Mildred Sherk Kreider

Songs in Diminishment Mildred Sherk Kreider

In this collection of essays and poetry, Mildred Kreider considers little indignities (forgetting how to "borrow" when subtracting) and the big questions (is God an "emergent quality"?) with equanimity and humor. She finds unexpected connections and universal insights in her experience: hallucinating gives her a new perception of van Gogh's wheat fields; she credits a burglar with saving her life. Over the course of the book she moves from her parents' radical faith to a more speculative spirituality, one less concerned with answers than with beauty. "Songs in Diminishment" is the summation of someone taking stock of a whole life, but still asking impudent questions like a first-grader.