Summary: A novel about spiritual formation.
I am a bit cynical about Christian novels. It isn’t that I do not know that good Christian novels exist, I know they do. Many Christian novels are among my favorite novels. But I also know that there are a very large number of novels that are classified as Christian, which are not focused on art, but on propaganda. I am most opposed to the Christian novel as propaganda, but a second category, Christian novel as “safe” is nearly as bad. It is not that I think that everyone should read every type of novel or that appropriate boundaries should not exist for the content within novels. But “safe” should not be the primary category for writing a novel.
Novels are relatively recent inventions. Novels continue to evolve and change. Novels communicate emotion, empathy, stories, perspectives which we do not have, windows into the lives of others which we do not live. There is a role for communicating information in the novel, but it isn’t a primary role for novels.
I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day this year. I have not been perfect in that, but I have read a lot more fiction this year than I have in many years. That has in part forced me to find fiction to read. As a spiritual director, I was aware that the Sensible Shoes series existed. But it was not until hearing a podcast interview with the author that I decided to pick up this first book.
Sensible Shoes is about four different women who meet at a spiritual formation workshop. The facilitator of the workshop is a spiritual director. The women sit together by chance, but they become friends over the several months of the class and the reader comes to know not just their relationship with each other and God, but also their history and background that has led them to where they are.
This is a series and it is hard to talk about a different books within a series as discreet parts without giving away spoilers. The four characters are a young, newly married PhD student, who only comes to the class on the recommendation of her advisor. A second woman is a sheltered and scared widow, who recently lost her mother and who has a daughter studying out of the country. The third woman is an associate pastor on a forced sabbatical attempting to separate her faith and her work. And the final woman is a middle aged homemaker in a loveless marriage with a scandalous past. These four women are whole characters, but they also play into stereotypes of the different roles that women play in life.
I really did enjoy the novel and think it did a great job illustrating spiritual formation, the grace of being changed by the Holy Spirit, and avoiding the too easy answers that this could easily fall into. There was a real attempt at showing that change is slow and ongoing, but still, the change does happen quickly. I am in the middle of the second novel now and I know that Sharon Garlough Brown is illustrating in the second novel how initial change does not always work out in the ways that we think it should or at the speed that we think change should happen, but I do not think there is really any way that I would not raise this as a potential problem. Personally, I am in my early 50s, I have been meeting with a spiritual director for more than 12 years, I have been a spiritual director for several years, I have been a “professional Christian” my entire working life, and I can affirm that spiritual formation is a slow process.
There is an informational aspect to the novel. As part of the story about the spiritual formation class, the novel includes the teaching about spiritual disciplines. The reader, along with the characters, learn about the prayer of examen, lectio divina (spiritual reading), walking a labyrinth, meditation and other spiritual disciplines. One of the reviews on GoodReads complained about these spiritual practices as being dangerous. And that is one of the complaints that was highlighted in the book biography of Celebration of Discipline. Modern Christians have objected to historical Christian spiritual disciplines as being “eastern” or “new age” or “anti-Christian” for decades. But the presentation of these basic spiritual disciplines is good and while informative, it fit into the story without feeling too forced.
Right now all of InterVarsity Press ebooks are on sale (for the whole month of April 2025) and that makes it a good time to try one of the books if you have any interest in spiritual formation. Novels just give a different sense of sharing about spiritual formation than non-fiction books do. There are always things I would change because I am not the author, but this is a good book to give illustration to the Christian life being more than just rote bible reading and church attendance.
Sensible Shoes: A Story about the Spiritual Journey by Sharon Garlough Brown Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook