Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

"Gracefully written and moving ... Things Seen and Unseen starts with Nora Gallagher entering the labyrinth of her life ... and ultimately it leads to the center of her being."--The Boston Globe

It started with an occasional Sunday, a "tourist's" visit to a local church. Eventually Nora Gallagher entered into a yearlong journey to discover her
faith and a relationship with God, using the Christian calendar as her compass.

Whether writing about her brother's battle against cancer, talking to homeless men about the World Series, or questioning the afterlife ("One world
at a time"), Gallagher draws us into a world of journeys and mysteries, yet grounded in a gritty reality. She braids together the symbols of the
Christian calendar, the events of a year in one church, and her own spiritual journey, each strand combed out with harrowing intimacy. Thought provoking and profoundly perceptive, Things Seen and Unseen is a remarkable demonstration that "the road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary."

"Like Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace, Gallagher is renewing the language of ultimate concerns."--San Francisco Chronicle

"The deep serenity that suffuses Gallagher's work, the lyrical cadences in which she writes, do not blunt the sharp edges of what she discovered in her quest for meaning."--Los Angeles Times

"I came to this church five years ago as a tourist and ended up a pilgrim," writes Nora Gallagher, speaking of her year at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara. It started with an occasional Sunday visit, a shy toe dip into the Episcopal Church. Eventually she delved into a yearlong journey to discover her faith and a relationship with God, using the Christian calendar as her compass. What Kathleen Norris did for the language of the church in Amazing Grace, Gallagher does for the Christian calendar--finding contemporary meaning in an ancient calendar that is often misunderstood or overshadowed with oppressive dogma.

Starting with the chapter titled "Advent," and ending with "Ordinary Time," Gallagher speaks to the biblical and historical themes of the church's calendar, then offers a translation for living in America at the end of the millennium. Most touching is her raw honesty, whether writing about feeding the homeless in the Community Kitchen or the unglamorous job of caring for a friend with AIDS. Indeed, it is Gallagher's humble interpretations of faith that make her seasonal wisdom so trustworthy. "I learned something about faith, its mucky nature, how it lies down in the mud with the pigs and the rabble," she says when writing about the darkness of Advent. "...God is not too good to hang out with jet-lagged women with cat-litter boxes in their dining rooms, or men dying of AIDS, or, for that matter, someone nailed in humiliation to a cross." --Gail Hudson