A Love Quilt - Trish McBride

A Love Quilt records a spirituality of aging, where many paths and truths are understood to converge. This engaging spiritual memoir quilts together 68 pieces of Trish McBride's writing from the last decade. The overall theme is that the meaning and purpose of human life is learning to love - ourselves, others, earth, cosmos, and Holy Mystery, the one of so many names. Trish believes we are all on a spiritual journey, whether or not we call it that.

Her efforts to live out her post-denominational Christianity are documented in her pieces on social justice, mental health, interfaith and racial relationships, prayer, non-orthodox theologies on forgiveness and same sex marriage, critiques of church practices, metaphor as the viable alternative to biblical literalism, and community - including her Covid-19 lock-down diary. The book also includes reflections on her travels near and far.

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Trish's three books - Faith Evolving, Exploring the Presence and A Love Quilt - are being republished in 2024. Read together, they document Trish's 75-year life and faith journey from childhood to her 80s - a unique longitudinal record of women's spirituality and thinking. They are both spiritual biography and contextual theology. 

Along the way, Trish moves from a traditional Catholic faith to embracing feminist theology and on into a post-denominational, inclusive, integrated Gospel-centred spirituality. She has used a patchwork metaphor across all three books, connecting writings of many colours, shapes and textures. Her purpose in all three has been to encourage others to ponder and record their own faith journeys.

"Within Trish's central theme of love, come some refreshing and diverse contexts, e.g. working alongside mental health consumers; engaging with people of different faiths and ethnicities and those in our community who identify as LGBTI. We find subjects as varied as quantum physics, cosmology, ecology, evolution and interspirituality. Although social justice is the backbone of Trish's faith in action; contemplation, mysticism and playing with metaphors of the Nameless One, are also essential companions on her journey of love. I challenge you to lovingly pick up this book and be prepared to be refreshed."

Heather Sangster-Smith, Educator, Advocate, Facilitator

"This is a work of such richness and spiritual insight... Trish McBride has opened her story and her soul to her readers and enabled us all to profit from her deep understanding of her own pilgrimage. ... In many ways Trish's story is so different from my own, that it was surprising and exciting to discover that her bold experiments, her deep experiences and her explorations have significant benefit even for those of us who have gone in different directions."

Peter Lineham, MNZM, Emeritus Professor of History