Everyday Miracles: Stories from Life

by Forrest Church

Essays discuss courage, fear, convictions, decisions, happiness, secrets, integrity, nature, loyalty, guilt, parenthood, and self-confidence

162 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1988

About the author

Rev. Forrest Church served for almost three decades as senior minister and was minister of public theology at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City. He wrote or edited twenty-five books, including Love & Death.

Reviews

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to fully enjoy this collection of autobiographical essays-with-morals by Reverand Church, written during the 1980s, given his later admissions about his life. He illustrates his wisdom on marital relationships with anecdotes from his own marriage (which he later ended by means of an affair). He mentions over and over again how enjoyable drinking is, while also describing the piteous lives of alcoholics he's known. I wonder whether Church (who later dealt openly with his own alcoholism) wasn't trying too hard to draw a thick line between himself and other problem drinkers.
The idea that writing these "stories from life" may have provided an escape from Church's real life problems is awfully depressing. In 1988 Forrest Church was given a rare opportunity to bend his personal experiences into cheerful little stories for the reading audience. Today anyone with a blog or a Facebook account can do the same thing. We'd probably all be better off focusing on reality.