One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp, Zondervan Publishing, $16.99 list price, hardcover.

I think this is one of those reviews that I'm going to take some heat over because I know this book and the author are very popular in Christian circles right now.  That's why I wanted to read it myself, because I had heard so much about it.

First, the positive.  I know several bloggers who are sharing their own 1000 gifts/gratitude lists and I'm always blessed to read them.  I have kept my own accounting of what I call "grace notes" for years so I understand the blessing of looking for things to be thankful for.  Voskamp shares from her heart with stories about her family and her own spiritual journey, and I think anyone reading this book would come away with a heightened sense of looking for God's grace in daily life whether it be having one's child come through surgery or the admiring the beauty of a full moon.  I appreciate the encouragement to live life fully right where we are without feeling we need to work through a "bucket list" of daring experiences or exotic locations before we can be fulfilled.

But, this was a difficult book for me to read.  Voskamp is obviously a poet at heart but the entire book is sing-songy with long descriptions and awkward word phrases and metaphors that I found distracting. It doesn't read as someone would actually talk in real life conversation.

As an example: "...tonight over our farm will rise the Great Hexagon of the blazing winter stars - Sirius, Rigel, ruby Aldebran, Capella, the fiery Gemini twins, and Procyon, and in the center, scarlet Betelgeuse, the red supergiant larger than twice the size of earth's orbit around the sun - and I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed.  The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two-stacked crystals the same; the trees in the wood draw in collective green breath to the still of January hibernation, and God in the world with birth ice from His womb, frost of heaven, bind the chains of the Pleiades, loose the cords of Orion, and number again the strands on my head."

Those who like this kind of poetic narrative with mystical undertones will enjoy this book.  Those who don't will likely struggle to find the message in the sea of words. For me, it was just too much page after page, and it took me a while to finish the book because I had to take it in small doses.

I was also wary of the mystical/contemplative spirituality/emergent church references, as she references those known to be mystics, panentheists, universalists, and New Age authors such as Brother Lawrence, Henri Nouwen, Annie Dillard, Brennan Manning, Sarah Ban Breathnach, Teresa of Avila, and Dallas Willard, among others. The influence of the teachings of these authors is apparent in Voskamp's writing. In the book Ann says, "The good news is that all those living in the land of shadow of death have been birthed into new life, that the transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun," a statement that coinicides with a teaching of the emergent church called universal reconcilliation that says that God, in his mercy and grace, will save all people, even those who don't receive Jesus as Savior.

In addition, I was uncomfortable with the chapter on making love to Jesus in which the author speaks of seeking communion with God in what can only be termed as sexual language, and actually describes in rather explicitly sexual terms an experience with God in Paris, taking it to a level that I personally don't believe scripture intends. Voskamp writes, "Mystical union. This, the highest degree of importance. God as Husband in sacred wedlock, bound together, body and soul, fed by His body, quenched by His blood . . . God, He has blessed - caressed. I could bless God - caress with thanks. It's our making love. God makes love with grace upon grace, every moment a making of His love for us. . . . couldn't I make love to God, making every moment love for Him? To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin. . . The intercourse of soul with God is the very climax of joy . . . To enter into Christ and Christ enter into us - to cohabit."

Scripture doesn't teach that our relationship with God is to be a sexual, orgasmic experience or that we are to know him the way Adam as husband knew Eve as his wife. Further, what are children and men supposed to do with the notion of making love to Jesus?

Despite the doctrinal and personal issues with this book, I tried to stay focused on the idea of living fully and abundantly in daily life by being thankful for the gifts that come from God's grace, no matter how small.  I am inspired to live more fully in this kind of gratitude but only as it leads me to Jesus as the giver of the gifts, not pantheism or new age spirituality.

This review is simply my opinion of the book and not a reflection on the author herself, whom I do not know personally.  Her writing style just doesn't appeal to me and I have to question much of the "theology" in the book.  With that in mind, I recommend careful discernment when reading it.  A best-selling book endorsed by celebrity authors and speakers and published by a mainstream Christian publisher does not guarantee Biblical truth.