What a treat to read together two distinguished Catholic theologians who are eminently qualified to ponder the presence of God "within us and in creation." Anselm Grun is a German Benedictine monk who has written 300 books on spirituality. Leonardo Boff is a Brazilian theologian and is profiled in S&P’s Living Spiritual Teachers Project.

Both Grun and Boff are awed and enchanted by God as "the unfathomable Mystery." Theology is on the right track when it asks questions instead of issuing answers or edicts. Grun acknowledges a further mystery when he discusses God in us as "divine power." But perhaps the most important mystery of all is panentheism — God's presence in everything.

Boff celebrates the different phases in the emergence of the universe and then goes on to affirm the interrelationship of everything in the universe. This results in his image of the Holy One not only as Creator but as the Spirit who spurs our ecological actions and our pursuit of justice.

Becoming New is one of those books which must have looked good on the drawing boards but then turned out even better than expected!