’s own loving nearness. She is gifted in that way, in functioning like a lightning rod between the earthly and heavenly planes.
She is also practiced in that way. Sometimes a person has abilities beyond their character, power that outstrips their own formation. Surely we have all encountered that sort of paragon. They are mighty in their effect, but they are disastrously incapable of sustaining their own output - their interior world was never developed to match their exterior ministries. This is not the case with Raynna.
My soul-sister is that rare individual whose lives within and without are mirrored in authenticity, verve and indelible gentleness. From that place - from the numinous and the real, from the human and the divine, from the griefs and the joys - she brings to us riches from the depths of her many wonderful encounters with the Spirit of Holiness. In her precious, invaluable little writ, Grow Gently, Raynna presents a path for sauntering our way into the same wholeness of experience. (It’s likely that many would think “saunter” was too flippant a choice of wording. I invite the reader to examine the etymology).
At this point, I would love to quote excerpts of the work if only to tantalize you, the prospective buyer, but I won’t do that. For one, I actually want you to purchase the book and walk with her yourself. You will not regret the decision. For another, I would do violence to her arrangement if I were to select a few lines only as something of a teaser-trailer. Like The Interior Castle by St. Teresa, you must read it in order if you are to read it at all. The innermost chambers would have little meaning to the sojourner who had not first passed through the outer courtyards and subdued all the pernicious reptiles along the way. So it is with Raynna’s composition.
In truth, this lady who writes to us from the West Coast today is very much like that great saint who writes to us from the convents of Spain centuries ago. The reader may balk at that, especially the Catholic. Let me remind them about the stories of Teresa’s quick temper and harsh wit. Her fit of prayer beneath the tree after surviving a capsized wagon while fording a river remains one of my favorite scenes to revisit in the contemplative endeavors. The saints of old, for all their grandeur, were especially human. And many of the moderns about us, if we have but the eyes and patience to behold them, are undeniably saints.
At this point, I can only tell you that I will always remember the very place in Raynna’s book where I got chills - literal, physical, full-body shivers. And I do not mean something as light and on-the-skin as goosebumps. No, these tremors ran through the whole of me, from bones to soul. There comes a point where she makes a sacred truth incisive with three successively compounding metaphors, and it delivers the potency of bringing me from the outer, to the inner to the innermost of my own little temple here inside of me in those few sentences she put down. Ever since that experience, I have struggled to remember a similar encounter in literature, and I simply cannot recall that kind of power settling down on me from the words themselves. I’m touched by what I read and study all the time. However, this was simply something else. You must read it to understand.
What’s more is the wondrous bonus of artwork from her family adorning the pages as you progress through the pilgrimage. First of all, the renditions are beautiful. Hollyhocks look like they are growing before you. Wasps appear sentient. There is an image of a wolf and a rabbit at rest that will shape your imagination of the World to Come. The sketches stand alone in their own worthiness of creative contributions to the interior discipline of worship.
Second of all, the renderings serve as an implicit reminder that these reflections come to us from a woman who lives very much in the real world alongside of us. Her insights originate from the mundane trappings of a wife, a mother, a homeschooler, a blogger and a photographer. She proves that there is no monopoly of monasteries. That is not to denigrate the many saints and works that have come to us from deserts and sanctuaries. However, sometimes we might think that only those who withdraw from the tedium of everyday living might ever approach Him with that kind of audience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Abraham, Moses and David were all shepherds. The Apostles were all tradesmen. God has always been in the business of sanctifying and vivifying the common with the fire of His Presence. He remains eager to invite us into that space with Him even today. He beckons us to Grow Gently.
Buy the book! Set aside an undistracted hour to immerse yourself in the waters of healing and the torrents of passage. Bring your favorite hot beverage with you as you prepare to step through the Wardrobe. You will find Raynna to be an eager friend and a most capable guide. Grow Gently will earn its place on the bookshelf of your study and the mantelpiece of your heart.
For my part, I will re-read Grow Gently on an annual basis, at the least.
The book only takes an hour.
It will also take the rest of my life… if I should grow so well.