A Simplicity of Faith: My Experience in Mourning (William Stringfellow Library)

In 1980 lawyer/theologian William Stringfellow experienced the loss of his close friend and companion poet Anthony Towne. Totally unexpected Townes death brought Stringfellow face-to-face with his most personal encounter with grief. These pages eloquently record his year of mourning thus becoming both a tribute to Towne and a way of celebrating life--past and future. Five of Townes poems appear here brilliantly capturing the mood and tone of Stringfellows text. Through the course of Stringfellows dialogue with grief he teaches us that bereavement can be a special source of inner peace. We discover that to know life in its fullest is to know and face death. A Simplicity of Faith is a spiritual odyssey of rare intensity. It is a convincing argument that biography reflected upon becomes theology. Though in many aspects focused on death it is a powerful statement of what it means to be totally alive. In this stirring chronicle of death within community grief becomes the somber flippancy of the clown and the account of mourning Promethean entertainment. Through it all we learn of the Word. --Will D. Campbell author of Up to Our Steeples in Politics It is I believe the best book that he has ever written . . . he penetrates so deeply into his personal experience of mourning that he is able to make universal judgments. Im reminded . . . of the writings of Solzhenitsyn. . . . He obviously knows how to write what he thinks--and to write it in such a way that anyone can understand both his experience and his theology. --Rt. Rev. John B. Coburn DD the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts William Stringfellow was a practicing attorney and a prominent Episcopalian layman who frequently contributed to legal and theological journals. After his graduation from Harvard Law School he practiced some years in the East Harlem neighborhood in New York City. He was a visiting lecturer at several law schools and lectured at theological seminaries across the country. Stringfellow authored more than a dozen books including A Private and Public Faith My People is the Enemy Count It All Joy and Instead of Death.