The medieval poet Dante depicted purgatory as "the Dark Wood" and described it as a place of failure and regret for sinners. Eric Elnes has a different view of it. He is a preacher, speaker, and host of Darkwood Brew, an online spiritual gathering place for an exploration of Convergence Christianity.
In this engaging paperback, Elnes maps seven gifts for those seeking spirituality in a post-Christian world. As many born-again individuals have discovered, faith built on certainty can collapse as easily as a house of cards. A much more reliable path is to acknowledge uncertainty as a gift that keeps on giving as we move through our days.
The next gift is emptiness which enables us to live in humility and to acknowledge the mysteries of life. This is followed by the gift of being thunderstruck where our days and deeds are put into motion by God. Getting lost is not valued in this competitive culture. But the spiritually mature person takes it in stride seeing his or her lostness as an opportunity to help others see in the dark.
Elnes probes a few more gifts of the Dark Wood: the gift of temptation, the gift of disappearing, and the gift of misfits. The author believes that the spiritually independent are slowly making their way to the Dark Wood where they can be tutored in the art of wholeheartedness.
