Erika Morrison's BANDERSNATCH is organized around four ideas viewed through Jesus' life: Avant-Garde, Alchemy, Anthropology, and Art. These four themes reveal a different aspect of God's "unorthodox creativity."

I love the way Morrison is encouraging us to find liberation from rigid religion that would attempt to put God in a box and keep us in a cage.

Favorite quotes:

“Glory is already down everywhere, waiting to be invited into our nothing. We cannot escape the encompassing presence of God because it fills the final bit of everything right down to the last atom in a shaft of sunlight receding below the edge of the globe.”

“Here’s how you tell the difference: If a religious system dominates or powers over you and tries to manage your behaviors or beliefs, it’s a human-made system. If a system is designed to come under you and support the growth of your love with Christ and your rare, creative, contributing self—if it seeks to support the health of your heart first, not manage your behaviors or beliefs—then it’s manifested from the Spirit.”

This is a wonderful, deep book. Radical and yet not radical at all - as it calls passionately to hear the only and true message, the call from God to be who we are have been created to be and to love as we are. To let go of the non-functional (and often that means dysfunctional, too) beliefs and systems and to look after our true, uniquely made selves.
Erika Morrison is as personal as she can be - open, honest, vulnerable, warm, passionate. If I could have a coffee with you, Erika, I would be more than happy (and more than curious! How could you go SO deep?). She is also the bearer of so often forgotten beauty, the beauty of be in love with your Creator - and this love has both ancient and totally modern clothing. Yes, you can love God even now, in these times.

This is passionate, beautiful (as beautiful as any touching poetry of words, and as much touching) is about the beauty of pain, of cross, of being together, too - and the glory of this love. It is stuff of madmen and poets and visionaries and prophets and mothers and workers and misfits and regulars, too. And the call to arms, too.

Beautiful, enriching book - as I say that as a practicing Catholic (who is going to stay the practicing Catholic, as it feels like the rightest thing for me and to me). But I can use and expand the way I profess my love for God, to use my unique gifts and to be the woman I have been created to be.
Thanks, Erika.