Book - Flunking Sainthood - A Year of ...

Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor - by Jana Riess

"This wry memoir tackles twelve different spiritual practices in a quest to become more saintly, including fasting, fixed-hour prayer, the Jesus Prayer, gratitude, Sabbath-keeping, and generosity. Although Riess begins with great plans for success (“Really, how hard could that be?” she asks blithely at the start of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation that she is failing—not just at some of the practices, but at every single one. What emerges is a funny yet vulnerable story of the quest for spiritual perfection and the reality of spiritual failure, which turns out to be a valuable practice in and of itself."      image & summary from goodreads.com

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Initially, publishers approached Jana Riess with an idea for a book -  Reiss would spend a year studying spiritual classics. She suggested that, along with the reading, she would experiment with a different spiritual practice each month. 

She decided on fasting; Sabbath observance; infusing daily tasks with a sense of God’s presence (finding spiritual value in ordinary tasks of our lives); read, study, ponder the Bible; simplicity & frugality; prayer – a month on centering prayer [really listening to God] & a month on praying at fixed times; gratitude; Benedictine hospitality; meatless month; generosity.

Of course, the doing turns out to be key to learning. Riess comments that often we can’t hear what God is saying until we do what He is asking us to do. (7) Towards the end of the book, Reiss reflects that “…the power of spiritual practice is that it forges you stealthily, as you entertain angels unawares.” (168)

Any spiritual practice, if it’s to become part of us and truly change us, has to be done for more than a month. Nevertheless, Reiss’s reflections on what she learned are interesting and insightful.