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You are Mine - Reflections on Who we Are

Author:	Alison Webster
Published By:	SPCK (London)
Pages:	134
Price:	£9.99
ISBN:	978 0281 059355

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This book by the Social Responsibility Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford is about identity. It affirms our unique identity before God and others and explores what it means for us to live in that knowledge. Webster conveys this by the use of narrative and story, both as a powerful means of communication and as the embodiment of what she is seeking to say. It is, she believes, the narratives that we tell and the narrative that we hear from others that define us and shape us. This is an unusual book and readers may have to take some time getting used to the searing openness and honesty of some of the incidents that she shares from her own life.

The central section, which uses the power of narrative and story to reflect on issues of race and sexuality, felt as if it might have belonged in another book. It was not that it wasn’t interesting, but seemed to this reader at least to import questions that needed fuller treatment elsewhere. The questions that she asks about the relationship between faith and identity are important ones - especially those about seeing faith as both personal and communal. However, while recognising how faith meets the “otherness” of God, I’m not sure that she does justice to faith encountering the “givenness” of God.  

The final section of the book is an imaginative encounter with the Jesus that Webster finds in the gospel. Like the rest of the book it will enthral and infuriate people in equal measure. It might be the sort of book that some would want to take as a resource on a quiet day or retreat, but I really can’t predict if it will work for you or not!