Books

All of Marilyn Sewell’s books are available for purchase at Amazon.


In Time’s Shadow: Stories About Impermanence, (5.5″x8.5″, soft cover, 192 pages), Skinner House Books, 2020

In Time’s Shadow: Stories About Impermanence

Minister, author, and activist Marilyn Sewell reflects on the everyday, the places we live and work, the thoughts we all have but hardly ever share, though they may carry the most profound of our human concerns. Using a variety of short literary forms―dramatic monologues, vignettes, letters, prose poems, lists, surrealistic tales―Sewell presents quirky, ironic, and compassionate slices of life that will bring laughter and at the same time take you deeper into the mysteries of existence. Sewell pushes for the thin, startling light beneath the confusion and chaos of our daily living: a woman worries that her cat loves her partner more than her; a man and a woman talk past each other in a therapy session; a lonely woman is distressed because her plant has stopped blooming. Together these short, compelling readings shine a light on the cultural incongruities and inanities which crowd our existence. We love, we lose, we die, and through it all, we ask, “What’s it all about?”

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Collected Speeches and Essays: 1982 to 2016, (6″x9″, soft cover, 166 pages), Fuller Press, 2019

Collected Speeches and EssaysThis collection of essays and speeches is representative of the prophetic voice of Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, minister, writer, public speaker extraordinaire, from the time of her first keynote address in 1987 through Huffington Post articles published after her retirement as senior minister of the First Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon, where she served with distinction for seventeen years.

 

The breadth and variety of Dr. Sewell’s writing is stunning. Here you will find

- a letter published in the NY Times the Sunday after 9/11;
- an analysis of the uses of power;
- a historical overview of the protestant church’s failures to address racism;
- a description of a self-directed blues tour of the Mississippi Delta;
- a speculative essay on the sexuality of Jesus;
- a moving personal essay on death, previously unpublished;
- a Jungian perspective on gender balance; and
- an impassioned plea for theological shifts demanded by the climate crisis.

Running through all her writing and speaking is a passion for justice-making, and a plea for compassion. Her words prove as powerful and compelling as when they were first written.

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Raw Faith: Following the Thread, (6″x9″, soft cover, 249 pages), Fuller Press, 2014

Raw Faith: Following the ThreadMarilyn writes about a universal longing — the longing for love and acceptance, the longing for home. The origin of her own angst is mother loss. Marilyn loses her mother at age 9 when her father snatches her and takes her to live with his parents in a small town in North Louisiana. She doesn’t get reacquainted with her mother until she is 33, when her mother is dying of cancer. Having grown up with no real home, she looks for home in the arms of men, in schools and churches, and in marriage. These places serve as a temporary refuge, but for the most part, home eludes her. She is sustained throughout her journey by her faith and her understanding that she is held by something larger than herself. Her wandering teaches her at last that home is not a place, not even with people she loves and who love her, but is rather a condition of the spirit. Home is always available, as she puts it, “if I can quiet my scared heart.”

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Praise for Marilyn Sewell’s memoir, Raw Faith: Following the Thread:

“This book describes a very human, often daily struggle to find meaning and connection. Profoundly moving… certainly among the first really modern spiritual memoirs.”
— Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature

“Fascinating and at times harrowing personal history. Candid, witty, compelling…”
— Paulann Petersen, former Oregon Poet Laureate

“…eminently readable and engaging throughout…  A heartfelt, thoughtful and deeply honest memoir.”
— Kirkus Review

“Written in luminous lines, her story can help to break you open to the raw human faith that will guide you to greater wholeness and compassion.”
— John Buehrens, Former President, UUA


A Little Book on PrayerA Little Book on Prayer, ( 6″x6″ soft cover, 64 pages ), Fuller Press, 2009

For those who are unsure, afraid of trying to pray, here are comforting suggestions. Table of Contents: Introduction, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Why Pray Anyhow?, What is Prayer?, Is Anybody Up There Listening?, Ways of Praying, Being Ready to Receive, Pray Without Ceasing.

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A Little Book on ForgivenessA Little Book on Forgiveness (6″x6″ soft cover, 54 pages), Fuller Press, 2008

Forgiveness is viewed not as a single act, but as a way of being. “It is our best chance as human beings to find at last the peace of body and soul that we seek.” Table of Contents: Part I Five Principles for Forgiveness, Part II Forgiveness as a Catalyst for Spiritual Growth.

