I have been friends in cyberspace with The Revd Rosemary Lain-Priestley, who  is Dean of Women’s Ministry in central London,  since I reviewed her book ‘Does My Soul Look Big In This’? earlier this year (SPCK April 2012). When she mentioned on twitter that she had enjoyed this book by Paula Gooder, I persuaded her (with not much difficulty) to review it for Lay Anglicana. Thank-you, Rosemary.

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The divine is to be found in the detail of human life and the extraordinary in the most ordinary of places. Having long been convinced of this, I was delighted to discover that a theologian of Paula Gooder’s calibre and compelling style has written a book based on the idea of finding God in ordinariness!

Everyday God: The Spirit of the Ordinary (Canterbury Press 2012) is the third in a series, the previous two having explored the ‘special times’ of Advent and Easter. The Church of England has two sections of Ordinary Time between the major seasons and festivals, and these are the trigger for this book. The author begins by arguing that ‘We need the ordinary in order to help us fully to encounter the extraordinary,’ and that ‘we doom ourselves to a life of dissatisfaction and disappointment if we cannot find some way of living contentedly with the everyday’.

The book itself is a lovely and engaging invitation to uncover the riches of life as we normally live it; to discover in ourselves the deep rhythms and patterns that enable us to sense and glimpse God in things we might be tempted to dismiss as mundane or at least consider unremarkable. It is beautifully written, with descriptions of life-as-it-really-is that will enable a wide readership to connect with its message. The author is a parent, tends an allotment, has a creative streak and loves the poetry of R S Thomas. These things provide varied seams of experience and illustration, shaping the book and rooting it in a life lived intentionally.

Through her expert commentary on thirty-three passages of scripture Paula drills down into the bedrock of daily life. She encourages us, like Moses, Martha and other biblical characters, to nurture within ourselves the habit of turning aside in order to notice, see and listen to God in the world. She sings of the Bible’s ‘unsung heroes’ and as she does so we see in their experiences our lives, our issues, our potential to connect with God.

She explores God’s choice to be found in the midst of mud, mess and Mondays, untrammelled by grandeur or royal protocol. She looks at the nature of the Kingdom and the miracle of all the ordinary things to which Jesus, in the parables, compared it. She points to the extraordinariness of what happens when we are called to something for which we are not ready, and find in ourselves the courage to respond to that call. And in the final chapter she looks at glimpses of glory in everyday life.

This is an extraordinary book in its ability to open up new perspectives on so many aspects of our life and experience: the significance and joy of which we might otherwise easily miss. The author’s ability to mine the scriptural material and come up with gems of connection and inspiration is deeply refreshing. An extraordinary book to be read anytime at all, but perhaps especially on Tuesdays, in term-time, in the Ordinary weeks of the year, all the better to discover God in the miracle of the mundane.

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This is what Dr Gooder says about herself:
Paula Gooder was born in Manchester, where she grew up. She went to University in Oxford where she did both her undergraduate and graduate degrees (first at Worcester College then at the Queen’s College). After that she taught for twelve years in two different colleges which train people for ministry (Ripon College Cuddesdon and the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham). Her research areas are 2 Corinthians and Paul’s religious experiences.
In the end she left teaching in colleges because she realised that trying to juggle looking after children, teaching and desperately trying to write something was impossible. So now she works freelance, teaching and lecturing to a wide range of different people and, at last, writing the many books that have been waiting to be written for a very long time.
She continues to juggle but now only has herself to blame when it all goes wrong.