Despite suggestions to the contrary, words are not always cheap. In reality, words- when formed with skill and artistry- have the potential to be both powerful and enduring. One of the reasons why Precipice has been offering a postmodern canon of sorts over the last few months is because I know that words- when formed thoughtfully and creatively, have the power to induce change- real and substantial change. Books, containing the right densities of words, can have a dynamic impact upon the lives of individuals, communities, and whole societies.

Clearly I am not the only person to believe so strongly in the power of the written word. A recent book by Marcia Ford suggests the same. Ford has penned "God Between the Covers" - a book that chronicles her own history of discovery and transformation via the power of the written word. Split into categories such as: True Spirituality: Christian Writers with Genuine Faith, Dangerous Journey: The Spiritually Subversive Role of Children's Literature, and Rebellion, Revolution and Peace: Black Power, Social Justice, and Questions about God, these are "the books that shaped (Ford's) life - powerful, influential, life-changing books with staying power."

Ford's collection brings together a refreshingly diverse set of books, from a broad subset of writers. Between the covers of God Between the Covers you'll find works from writers as diverse as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Brennan Manning, Francis Shaeffer, Brian McLaren, Rowan Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oswald Chambers, and Wendell Berry.

By the time you get to the final section of the book: Peace Like a River: Finding Faith through Fiction Once Again, Ford has done well to remind us not only that books have the capacity to enforce our predisposed ideas, but also to form them, or crush them- as need be.

Ford intriguingly chronicles her own journey as a postmodern living in an era of American Christianity that was not yet familiar or comfortable with that title. Clearly for Ford, in a time where her own ecclesial setting left more than a little to be desired, it was a community of books that helped her find her way. Eventually a live human being did come along to offer an analysis of sorts of her dis-ease. Ford recounts that,

Soon enough someone identified my theological malady as "postmodernism". I was flattered: I belonged! For a self-proclaimed misfit, this was good news indeed.

How many of us remember a similar sense of relief when we realized we were not the only one to think in such strange, sometimes murky shades? And I'm sure that Ford's own experience was only that much more bizarre- considering her "emergence" took place in a time before the institutionalized Church in North America had begun to offer any real help or understanding in this regard.

Ford's book traces not only an interesting path along one person's faith sojourn, but also to some extent the path of an entire group of believers trying to make sense of faith in Jesus in a world that could no longer be painted in shades of black and white. In that sense this book also chronicles to some extent, the emergence of a postmodern society in North America. And that is always an intriguing journey to retrace.

God Between the Covers is more than a journey recalled, it also a vision defined; a vision for postmodernly-sensitized Christian faith. Ford writes,

What I can do here, here in the chapters to come, is offer an unofficial glimpse into the way I see Christian postmodernism lived out in everyday life: by modelling an authentic faith, becoming- and remaining- culturally relevant, being open to changing the way we do church, serving others in body, mind, and spirit, expressing our spirituality in creative ways, and allowing oursleves and others to openly question those things we were once so certain about.

All told, Ford makes note of more than one hundred authors who have positively affected her journey of faith. If you're looking for a collection of authors and works that speak to a postmodern sensitivity (as I so often like to refer to it!) then Marcia Ford's God Between the Covers is a great place to start. This book serves as a reference point, or perhaps even more so a referential matrix, for not just one life, but an entire subset of lives emerging on the pivot point of the third millennium.