Martin Shaw is not new to books or storytelling, but he’s new to Christian faith, and that’s part of what this book is about. We did not review his Mythteller Trilogy when it was published, but those books have had a cult following among readers who see the disenchantment of modern life. One reader-reviewer on Goodreads praises the first of that trilogy, A Branch from the Lightning Tree (2011), saying: “Martin Shaw makes me want to burn my possessions in a bonfire and disappear into the night with nothing but my grandmother’s ring, a tattered tome of medieval poetry, and a falcon peregrine for company.” He’s always been a writer and storyteller about wildness and the journey.
In this book, which is mostly memoir, we learn of his conversion to Christian faith, which began with tutelage from the Oglala medicine man and teacher, Wallace Black Elk (d. 2004). Unlike his forefather, Nicholas Black Elk, Wallace Black Elk was not a Christian; he was, in fact, opposed to organized religion because of the ways it damaged Native communities. But Shaw begins by telling us how Wallace Black Elk pointed him in the direction of Jesus, telling him, “The little hippie guy, Jesus. We knew he was coming. We’d heard his words. Long before white folks told us.”
This turns Shaw back toward the Christianity he abandoned “with full vigour at seventeen,” in part, because “I associate church entirely with hymns and sermons.” Instead, as this book goes on to praise and advocate for, Shaw discovers “Christianity as a liturgy of the wild…a wider, more alive, more embracing sense of the God of my childhood than I’d ever entertained.”
This book should appeal to those looking for something similar — but fans of Shaw’s music, mythic studies, and ecological storytelling may be disappointed by what feels like a turn away from what’s wild and intuitive toward what is tame and traditional. Still, others will be drawn to the wild ways that Shaw now understands passion, prayer, and praise. It appears to be a form of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in which he has landed — and the excerpt accompanying this review offers a sampling.
