Reader Wisdom Requested

If you are willing to think a bit outside your usual box?When God Calls A Woman: The Struggle of a Woman Pastor in France and Algeria by Elisabeth Schmidt is worth your time. The title intrigued me, I found it in the theology section of the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles between Calvin and Luther when I was poking around. I expected it to be something else. Elisabeth Schmidt was raised an athiest, but eventuallybecame the first female pastor ordained into the French Reformed Church. The section that really gives me pause though, was when she (along with all the other female pastors they could find) volunteered to go undercover as a pastor (posing as a social worker) to live among the inmates of a NAZI work camp. She was just really an amazing person, and had a lot of intelligent (and witty) things to say about life, faith, discipleship, and trying to navigate a rather exclusive status quo.Born Again by Charles W. Colson -- Chuck Colson was involved in Watergate, and spent a life-changing, faith-changing seven months in prison for his Watergate-related crimes. He went on to found a major evangelical Christian prison ministry. And Henri J.M. Nouwen comes to mind, but he wrote so much, so widely, so topically, and so autobiographically? It would be hard to pin down a singular definitive "spiritual autobiography" for Nouwen. His journals are good, I really liked The Genesee Diary. He wrote a short book about his near-death experience (technically he did die) in Beyond the Mirror that wraps itself well around Philippians 1:21. I've been limited by what I can get at libraries and such, but if you know someone who knows the Nouwen canon well, Nouwen is a place where you will find many good things.

JRR Tolkien was catholic, his biography by Humphrey Carpenter is a good read. He interacted with many strong personalities over his lifetime in which he challenged others as much as they challenged him.

I am not sure that these are what you want but here are some suggestions: Lanza del Vasto, Return to the Source. Founder of the French nonviolent Community of the Ark relates his trip to India to "find himself". I found this very moving. (Also good for inter-religious dialogue.) John P. McNamee's Diary of a City Priest - a priest working among the poor in Philadelphia Niall O’Brien, Island of Tears, Island of Hope or Revolution from the Heart - an Irish priest who worked in the Philippines and was incarcerated wrote two books that I know of, one of which was autobiographical. I read them more than 20 years ago and so can't remember which is more autobiographical Elias Shakour, Blood Brothers - a Palestinian Melkite(?) bishop Will Campbell, Forty Acres an a Goat - a radical Baptist from the South, involved in inter-racial work J. Guadalupe Carney, To Be A Revolutionary: An Autobiography A Jesuit who worked in Honduras, was expelled and returned as a chaplain to a small band of guerrillas and was killed. Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert