Our Hearts are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir by Richard Lischer (review)

Reviewed by: Our Hearts are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir by Richard Lischer Deanna A. Thompson Our Hearts are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir. By Richard Lischer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 379 pp. In this book the author calls attention to the great cloud of witnesses testified to in Hebrews. He notes that these witnesses are not hierarchically arranged, an observation that previews his own unconventional, non-chronological exploration of twenty-one spiritual End Page 122 memoirists from various places and stages of Christian history. In the cloud of witnesses' image on the book's final page, the author reminds us of the words of Hebrews 11.40: "apart from us they should not be made perfect." The stories of the faithful in Hebrews, just like the spiritual memoirists he covers, are "small vessels of encouragement to readers to complete their stories" (358). We fellow travelers on the journey of faith have a stake and role to play in the ongoing witness of those who make up "the Cloud." Lischer's practice of listening deeply to these spiritual memoirs beckons readers to take in the wisdom of each witness and consider their impact on the world and on us. Even though the author warns the reader that this will not be a "greatest hits" approach to spiritual memoir, he cannot help but begin with Augustine (and who can blame him?). Augustine is the only memoirist who gets two chapters devoted to his life and work. Lischer illustrates how Augustine's narrating the story of his interior life basically invents the genre of Christian autobiography. His decades-long study of Augustine combined with his gifted ability as a memoirist offer not only an intimate portrait of this fourthcentury bishop but also important insights on his place among spiritual memoirists. The red thread running through Lischer's analysis is how God is a living reality for Augustine throughout the Confessions. And witnessing to God as a major character within one's life becomes the criteria and focus for the next twenty spiritual memoirists. Lischer's choice of memoirists is noteworthy for multiple reasons, most notably around gender parity. Eleven of the twenty-one covered are women, including both a number from the "greatest hits" of female spiritual memoirists like Julian of Norwich, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Dorothy Day, as well as several that are less widely known, such as Agnes Beaumont, Kathleen Norris, and Heidi Neumark. Featuring three modern memoirists of color—Harriett Jacobs, James Baldwin, and Richard Rodriguez—requires sustained reflection on the awful marriage of White supremacy and American Christianity and ongoing complex navigations of race and religion. Including Dutch Jewish memoirist Etty Hillesum—whose life is End Page 123 "one great dialogue with God," until it is suddenly extinguished by the evils of Nazism—summons Christians to reconsider whose spiritual testimony gets included within the cloud. Lischer writes as one intimately familiar with the craft of memoir and that enhances his ability to bring alive the circumstances and critical details of the memoirs. The thematic structure of the text also allows him to be expansive in his treatment of what memoirists are up to in their narratives. The section entitled,"The Stripping of the Altar" sits at the theological and emotional center of the text. That the author has lived through and written about his own experience of altar-stripping (Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son is his heartbreakingly beautiful meditation on losing his son to cancer) gives him the courage and wisdom to link the tragic stories of Peter Abelard and Heloise of Paris with the devastating narratives of Etty Hillesum and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, alongside the illness-infused writings of C.S. Lewis and Reynolds Price. This section in particular helps the text make more perfect these powerful witnesses who wrestle with God while attempting to trust the promise that we will be changed from one glory to another. End Page 124 Deanna A. Thompson St. Olaf College Northfield, Minnesota Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.