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Title details for Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome by Reba Riley - Available

Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome

A Memoir of Humor and Healing

by Reba Riley
Reba Riley
Audiobook
4 of 4 copies available
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4 of 4 copies available
Written with humor and personality, this debut memoir recounts a woman's spiritual quest of experiencing thirty religions before her thirtieth birthday. Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is for questioners, doubters, misfits, and seekers of all faiths, and tackles the universal struggle to heal what life has broken.
On her twenty-ninth birthday, while guests were arriving downstairs, Reba Riley was supposedly upstairs getting dressed. In actuality, she was slumped on the floor sobbing about everything from the meaning of life to the pile of dirty laundry on the floor.

Life without God was crashing in on her. And she was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. She uttered a desperate prayer, and then the idea came to her—thirty by thirty. And thus she embarked on a year-long quest to experience thirty religions by her thirtieth birthday. During her spiritual sojourn, Riley:

-Was interrogated about her sex life by Amish grandmothers

-Disco danced in a Buddhist temple

-Fasted for thirty days without food—or wine

-Washed her lady parts in a mosque bathroom

-Was audited by Scientologists

-Learned to meditate with an urban monk

-Snuck into a Yom Kippur service with a fake grandpa in tow

-And finally discovered she didn't have to choose a religion to choose God

In a debut memoir that is funny and earnest, Riley invites questioners, doubters, misfits, and curious believers to participate in the universal search to heal what life has broken. Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome takes you by the hand and reminds you that sometimes you first have to be lost in order to be found.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 18, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781442393585
      • File size: 307078 KB
      • Duration: 10:39:44

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 9, 2015
      Exhausted by a mysterious chronic
      illness, businesswoman Riley, who once studied at the Focus on the Family Institute to become a Christian counselor, wants to believe in God again. The very thought of going to church, however, triggers dread. Hoping to find spiritual healing, Riley resolves to try 30 different religions before her 30th birthday. This chatty, lighthearted memoir recounts that experiment, in which, among other adventures, she visits a Hindu temple on Diwali, attends synagogue on Yom Kippur, and goes to a Scientology center for an “audit.” Though she circles back to Jesus, he is not the tightly circumscribed Jesus of her childhood Pentecostalism, but a powerful love that is greater than any single religious expression. If the prose leans a bit too heavily on dialogue and the humor occasionally reads as trying too hard, Riley’s debut gently offers doubters a friendly invitation to reconsider the gifts religion has to offer.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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