The God of Shattered Glass

Where does one find hope in the midst of profound suffering? Tony Backman aches to know. A blues-harmonica-playing child psychologist at a residential treatment center in Santa Rosa, California, Tony specializes in narrative therapy. His story-based technique empowers abused teenagers to reimagine their lives through myths and folktales and so restore their vitality. Such vitality, however, eludes Tony in his own life. Mired in depression, he longs for his fractured family and fends off childhood flashbacks too painful to face. Tony’s mentor recommends classical underworld myths as a roadmap for the spiritual journey toward healing and hope, but Tony is too drained for the undertaking. Until Carey Foster enters his life. Carey is a golden-voiced eleven-year-old choral soloist at a local Catholic boys’ home. Brought to Tony’s treatment center with his wrists sliced, Carey cowers mutely with his secrets in the center’s locked ward, a flicking middle finger his only beacon. Carey’s healing depends on Tony’s ability to navigate the labyrinth of deception and cryptic self-disclosure that conceals the soul’s darkest secrets. It also depends upon Tony’s willingness to navigate the labyrinth of love and disappointment lodged in his own soul. At once a psychological study of how trauma is healed; a hero’s journey through the underworld of abuse, betrayal, and shattered faith; and a theological thriller in search of a credible and sustaining Sacred in the midst of unspeakable suffering, The God of Shattered Glass reveals that stories do indeed heal, and that the way to God is not up, but down.

Frank Rogers, Jr. is the Muriel Bernice Roberts Professor of Spiritual Formation and Narrative Pedagogy and the co-director of the Center for Engaged Compassion at the Claremont School of Theology. His teaching and writing focus on spiritual formation that is contemplative, creative, and socially liberative. A trained spiritual director and experienced retreat leader, he has written on the interconnections between spirituality, social engagement, and compassion. He is the author of Practicing Compassion (and its supplemental curriculum, The Way of Radical Compassion); The God of Shattered Glass, A Novel, and Finding God in the Graffiti: Empowering Teenagers through Stories which explores the role of the narrative arts in the spiritual formation of marginalized and abused youth and children. His current project is designing and teaching in the Triptykos School of Compassion, a three-month intensive formation program in radical compassion.