Foster’s Pie Pan: Stories of Grace Abounding in a Fallen World offers vivid glimpses into the lively, heartwarming, sometimes surprising, then again tragic, experiences of specific people (and animals) with whom the author has become acquainted either close-up or from a distance, while encountering a variety of seasons, occasions, and events that offer readers scenes from which to consider their own stories as sacred, and the ground upon which they stand as holy.

 The cast of characters includes unfamiliar persons, like Foster, Clarence, Elijah, Philemon, Dick, Stephen, Charity, Lucy, John, Tooney, Cromwell, “Woodchuck,” and “the Sad-eyed Angel,” as well familiar ones, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Van Gogh, Saint Valentine, Saint Paul, Mother Teresa, and Santa Claus.

Seasons of the heart and seasons of the year become what they are not routinely expected to be,  as “Quiet, Please! While the Fox Is Passing,” “The Bitter Frost and the Wild Snowflake,” “Cry, Advent!” “Easter at Christmas,” and “A Day for True Love” beckon us to take a deeper look at common rituals so easily, and mistakenly, taken for granted.

The author summons us to a field where African American slaves till the soil and tend the tobacco leaf; takes us into the hazardous waters of the Caribbean in which the captain of a fragile wooden vessel navigates his passengers through a precarious midnight voyage; leads us through a backroads settlement in the rural piedmont of Virginia, as well as into a retreat center high in the mountains of western North Carolina, in quest of “the treasure buried in all events.”

He speaks to us during the rite of passage of a high school graduation ceremony. Not least, he commends us into the humbling company of Saint Paul as together we go into the interior regions of Asia Minor and the “screeching, screaming city of Ephesus with its ghettoes, ghouls, goblins, and gibberish,” as forerunner to our coming suddenly upon the border town of Clint, Texas, where immigrant children are treated like wild animals warehoused in wire cages.

This spiritual odyssey concludes in the ancient greystone Abbey of Saint Columba on the tiny island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, “at the heart of a groaning creation, a ‘thin place’ in the eye of the tempest,” where to partake of “Bannocks (Loaves) of Bread” is to recompose one’s spirit and reengage one’s calling.

The voices of poets and writers, past and present, sit aloft of chapters and speak their words of invocation. All along, elusive yet welcome signs of God’s inexhaustible grace abound within the most common and least likely of human encounters.

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“Only a writer as sensitive to the power of words could give us a book like this that touches the heart. Priest of the word, Charles Davidson bids us to “Lift up your hearts.” Read the book. It will lift you.”

—Ross Mackenzie, Historian Emeritus, Department of Religion, Chautauqua Institute, NY

“Rich with stories and reflections from decades in pulpit and classroom and in open spaces, each personal story in Foster’s Pie Pan offers reminders of truths we depend on and refreshing perspectives on those truths—about how healing comes in surprising ways, and how the well-worn paths of ordinary life lead, again and again, to holy ground. As they turn these pages, readers of every generation will find themselves invited home.”

—Marilyn McEntyre, professor, writing coach, author of Caring for Words in  a Culture of Lies and When Poets Pray

 “It is one thing to know that our lived worlds are constructed by narratives, as I know. It is quite another matter to have a fund of good stories, know how to tell them, and evoke our interest via image, character, memory, and quick riffs that surprised. This is what Charles Davidson does in singular compelling ways. He invites us into a world—the world of his imaginative making—that is richly peopled by great poets, struggling animals, caring folk, indolent neighbors, and a whole company of saints. Religion (and therefore biblical texts) comes easily in this world as a part of normal thinking. This wondrous collection bears witness to those who do not want to miss out on the gifts that are stunningly given among us. These stories, in the skilled artistry of Davidson, keep giving us gifts in illuminating, transformative, and summoning ways.”

—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary