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New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up in us desire to serve you, to live peacefully with our neighbors and all your creation, and to devote each day to your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

"A Liturgy for Morning Prayer," Upper Room Worshipbook

Used by permission from the Book of Common Worship, © 2018 Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. This prayer appears in “A Liturgy for Morning Prayer” in Upper Room Worshipbook.

Reluctant Pilgrim

A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert's Search for Spiritual Community

Enuma Okoro • October 2010

BUY Print $14.99

BUY eBook (Available in ePub or Kindle) $9.99

Finalist in the "Best Books 2010" Awards

"This is one of those books that you read and then have to sit back or curl up in a ball and 'be still and know.' In these honest, tear-stained pages are clear signs that there is a 'Hound of Heaven' hunting us down—this Spirit that is stalking us with love, winking at us with miracles, tickling us with grace, subverting everything that could destroy us, and whispering in our ears that we are truly beloved."

—Shane Claiborne
Author, activist, recovering sinner

Love God, but not so sure about church? If you've ever had doubts or felt the gnawing need to examine your interior life, you'll find a trustworthy companion in Enuma Okoro, a purse-shopping, tea-sipping, shaky follower of Jesus who wouldn't mind meeting a guy who loves God and has decent hair.

But after her father's unexpected death, her grief seems to morph into the panicky feeling that God wants something more from her, like maybe becoming a nun.

As she seeks to unravel those feelings, Okoro takes us back to the places that formed her, from her first years in church at a parish in Queens, New York, to her years in West Africa where she collected crucifixes along with Richie Rich comic books, to her studies in Europe and the United States.

Part Augustine, part Jane Austen with a side of Anne Lamott, Okoro attempts to reconcile her theological understanding of God's call to community with her painful and disappointing experiences of community in churches where she often felt invisible, pigeonholed, or out of place.

At turns snarky and luminous, laugh-out-loud funny and vulnerably poignant, Reluctant Pilgrim is the no-holds-barred account of a woman who prays to savor God's goodness and never be satisfied. It is a daring, insightful, and deeply moving field guide for the curious, the confused, and the convicted.


Categories: Discipleship, Women
Enuma Okoro is a writer, speaker, and retreat leader. She graduated from Duke University Divinity School and served as director of the Center for Theological Writing there. She is the author of Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert's Search for Spiritual Community and Silence and Other Invitations of Advent. Okoro is a coauthor, with Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America's Spirituality page and in The Christian Century.

ISBN: 978-1-935205-10-4

Kindle ISBN: 978-1-935205-12-8

EPub ISBN: 978-1-935205-15-9

Imprint: Fresh Air

Pub Date: October 2010

Trim Size: 6 in (w) x 9 in (h) x 0.4232 in (d)

Page Count: 192

BISAC Categories: RELIGION / Christian Living / Spiritual Growth

BISAC1: REL012120

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This is one of those books that you read and then have to sit back or curl up in a ball and “be still and know.” In these honest, tear-stained pages are clear signs that there is a “Hound of Heaven” hunting us down . . . this Spirit that is stalking us with love, winking at us with miracles, tickling us with grace, subverting everything that could destroy us, and whispering in our ears that we are truly beloved. Shane Claiborne Author, activist, recovering sinner www.thesimpleway.org

Okoro's story about one woman's yearning for holy community with God and others is jazzy, bitingly funny, wistful, and poignant. It is terrifyingly honest and, above all else, very beautiful. Phyllis Tickle General Editor, The Seven Ancient Practices Series

If indeed it is the truth that sets us free, this book's honest account of life in and out of the community clled church has power to liberate a generatioin desperate for authentic relationship. Enuma is the real deal. Follow her to freedom. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Author, speaker, and new monastic

Books by Enuma Okoro