Margie Haack

For 20+ years I have been reading the writings of Margie and Denis Haack and learning about thoughtful discernment, especially in engaging with an open mind to movies and how we learn about being human, as well as the goodness of ordinary life, through their ministry Ransom Fellowship and their journal Critique. Margie, every season for decades, has put out a newsletter called Note from Toad Hall and then Letters from the House Between. Her honest words and stories were always an encouragement. She felt like a kindred spirit as she shared her struggles and the grace of Jesus. God really did use their work to engage my mind and enlarge my heart.

Margie’s first book The Exact Place still remains one of my favorite memoirs. It is at once laugh out eloud funny and teary-eyed sad. I loved sharing it with friends. Now Square Halo Books is re-relesing The Exact Place and her book of sessay God in the Sink (now titled This Place: A Few Notes from Home.). No Place: A Desert Pilgrimage is the second in the Place Trilogy. I am so happy about this

This story “picks up during the cultural upheaval of the late '60s. A young Minnesota farm girl gets married and joins a hippie commune in the high desert of New Mexico. Margie's spiritual pilgrimage wound its way through doubts, failures, broken relationships, and the wounds of fundamentalism. Full of moments both amusing and absurd, her path ultimately led to the hard question: Was Christianity worth living for and what would that look like? It was a journey that sometimes led through no place she wanted to stay.”

Photo of Denis and Margie Haack from their wedding . . . part of Margie’s No Place story.