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A Little Book of ReflectionsA Little Book of Reflections (6″x6″ soft cover, 124 pages), Fuller Press, 2011

A collection of short reflections on life’s spiritual challenges: 29 topics, including Compassion, Courage, Faith, Fear, Forgiveness, Loss, Love, Prayer, Suffering, Spiritual Journey and transformation.

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Wanting Wholeness, Being BrokenWanting Wholeness, Being Broken (6″x9″, soft cover, 267 pages), Fuller Press, 2nd ed., 2014

Book of sermons, first published 1998. Sections include: Longing for the Way, Hungering for Connection, Searching for the Holy, Realizing the American Dream, Meeting the Day with Courage, Seasons of Renewal, The Circle of Being. 33 sermons.

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Threatened with Resurrection: A Book of Sermons IIThreatened with Resurrection: A Book of Sermons II (6″x9″, soft cover, 206 pages), Fuller Press, 2nd ed., 2014

Book of sermons, first published 2006. Sections include: Partnering with the Divine, Right Relationship with Others, Becoming What You Were Meant to Be, Courage for the Dark Nights of the Soul, A Faith That Endures. 36 sermons.

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Unitarian Universalist Culture: The Present and The PromiseUnitarian Universalist Culture: The Present and The Promise, (Monograph, paperback, 28 pages), Fuller Press, 2006

Marilyn Sewell identifies cultural challenges that keep Unitarian Universalism from growing and offers a new focus for the future.

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Breaking Free: Women of Spirit at Mid-Life and BeyondBreaking Free: Women of Spirit at Mid-Life and Beyond, (5.9″x9.1″, soft cover, 256 pages), Beacon Press, 2004

Breaking Free is a collection of personal essays by women in the second half of their lives — essays in which they examine what age and life have taught them and reflect upon their lives and experiences. Contributors include Vivian Gornick, Audre Lorde, Erica Jong, Grace Paley, Terry Tempest Williams, Isabel Allende, Barbara Hurd, Sandy Boucher, and Maya Angelou.

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Cries of the SpiritCries of the Spirit, (6″x9″, soft cover, 334 pages), Beacon Press, 2000

Brimming with the inspirational words and thoughts of our finest writers, Cries of the Spirit is a beautiful sourcebook of poetry and prose in praise of life and all that it entails. Here women’s voices fill the age-old silence about matters central to their experience, from menstruation, sexual intimacy, and childbirth to caretaking, household rituals, and death. These writings represent a healing vision of the sacred that emerges from the particular consciousness of women — a vision that partakes of the world of earth and flesh. Contributors include Denise Levertov, Jane Hirschfield, Mary Oliver, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds.

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Claiming the Spirit WithinClaiming the Spirit Within, (6.9″x9.8″, soft cover, 345 pages), Beacon Press, 1996

This rich and diverse anthology of more than 300 poems celebrates the sacredness of women’s lives: the experiences that shape them, the relationships that sustain them, and the legacy that they build. In these poems, woman defy conventions and limits, fall in love and out again, wonder at their own bodies, grow old, and sing of the earth and sky. They pray, give birth, and make sense of suffering. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Rita Dove, Louise Erdrich, Tess Gallagher, Nikki Giovanni, Joy Harjo, and Maxine Hong Kingston.

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Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic ChildhoodsResurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods, (5.5″x8.3″, soft cover, 224 pages), Beacon Press, 2001

Resurrecting Grace is a collection of personal essays about the often painful and humorous experience of growing up in the One True Faith. These short confessional pieces about the saints, the nuns, hidden desires, and overt transgressions — and of course the guilt, the guilt, the guilt–is one for proud Catholics, former and recovering Catholics, and Catholics by association. Contributors include Frank McCourt, Brian Doyle, Tobias Wolff, James Carroll, Patricia Hampl, Sandra Cisneros, Mary Gordon, and many others.

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NOTE: All these books are still in print. Cries of the Spirit was Noted With Pleasure by the New York Times Book Review in 1991, and has sold over 70,000 copies.