Life to the Whole Being: The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor by Matthew Wickman (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Life to the Whole Being: The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor by Matthew Wickman David B. Perrin (bio) Life to the Whole Being: The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor. By Matthew Wickman. Provo, UT: BYU Maxwell Institute, 2022. 227 pp. $19.95 pbk. It is not obvious that a book such as Life to the Whole Being would be subject to a critical analysis of its research, methodology, and contribution to scholarship—all elements typically included in a book review for an academic journal such as Spiritus. As the subtitle indicates, this book is largely autobiographical—in the genre of spiritual memoir—and hardly academic in the strict sense of the word. So, why would such a book be subject to review in the academy from the perspective of the field of Christian spirituality and not, let us say, as a piece of literature perhaps best reviewed from within the fields of literary and cultural studies, the fields of expertise of the author? Read on dear reader, read on. For this is the precise question this review intends to respond to, all the while keeping in focus the book's research, methodology, and contribution to scholarship. For quite some time, research in Christian spirituality has struggled with the implicit self-implicating nature of the discipline. Can the field of Christian spirituality hold its own against the expectations of the academy that research be as objective as possible, as analytical as possible, and thus instill greater confidence in the veracity of its results—all the while acknowledging the self-implication dynamics at play in the field of Christian spirituality? The dust has largely settled on this question, and the verdict is in: Christian spirituality as a research field of study is a self-implicating endeavor. The explorer in the field of Christian spirituality is part of the reality under scrutiny. And we see this reality in full flight in Wickman's Life to the Whole Being. Not only is Wickman trying to plumb the truth and meaning of a range of topics in Christian spirituality in general but also, and perhaps more significantly, the author is searching directly for personal identity in it all. Christian spirituality is a field of study where one subjects to critical inquiry, for example, the beliefs, practices, and history of the field and, often by implication, one's own personal clarity around beliefs, practices, and history. This is the research undertaken in Life to the Whole Being. The author is the subject of his own research in the pursuit of finding clarity on his own beliefs, practices, and history, but not just for his personal edification. The research is far broader than this. The book was written as a case study that has as its ultimate goal a deepening of understanding of the truth claims of the issues studied from within the perspective of the faith-based community to which the author belongs: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What methodology does the author use to undertake the research described above? Without explicitly stating it, the author unabashedly offers a critical analysis of experience-as-experience, the formal object of study in the field of Christian spirituality. It is just, in this case, the author's own experience-as-experience. As is often the case in spiritual memoirs, the author tells personal stories—many, many stories. Wickman describes the criteria for selection of these stories: "I attend … to the wonder of spiritual experience and the peace it bestows" (15). Some of the stories are alarmingly personal in nature, such that they have the effect of disarming the reader and thus drawing them (this reader at least) into standing raw before the text in a pause that causes full feelings, bags of emotions, to well up—akin, in some way, if even remotely, to what the author is "telling" in the moment. [End Page 356] The "tellings" in the book are divided into themes. These themes include (as described by the author in the Introduction) "spiritual promptings and the effort to follow them," "the potential conflict and ultimate harmony between our spiritual and religious lives," "God's capacity to speak...