Brie Stoner may be new to authorship, but she’s not new to creative endeavors. A talented musical artist, she plays multiple instruments and sings in several languages (see briestoner.com). A popular podcaster, she used to co-host with Richard Rohr “Another Name for Every Thing,” and a few years ago started a podcast of her own devoted to conversations with artists of all kinds called “Unknowing.” It’s in its third season. She is also a painter.
A writer with an interesting biography, Stoner is the child of Baptist missionaries who worked in Spain, where Brie lived until the age of twelve. She writes about this in the book. But like many progressive Christian voices today, Stoner seems to have outgrown her faith. “I threw off the constriction of the church altogether in favor of a more mystical, universal, and earthbound way of understanding reality,” she writes in the introduction. One gets the feeling that her book is aiming to create a new understanding of human existence, and a vocabulary to match, to reinfuse a Christian framework that’s gone stale.
Stoner wants to help every reader discover their creative possibilities. She does this through “An Erotic Worldview Shift,” which is Part One. This means tapping into Eros: “the desire of life-force on its way to making more life.”
Part Two — actually, the author calls them “Acts” instead of “Parts” — is about locating and applying the Eros that we all have, into more creative lives. Stoner calls this “Turning Yourself On.” This includes teachings that aim to heighten human sensitivities, pleasure, intimacy, vulnerability, and longing. And yes, the allusions to sex are both deliberate and apt. (See the excerpt accompanying this review for an example.)
