Chances are if you're listening to this podcast, you're a reader. And you may have had at some point or another a profound experience with a book, probably with more than one. Books shape our lives, and they shape our spiritual lives. In fact, books have become particularly apt tools in the Christian toolkit for spiritual formation.

What is your relationship to reading and growth in the spiritual life?

Do books have to be great or deep in order to bear spiritual fruit? What makes reading a uniquely powerful avenue for spiritual growth? What are some of its dangers to the spiritual life? What is a Christian way to read, if there is such a thing? Do books and reading make us too "ivory tower" for the "real world"? Can books ever help divides between those with more access to elite education and those with less?

Today we'll hear a really fun conversation I had with the Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner, where we looked at some of these questions. Dr. Winner is a well-known Christian author and Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke. She's also Vicar of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Louisburg, N.C., and self-proclaimed book lover. (Book addict?) Our conversation takes us from childhood to incarcerated communities, to a top 5 of some of the books that have had a spiritual impact on her life.

Some of the books we discuss in the show:

Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy
At Home in Mitford
Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women's Prisons
Radical Orthodoxy
The Making of a Sonnet
Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking
Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews
In This House of Brede
Shakespeare Behind Bars: the Power of Drama in a Women's Prison
Ponder These Things: Praying with Icons of the Virgin
Kristin Lavransdatter (trans. Tiina Nunnally)
Catherine of Siena

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