SPICE Up Your Life invites readers to consider how mundane encounters can be brimming with opportunities for reflection about God, life, and relationships. Such a practice promises to deepen our understanding of the situations in which we are immersed, as well as shape our responses in those moments.
The book promotes this reflective practice within the context of Quaker testimonies, which form a bedrock foundation for defining the aspirations of Quaker living. Far from being historic relics, these values can help align one’s life practices with one’s convictions. SPICE Up Your Life helps us learn to articulate afresh the truthfulness we seek to communicate, and to do so in a manner that does in fact bear witness to the convictions Friends deem to be deserving of the label “testimony.”
A remarkable book that gathers up all the bits and pieces of the Society of Friends scattered around the globe and shows us—with great understanding and a dash of Jay’s trademark humor—how each one of us is intended to be a part of the whole and charged with a mission to complete.
Ellen Michaud, author of Blessed: Living a Grateful Life and writer-in-residence at Earlham School of Religion
Thought-provoking, entertaining, and practical! In SPICE Up Your Life, Jay Marshall uses fun storytelling and insightful questions to explore how traditional Quaker testimonies (or core values) can offer guidance in day-to-day living. Ranging from flat tires and dive bars to minced oaths and pimento cheese, Marshall’s essays show how lofty values like simplicity, integrity, equality, and community can have down-to-earth application.
Howard R. Macy, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Biblical Studies at George Fox University and author of Befriending the Prophets
Read this book for Jay’s stories of international travel and local eating adventures, but linger on the probing queries. Jay shares how the Quaker testimonies of peace, integrity, community, equality, and sustainability inform and shape his everyday life. His humor and curiosity, coupled with the reflective queries at the end of each chapter, encourage readers to consider how the testimonies provide meaning for each of us—particularly at this time when our society is hungry for meaning and cohesion.
Diane Randall, Former General Secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation
To us who are not Quakers, Jay speaks masterfully, so much so that Quakers could look over his shoulder and learn about their treasures perhaps for the first time again. Jay is clear-eyed yet enchanting, reconnecting us with the divine in the muck and glory of everyday life. I sighed with delight, laughed out loud, and took notes to use in the years to come. This is a book to keep on the nightstand and pick up over and over again. It will help you let go, fall asleep, and rise the following day with some inexplicable strength in your step.
Samir Selmanović, Ph.D., Founder of TURN Community
The quest for truth has led many to seek answers in foreign places long revered, the respected writings of others both ancient and contemporary, and most often, in the populist pundits of screen and radio. It is as if truth is always “over there” and someplace removed from our place in the world. Jay Marshall calls us to the values of truthfulness in the “here and now” and in the everyday. Among Jay’s stories, queries, and questions rests an invitation to consider how daily, common moments offer testimony to the larger values of life. From a yard sale to a pimento cheeseburger at Mabry’s Mill, stories of practical wisdom remind readers of the sacred ordinary. Through Jay’s layered writing, the reader can engage the words of a gifted storyteller, go deeper into the values unveiled with wit and intellect, and go deeper still and consider how our stories might give testimony to truthfulness. To read one story is to be inspired. To read Jay’s collection of stories framed by his Quaker faith is to know of the richness of our journey and the blessing of the sacred ordinary.
Dr. Jeffrey Carter, President, Bethany Theological Seminary
Jay Marshall
is a life-long Friend. A graduate of Guilford College, Duke Divinity School, and Duke University, he served as a pastoral minister and seminary dean. He is author of Thanking and Blessing: A Spirituality of Gratefulness and When the Spirit Calls. He blogs occasionally at jaymarshallonline.com.