Hellwig, Monika D. _Guest of God: Stewards of Divine Creation_.  New

York/ Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1999. 127 pp.

Reviewed by David N. Cremean, davidcremean@bhsu.edu, Black Hills State University.

This short book at times manages to transcend the devotional type of work it is apparently intended to be, thus placing it in a tension of sorts with itself. Author Hellwig is a retired Professor of the Theology from no less a significant Catholic institution than Georgetown University, and at least up until the time she published this book she was still working as the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities' executive director. Consequently, she is well-qualified to author such a volume.

_Guests of God_, especially in its first, fifth, and sixth chapters, carves out a relatively solid argument for the need, even requirement of, a more simple lifestyle among those who would term themselves Christians. In the opening chapter, Hellwig embeds her appeals for simplicity, as the title suggests, in the paired ideas that all humans are "guests of God" and that God is the Host Exemplar of existence; she therefore maintains in the main text's second sentence, "The world in which we live is pure gift" (7). Yet she soon carves out room existential room for human action, stating we as humans flare entrusted with our own becoming" (8).

Chapter 5, "Redemption and Change," reminds readers that historically, at times as a whole Christianity, perhaps most sweepingly in America, lost its social vision; she emphasizes the valuable Catholic concept of social sin--her primary term for it is "structures [that] are sinful" (42). Thus all institutions, including the church, need "redemptive life. . . that continually reaches out to the coming of God's reign in human affairs" (43). Thankfully, Hellwig's vision of this redemption is far different than the fascistic "Christian" visions of the like of the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world.

Chapter 6, "The Scandal of Poverty," works toward what Malcolm Muggeridge termed in a title of his own "Jesus Rediscovered." Based on this vision of Jesus--the same one profoundly found in Jackson Browne's vital song, "The Rebel Jesus"-- Hellwig concludes, "As Christians we are not called upon to make moral judgments against others but to help them climb out of the dead-end situations in which they are trapped" (53)--in short, not just to teach them to fish, but to fish for them, too, in multiple ways.

Yet for the most part the book adds little if anything new to the avalanche of books concerned with simplicity, and in its theological ideas it proves sometimes downright evangelistic. Chapter 11, on ecology, proves especially disappointing, though in it and at a couple of points earlier, Hellwig mentions a couple of solid base principles for a theology of the discipline. Moreover, as do most single-dimension metaphors for what may constitute at part of the Divine, the end effect of the focus on God's hospitality is to reduce that God, here to something akin to a supernatural version of Chaucer's Harry Bailey Ostler, "Mine Host" as he terms the Tavern Keeper.

Hellwig also engages some statements that are problematic at best. Early on she conflates faith with knowledge, juxtaposing the two as follows: "Those who have _faith-l who _know_themselves to be more than chance occurrences in a blind universe. . . " (10, emphases mine). A mere two pages later, she maintains that "The purpose [as if there could only be one] of looking at the large picture of what we are doing in the world with God's hospitality is not to impose guilt. It is, rather, to stress critical analysis and creative responsibility" (12). While we live in a world of Oprah feel-goodness and while guilt can be--and often has been--overdone by the religious powers that be, it neither need be left out of the equation altogether, nor mutually excluded from positive practices. Intermittently throughout the book, Hellwig falls prey to similar weakly expressed or thought-out statements.

The prayers that precede every chapter are each in Hellwig's (or the editor's) words "adapted" from a specific Psalm. One or the other of them even went to the additional trouble to maintain, in bold at the top of the copyright page, that these prayers" are not translations. . . but original verses based on the imagery and themes of the psalms referenced." Though such strategies have been commonly and often beautifully practiced in Catholic and other traditions and though the prayers are peaceful and simple enough in their own right, they are arguably more plagiarized than adapted and leave one wishing for more originality and in general for a more direct connection to the material that follows. Even more distracting, the majority of the questions that follow each chapter seem too pop-psychologic given the earnestness and the placid intensity of Hellwig's main material. It would have made for a more unified and flowing text to have cut both of these elements.

Also inconsistent and including a number of unneeded repetitions, daughter Erica Hellwig Parker's simple black and white illustrations are occasionally refreshing and frequently less distracting and disruptive than the above two elements of the book. The illustrations focus on the natural world and thus fit fairly well with the text's overall message. Among several notable exceptions to the successful drawings are an anthropomorphicized snake whose head looks more like that of a ferret on page 13, a too happy-looking bear on pages 38 and 98, and a giddy-faced lizard on page 56. The effect of their lackluster success makes these last three elements seem all the more like padding utilized to extend a long pamphlet into a short book.

Nevertheless, numerous ideas that Hellwig explores within her limited parameters prove arguably laudable. Her diagnoses of much of the materialism and dread that ails modern American society and modern Christianity are consonant with those of such gifted Christian and Catholic writers as Kierkegaard, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, and others of like ilk. Furthermore, on the whole, Hellwig actually writes much better than most who tackle the simplicity genre. Her style occasionally attains a simply poetic level, and throughout she is a capable though rarely inspiring writer.