Book Review: Everyday Annunciations (Liturgical Press, 2024)

What unique paths people take to navigate the geography of grief.

When Susan Swetnam is widowed and childless at age 54, she enters a labyrinth of grieving, and through her skillful writing brings the reader along every step of the way. She begins by explaining that “the angel of disturbing circumstance” can be loss of marriage, job or home, health concerns, career or financial challenges, failures of every sort, any interruption of the trajectory we expected for our lives. How do we endure these shocks? Some will never really get over them, and everyone will bear some scars.

Swetnam leads us to imagine how God can use things which first seem disastrous to serve God’s unfolding purposes. The essential hinge: framing “life’s disruptions as annunciations,” saying “yes” as Mary did, despite our fear or bitterness. Fortunately, Swetnam spares us the pieties and shows how Mary too is initially shocked, resistant and confused by the angel’s message.

To move forward when her concept of the future is shattered, Swetnam reflects on six Renaissance paintings that depict the Annunciation, the ultimate “yes” to an unknown script. They show the whole range of emotions Luke reports Mary feeling. Her steppingstones to acceptance give readers permission to be human as they too reconcile to the divine will.

Swetnam’s intensely personal experience offers hope to many who endure incalculable loss. The author is brutally honest about natural, futile attempts to cope: depression, addiction, denial, magical thinking, suicidal ideas, and luminously clear about how Mary’s path might better accompany. She alerts readers to “Gabriel surrogates” and reaches the delightful point of saying to Mary, “Oh girlfriend, I get what you’re feeling.”

Over a 20-year process, details discovered in the paintings and shifts in Swetnam’s life experience lead her to see how “Yes comes in many forms… and adapts to many timetables.” Eventually, tragedy turns to treasure and desert to garden. Lucky the reader who gets to come along for the transformation.