"Diversity is to be celebrated, for it is diversity that 'fleshes out' the sacred by apprehending it from different angles," writes Paul O. Ingram in Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience (Continuum, $22.50, ISBN 0-8264-1040-5). The author, who teaches religion at Pacific Lutheran University, uses categories in a twelfth century book from the Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition to structure this imaginative and compelling exploration of the value of interreligious dialogue in this postmodern era of pluralism.
All of the world's religions have tried to capture and contain the Sacred through myth, ritual, and doctrine. Yet Spirit is always wild, refusing domestication. So we see traces of the Sacred in scripture, in the modern world, and in our daily lives. Ingram demonstrates the spiritual adventure in crossing over to various religious traditions, learning new practices, and returning to our own religious Way with hopes for creative transformation of our lives. The author charts some of the exciting cross-cultural movements of the Sacred in ecology, women's spirituality, liberation theologies, and "the liberation of life from death's oblivion." The book closes with a doxological celebration of grace that is "witnessed by all of humanity's religious Ways." Paul O. Ingram's Wrestling with the Ox is a towering achievement in interreligious dialogue.