Synopses & Reviews
Keeping Faith chronicles award-winning novelist Fenton Johnson"s spiritual quest to forge his personal path back to faith. Sparked by the realization that he could no longer adhere to the faith of his youth, he embarks on an ecumenical exploration of monastic tradition, East and West, body and soul.
In this moving and thoughtful account, Johnson visits the Abbey
of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the monastery made famous by Thomas Merton in writings such as the Seven Storey Mountain, and he undertakes an extended stay at the Zen Center in San Francisco. He learns to
practice Christian rituals with a new discipline and studies Buddhist meditation. In the course of his journey, he comes, by way of Buddhist thought, to embrace his Christian faith and arrives at a new understanding of the deep relationship between body and spirit and a new way of practicing faith.
Synopsis
In his resonant account of a spiritual quest, Fenton Johnson examines what it means for a skeptic to have and to keep faith. Exploring Western and Eastern monastic traditions, Johnson lives as a member of the community at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky and at the branches of the San Francisco Zen Center. Ultimately his encounter with Buddhism brings him to a new understanding and embrace of Christianity. Weaving together meditations on Johnson's spiritual journey with history and insights from modern monks, Keeping Faith offers a blueprint for a new way of practicing faith.
About the Author
FENTON JOHNSON is the author of two award-winning novels, Crossing the River and Scissors, Paper, Rock, and a memoir, Geography of the Heart. A contributor to Harper's Magazine and the New York Times Magazine, he currently teaches at the University of Arizona.