About the Author

Reverend David Arthur Auten is Senior Pastor of the historic First Congregational Church of Ramona, California (United Church of Christ). He is also the author of Embrace: Strangeness, Mediocrity, and the Living God.

Reviews

""In a probing, sensitive, insightful, and wide-ranging exploration, Auten reveals how we as persons are complex, beautiful, known and knowing, secret and unknowable, wonderful and weird--and called always to love. Combining the truths he has gleaned from many traditions, from ancient times to the postmodern, whether philosophical, literary, or scriptural, David offers a guidebook for living that is highly accessible, deeply learned, challenging, and comforting. This mix of practicality, mysticism, and self-discernment is just what many of us need: an invitation to self-transformation and self-giving. A beautiful and bountiful work!"" --James D. Findlay, California State University ""By transparently revealing and accepting his own eccentricity as a wonderful gift from God, David Auten invites us all to explore, and then accept, our own individuality through a thoughtful knitting together of insights from an interesting array of great thinkers."" --Dennis Baril, Community Covenant Church, Rehoboth, Massachusetts ""Auten's reflections . . . revolve around two key concepts--difference and love. Using abundant references to Scripture, and correlated with a great many writings both ancient and modern, Eccentricity is a purposefully 'incomplete' text, inviting readers to find completion in their own meditations on their 'difference.'"" --Rowan A. Greer, Yale Divinity School