https://www.amazon.com/But-Only-Love-Make-Tree-ebook/dp/B0GY3QKVVN?dplnkId=1730a0a9-e298-4640-b40e-ce01bb309ac5&nodl=1
What if faith is not about finding final answers, but about learning to recognize Divine Mystery in the questions, relationships, and experiences that shape our lives? In But Only Love Can Make a Tree, Lorraine Valentin Sharpe offers a compelling vision of faith as an open, lived encounter with God as Love—inviting readers to move beyond inherited doctrines and discover a deeper spirituality grounded in wonder, questioning, and everyday experience.
Through the conversations of Ronan and Malaika, Sharpe invites us into essential questions: Who—or what—is God? What does it mean to believe? Where do love, doubt, reason, commitment, and tradition meet?
What I appreciate most is that Sharpe does not rush to provide tidy answers. She allows her characters—and her readers—to grapple with Divine Mystery, not as a problem to be solved, but as a Presence to be encountered, questioned, loved, and lived.
The conversations also remind us that theology belongs not only in seminaries, churches, or textbooks. It unfolds around kitchen tables, in moments of doubt and discovery, and whenever our old images of God become too small. Our lived experience can become a sacred place of revelation, and questioning what we have been taught can open us to a more mature and expansive faith—one spacious enough for uncertainty, wonder, and surprise.
Sharpe’s exploration of God as Love rather than as a distant authority offers a hopeful path. Divine Mystery may be encountered whenever love breaks through: when we forgive, seek justice, delight in creation, accompany someone who is hurting, or sit together in wonder.
I love the title, But Only Love Can Make a Tree. After all our theological debates and carefully constructed explanations, a tree may have something important to teach us. It grows toward the light, sinks its roots into the earth, offers shade, and proclaims the miracle of life without saying a word.
This thoughtful book gives readers permission to question without fear and to trust that Divine Mystery may be closer than we imagine. Perhaps faith ultimately leads us not to having all the answers, but to living more deeply in wonder. And in the end, love may be the greatest revelation of all.
—Rev. Dr. Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP
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