Soul Woundedness

Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai is a spiritual companion and Assistant Professor of Spirituality at the Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. They have contributed to volumes on spiritual and religious responses to homelessness, including Land of Stark Contrasts: Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness (Fordham, 2021) and Street Homelessness and Catholic Theological Ethics (Orbis, 2019).

Prologue ix Note about Quotations xiii Introduction 1 1 The Wound of Faith 15 2 The Wound of Rejection 35 3 The Wound of Human Being 59 4 The Wound of God 91 5 The Wound of Love 116 Conclusion: A More Loving Love 134 Notes 159 Bibliography 177

Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai's book Soul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle, is a substantial contribution to the disciplines of homelessness and religion. His insights are based on hours of ethnographic work with youth who are homeless in Seattle, putting their stories from the streets in conversation with theories from the discipline of spirituality. Paul gives a nuanced understanding of both the joy and travails of the youth, and notes that while they critique much of Christian theology that has judged them, they nevertheless have a deep spirituality that gives them a sense of hope and community. Paul models and offers ways that we can be present to and accompany these youth who are ignored and mistreated while also identifying the larger structural factors that cause poverty and homelessness.---Dr. Laura Stivers, author of Disrupting Homelessness: Alternative Christian Approaches Soul Woundedness is a heartfelt and moving book about one of the great social crises of our time. It is also an ethnography about the nature and experience of God.---TM Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others Take this journey with Paul into the lives of our neighbors on the street. He opens himself and us to the inner center of homelessness and our humanity. Through the practice of a deeply loving spirituality, we are invited to share with new understanding in creating caring community. Soul Woundedness should become a classic text in the social sciences and humanities, a staple in religious studies and a basic read in every congregation. Extraordinary, sensitive, revelatory and healing. ---Craig Rennebohm, author of Souls in the Hands of a Tender God