Beneath and Between: And Other Overlooked Words That Illuminate God

A breakthrough work of spiritual formation that gives us a fresh vocabulary to experience an ineffable God.

What if God is not just above us but also beneath and between, alongside and among? What if God comes into us, and is thus within and throughout and around--all while yet beyond? In lush and literary prose, writer Varina Buntin Willse invites us to encounter the omnipresence of God through the lens of the lowliest of all parts of speech: the preposition. The result is nothing short of revelatory.

With echoes of Barbara Brown Taylor and Sue Monk Kidd, Beneath and Between guides readers into a new metaphorical universe, in which our experiences of God transcend the predictable grammars of faith. Hidden right there in plain sight--in scripture, in liturgy, in prayers and poems and writings from various wisdom traditions--dwell little words that offer stunning epiphanies. Ideal for group study and personal reflection, this book is rich and provocative in the most reverential way, offering more dimensions of the divine than doctrine usually affords. It is as if Willse has taken a crowbar to a crusty, heavy old door and pried it open, letting a rush of fresh air come pouring through.

For the contemplative and the confused, for the confident Christian and the heartbroken one, for the skeptic and the seeker, for anyone who feels left behind or excluded from expressions of faith: Find in these incandescent pages an expansive view of God and a companion for your spiritual journey. This is a book to savor.

Varina Buntin Willse is an award-winning author of spiritual and narrative nonfiction with degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Oxford University. She has penned six legacy books, provided content strategy to over one hundred companies, and helped to establish a new high school where she then served on the faculty. Founder of the mindfulness platform Ponder Effect, she leads spiritual retreats and regularly speaks on matters of the soul. She and her family live by a creek in Nashville, Tennessee.