Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor by Jana Riess
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author shares her "failed" experiment at challenging herself to focus on a specific religious practice e.g. fasting, centering prayer, Sabbath keeping, charity, and generosity each month of a year. In reality, her experience resulted in increased spirituality so she only "failed" at perfection. Her keen sense of humor made the reading not only enjoyable, but easy for the reader relate. All of us have at sometime vowed to be better and not met our goal completely.

Favorite quotes from the book:

"...those attempts at sainthood that seemed like dismal failures at the time, actually took hold somehow. They helped to form me into the kind of person who could go to the bedside of someone who had harmed me and be able to say, "I forgive you, Dad, Go in peace." Although I didn't see it while I was doing the practices themselves or even while I was writing the chapters in the book, the power of spiritual practice is that it forges you stealthily, as you entertain angles unawares."

“we need to take a long hard look at what we believe about God . God doesn't owe us anything, no matter how cheerful and uncomplaining we are. Period.”

“The less comfortable we are with ourselves, the more we will look to things around us for comfort. The more assured we are of ourselves, the less assurance we will need from things outside”

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