Book Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

The Singer and the Song
An Autobiography of the Spirit
Miriam Therese Winter
Orbis Books 10/99 Paperback $15.00
ISBN: 1-57075-279-6

"We are not people of the book. We are people of the story. Too long have we focused on a printed page, reading the past into life, calling it forward into the present as though there were nothing now of note that might be designated gospel. Biblical stories, our stories, are one and the same story," writes Miriam Therese Winter, professor of liturgy, worship, and spirituality at Hartford Seminary. In this uplifting memoir, the four-time Catholic Book Award winner demonstrates how the Divine Musician has played grace notes through the words and deeds of her life.

The use of music metaphors is appropriate since Winter is a Medical Mission sister who has recorded a dozen musical albums, including the classic "Joy Is Like the Rain." Many of her folk songs are quoted in the book. An example: "You touched my heart and I began to sing, / to free the music deep in everything." Winter sings the praises of the insect choirs that provide nature's night music. She ponders the spirit world of angels and saints who provide rhythm for her daily activities.

Winter gives stirring accounts of her experiences in Ethiopia feeding starving people and in Cambodia working with refugees. The author's prose poems about a sojourn in India are quite unique. Whether writing about her battle with breast cancer, her thoughts on a domestic Eucharist movement, or her role in providing the Christian community with fresh images of God, Winter consistently challenges us to reverence the activity of the Holy One within the precincts of everyday life.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat