I do not usually read with lists in mind. I read slowly, often distractedly, sometimes devotionally, sometimes just to survive a season. But looking back over this year, a handful of books stand out not because they impressed me intellectually, but because they helped to form me. They changed the way I noticed the world. They softened me. They reoriented my imagination toward God.
These are my top five books of 2025, not ranked by importance, but gathered because each met me where I was and quietly moved me somewhere better.
1. Haiku: Japanese Poems for the Four Seasons edited by Ornella Civardi
This book did something simple. It forced me to slow down.
Haiku does not allow for rushing. There is no room for verbosity or explanation. You must attend. You must notice. A falling leaf. The sound of rain. A moment that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Reading these poems is helping me to train my attention outward again, away from constant abstraction and into the texture of the world around me.
Spiritually, this mattered more than I expected. It reminded me that presence is not a technique but a posture. That the sacred often hides in what is small and fleeting. That God does not always speak in paragraphs but sometimes in a single image, held long enough to be received.
I found myself more deliberate after reading this book. More aware of light, sound, and stillness. In a culture obsessed with speed and productivity, haiku felt quietly resistant. Almost monastic.
2. The Wood Between the Worlds by Brian Zahnd
Zahnd has a gift for naming the thin places between heaven and earth, and this book lives entirely in that space. Drawing its imagery from C S Lewis, The Wood Between the Worlds explores liminality, transformation, and the places where God meets us between certainty and chaos.
What I appreciated most was its refusal to rush toward answers. This is not a book trying to win arguments. It is a book inviting readers into mystery, into surrender, into the slow work of unlearning false images of God.
It resonated deeply with my own growing sense that faith is less about holding tight to certainty and more about learning how to dwell faithfully in the in between. Zahnd writes with pastoral warmth, theological depth, and poetic imagination, making this a book I returned to more than once.
3. Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers By Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite
In an age where pastoral ministry is often shaped by metrics, branding, and performance, this book gently but firmly pulls us back to a much older vision of soul care. One rooted in patience, humility, discernment, and deep attention to the inner life.
The section on Gregory of Nyssa stood out to me in particular. His vision of the soul as endlessly journeying into God, always growing, always becoming, reframed formation not as fixing people but as accompanying them. Gregory does not see humanity as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be loved into wholeness.
That perspective has stayed with me. It has shaped the way I think about spiritual direction, formation, and even my own inner life. It reminded me that good pastoral care is slow, relational, and deeply human.
4. The Shack by William Paul Young
I know this book divides opinion. But this year, God used it powerfully in my life.
The Shack met me at a time when I needed healing more than explanation. It did not answer all my theological questions, nor did it try to. Instead, it reintroduced me to a God who is present in suffering, gentle with wounds, and more loving than my fear had allowed me to imagine.
Reading it felt less like consuming a book and more like being accompanied through a difficult conversation. It helped clarify my path toward God this year, not by removing doubt, but by reshaping trust.
For all its simplicity, The Shack carries a deeply pastoral theology. One that prioritises relationship over control, love over fear, and presence over performance. I am grateful for it.
5. Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Reading Pádraig always feels like home.
Ó Tuama has a remarkable ability to write about God without forcing God into the room. Kitchen Hymns is intimate, domestic, and deeply human. It finds the sacred in ordinary spaces, conversations, and moments that rarely feel religious enough to matter.
What I loved most is how gently theological it is. The poems and reflections do not preach. They listen. They honour complexity. They allow grief, joy, doubt, and love to sit at the same table.
This book reinforced something I keep returning to in my own writing and faith. That God is not waiting for us in abstraction or spiritual achievement, but already present in kitchens, friendships, silence, and shared meals.
Scribbling Theology 