Excerpt: In Entering the Wild, Janzen narrates the process of crafting these hymns; and I found this chapter, titled “Three Women and the Lost Coin: How Three Women Found Me,” the memoir’s most compelling. In 1990, Janzen was asked to be on a committee to recreate a Mennonite hymnal that might “nourish . . . congregations for twenty years or more.” The committee, wanting to include several hymns honoring the feminine characteristics of God, turned to Janzen. Janzen describes encountering the work of three mystic women—Julian of Norwich, Hildegard von Bingen, and Mechtild of Magdeburg—and nding there “the possibilities of devotion and celebration that opened windows to my own imagination.
