In this soul-stirring collection of essays, Amy Sander Montanez, a licensed professional counselor, marriage and family therapist, and spiritual director ponders some of the wonders and surprises of her 20-year spiritual journey of transformation. What kind of insights is she talking about here?

At a retreat a keynote speaker talked about Jesus as the great receiver. We usually think of him in terms of what he gave to others. But as the Biblical passage about the descent of the Spirit shows, he was blessed from on high and given assurance that he was well-loved. As Montanez points out, it is still hard for many of us to receive the unconditional love of God and even more difficult to see the divine within ourselves. In another meditation, the author marvels over the surfeit of people in the Bible who just say yes to life.

Montanez is a gifted connoisseur of everyday spirituality. She likes the playful definition by Hafiz, a Sufi poet:

"Where is the door to God?
In the sound of a barking dog,
in the ring of a hammer,
in a drop of rain,
In the face of everyone
I see."

The author plays detective on the lookout for meaning, and she finds it in the way bricks are laid, the music of tenor chimes, the sounds of silence, loafing with God, and watching the movie Titanic.

The perfect quotation to sum up Moment to Moment is from Bishop Steven Charleston's Facebook page:

"I celebrate the simple joys, the everyday joys, the ones that slip past us in only a holy flicker . . . In every life there are these small spaces of grace, the tiny reminders that life not only goes on, but goes well."