Faith Evolving - Print.

A deeply personal yet universal spiritual journey, Faith Evolving weaves together poetry and reflection to inspire readers to ponder their evolving faith in relation to life’s challenges and joys.

This book:

• Provides a relatable spiritual biography for those reflecting on their own faith journeys.
• Encourages readers to think critically about their relationship with God and church institutions.
• Offers insights into how life experiences shape and evolve personal faith.
• Reflects the spiritual journey of women, especially within the context of New Zealand and Australasia.
• Engages with deep theological and philosophical thought without being overly academic.
• Is a compassionate, non-bitter reflection on both the joys and struggles of faith.
• Supports spiritual growth for readers in various stages of faith or those exploring post-denominational spirituality.

Features

• Blends poetry, prose, and personal reflection over a 30-year faith journey.
• Divided into three distinct sections, each covering different stages of life and faith.
• Explores themes such as personal transformation, justice, and post-denominational spirituality.
• Offers reflections on significant life experiences including grief, loss, and healing.
• Written in accessible language, making it suitable for laypeople, clergy, and spiritual seekers alike.

Soft cover 188pp
7" x 10"
71,424 Words
Re-published: 19 April 2024
Language: English
ISBN: 9798884062061
Philip Garside Publishing Ltd (2024)

[In stock 5 Oct 2024]

Description

Faith Evolving: A Patchwork Journey is an intimate and heartfelt exploration of one woman’s evolving spiritual journey. Trish McBride, once firmly rooted in traditional Christian faith, invites readers to travel with her as she navigates the many challenges, losses, and joys that have shaped her understanding of God and life. Using a unique blend of prose, poetry, and reflection, McBride weaves together the significant moments of her life – from dealing with personal grief and loss to witnessing and confronting injustice in her community.

Spanning three distinct periods of her life, this book touches on universal themes of personal transformation, healing, and the quest for meaning. Readers will find McBride’s voice to be compassionate, insightful, and relatable as she reflects on her evolving faith, moving beyond the bounds of denominational church teachings to a broader, more inclusive spiritual understanding.

Whether you are on a personal spiritual quest or a minister seeking inspiration for your faith community, Faith Evolving offers profound insights and reflections that will resonate deeply. It’s a testament to the power of story, faith, and the courage to grow.

• • •

Trish’s three books – Faith Evolving, Exploring the Presence and A Love Quilt – are being republished in 2024.

Read together, they document Trish’s 75-year life and faith journey from childhood to her 80s – a unique longitudinal record of women’s spirituality and thinking. They are both spiritual biography and contextual theology.

Along the way, Trish moves from a traditional Catholic faith to embracing feminist theology and on into a post-denominational, inclusive, integrated Gospel-centred spirituality. She has used a patchwork metaphor across all three books, connecting writings of many colours, shapes and textures.

Her purpose in all three has been to encourage others to ponder and record their own faith journeys.

Free PDF Sampler of articles and poems from Trish's three books

Want a taste of the quality and breadth of Trish's writing?

Click here for a free 35 page PDF containing extracts
from Faith Evolving, Exploring the Presence and A Love Quilt:
Download Free Sampler

• • •

Trish McBride was born in Lancaster, England and came to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1952. For most of her life she was deeply involved in the Catholic Church. She has subsequently spent times with ExAlt, a women’s spirituality group, a Progressive Presbyterian parish, and the Religious Society of Friends, and now identifies as post-denominational. 

Now retired, Trish has been a spiritual director, chaplain in various contexts, counsellor and supervisor. She is mother to 7 and delighted grandmother to 23, some acquired, and is now (2024) happily settled in a retirement village.

A high point in her writing career was as a prize-winner in a 1994 international competition for religious journalism awarded by The Tablet, London. Others have been contributing chapters to five Aotearoa Catholic-based theology books, (The God Book, A Thinkers Guide to Sin, Journeying into Prayer, But is it Fair? and Living in the Planet Earth), publication of two academic papers in USA, and completing her own unintended trilogy: Faith Evolving, Exploring the Presence and A Love Quilt.

Many of the articles and poems in her books have previously appeared in a variety of publications. Formal studies included MA (Hons) in Classics, Diploma in Pastoral Ministry and Recognition as an Associate in Christian Ministry (interdenominational).

Involvements include family, social justice, nurturing friendships, quilting, reading, swimming, walking and occasional painting.

Title and Copyright

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Preface to the Third Edition

Clothes-line Theology: 1974 – 1986

• 41 Koromiko Road
• Magnificat
• Community
• Being Small
• A Blood Donor’s Prayer
• About Loving
• If
• Vine
• Birth
• Commitment
• Forgiveness
• Al-Anon and a Catholic
• Worth
• Cana
• Woman
• Fruitfulness
• Honoured
• Retreats
• Incarnation
• Fishing
• Duckling
• Hunger
• Encounter
• Burdens

After That: 1987– 1994

• Change
• Garden
• Ruach
• Gold
• Integration
• Storm
• Chaos
• The Flower
• Betrayal
• Clay
• Listening
• Time
• Presence
• In Deep
• Waikanae
• Cave
• The Invitation
• An Intrinsic Moral Evil?
• Humility and Me
• Mending
• Straightening
• A Tiger Named Susanna
• Waiting
• Whatsoever You Do …
  • A tribute to AIDS Campaigner Tom O’Donoghue

Turangawaewae: 1995 – 2005

• The Wash
• June
• Sharing the Journey – Growing in God through Spiritual Direction
• Extrication!
• Women’s Experience of Church Response to Family Violence – towards a theology for abusive marriages
  • Quotes to Ponder
  • Recommendations
  • Recommended Reading
• Ambivalence
• Aftermath
• Journey with AIDS
  • Candlelight Memorial
  • Good Friday
  • Cairn
• Reproach
• First Australasian Conference on Sexual Abuse by Health Professionals and Members of the Clergy
• Of Poppies and Vines …
• Life
• Seeing
• Outrage
• A Theology of Forgiveness
• Discovering Decolonisation
• A Letter
• Trinity
• ‘Come and See!’
• Engaging with the Scriptures
• Journey with the Jews
• Revisiting Original Sin
• Starting
• Dancing
• Living Springs – Towards a Just Future
• Open Discipline, Consumer Rights and the Churches
• Visitors
• A Clergy Wife Speaks Out
• The Violent Church
• Consenting Adults or Organisational Incest?
• Millennium
• Unless You Become as Little Children …
• The Emperor’s New Clothes
• Reflections on a Transition
• Potential
• Fierce Feathers
• Proclaiming Liberty to Captives…
• Therapy
• A Quaker Saint
• Transformation –
• Community Care – the Good News
• Ministering to Church Leavers
• Celebrating Susanna
• Another Response to Jacquie’s Daughter, Maybe for When She’s a Little Older
• Dancing with Gratitude
• The Table Ministry of Jesus
• Psychotherapy as Sacrament
• And Now …

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

Appendix 1 — Summary of J W Fowler’s Stages of Faith

Appendix 2 — Power and Equality Wheels

Glossary

About the Author

Click the links for:
3 Print Book set | Faith Evolving Print Book | Exploring the Presence  Print Book | A Love Quilt Print Book |

3 eBook set | Faith Evolving eBooks | Exploring the Presence eBooks | A Love Quilt eBooks