Writings
Essays:
- Confessions of a Campus Minister from Spring 2009 Newsletter, The Common Ministry
- Living Fully in the Present in Uncertain Times from Winter 2010 Newsletter, The Common Ministry
Open Your Eyes: Toward Living More Deeply in the Present (Wipf & Stock, 2011)
Described on the cover of the NEW Wipf & St
ock publication:
“In order to discover inner peace and peace in our world, we will need to let go of traditional understandings of pain and suffering as God’s will. We will need to stop claiming that Christianity contains elite, exclusive truths. We learn here from the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark how to open our eyes and awaken to the presence of God here and now. Gail Stearns brings insight form Bibilcal scholars, spiritual leaders, and her own experience as a pastor and university teacher, to move us to a place where we can dwell more deeply in the present and live in a more compassionate world.”
“Our obsessions about the past and our anxiety about the future are deeply related to what Gail Stearns refers to as the crisis of soul. We are so unconvinced of our own value that we seek that value in all the wrong places. The future of creation depends upon our seeking that value within the substance of our religious traditions. This book contributes very well to that search!”
—Don Mackenzie
co-author of Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and a Sheikh
“This is a courageous and thoughtful book that does not accept tradition or doctrine for its own sake. It presents a wise reading of the Gospel of Mark for our time by letting it speak to the issues raised by living in the world of the twenty-first century. Gail Stearns draws upon her extensive experience as a college chaplain and teacher in bringing the deepest meaning of Mark together with the suffering and aspirations of her audience.”
—Adela Yarbro Collins
Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, Yale University Divinity School
Writing Pauline: Wisdom from a Long Life (Hamilton Books, 2005)
“Pauline’s ramblings…sometimes seem muddled and strange, while other reflections are poignantly sage. Stearns balances this paradox aptly, and…writes with authority…helping simplify the crisscrossing themes of feminist theory, theology, and Jungian psychology. But academic twist aside, Writing Pauline is mostly about a regular woman wrestling with career, religion, sexuality, politics, and self-reflection….her struggles with some complicated cultural issues imparted an important lesson—that wisdom gained over the course of a long life can be life’s biggest gift.” –Andrea Vogt, Washington State Magazine
